Page 4 of Truth or Lie

“We can go together,” I told her. “Assuming you don’t want to run for the hills after this conversation.”

She shifted in her seat. “If it’s about your heat, there’s really nothing more to say. I’ve told you before—I can’t stop Jax and Flynn from mating you, if the four of you are set on it. Hell—Jax and Kam are technically mated already.”

“And we’ve toldyoubefore—that isn’t the point,” I said. I had no intention of losing my temper with Alex... though Kam might, if she pushed him too far. That being said, blunt talk often seemed to be the only way to get her to engage beyond shallow deflections.

Her hard green eyes pinned me. “Then what is the point, Leona? You both want something from me that I’m incapable of giving. That part of me was broken a long time ago.”

Alex had mated before, and it had ended tragically. Her former mate was still alive at least—though she was sterilized now, with her mating gland cut out by Committee butchers. I understood that Alex wasn’t in any hurry to sign up for a potential repeat of that experience—but that wasn’t what we were asking of her.

Or rather, it wasn’t whatIwas asking of her.

“Yes,” Kam said, his voice low and misleadingly mild. “Please—let’s talk about being broken when it comes to mating.”

I hid a wince and sat back in my chair, ceding the floor to my packmate. I hadn’t expected the gloves to come off quite that fast... yet here we were.

“You more than anyone should appreciate the dangers of this,” Alex shot back, never one to back down from a fight.

Kam’s brown eyes snapped with reflected firelight. “The dangers? Let’s see. Some or all of us might die. Some or all of us might be captured. We might be tortured. We might become victims of the Beta Liberation Front’s experimental nerve gas. Perish the thought—I mean, whatever would we do if any of those things happened?”

I suppose I could have warned Alex that when Kam’s temper finally reached its tipping point, he played dirty. With the exception of death, everything on that list had already happened to us. And frankly, that no one had died so far was a miracle.

But Kam wasn’t done. “Andof courseif you aren’t mated to us, you’ll be completely blasé about the prospect of our suffering. Just like I didn’t give a damn about Jax’s wellbeing before I had his bite mark on my shoulder, but now I suddenly care what happens to him because we’retechnically fucking mated.”

This was the reason I usually tried to avoid pissing Kam off. I kept my mouth shut and waited for the fireworks to die down.

“A mating implies an additional expectation of care—” Alex began.

“You’ve already risked your lives!” Kam’s normally quiet voice rose to a shout. “You’ve done it over and over—for us and for each other! There isliterally nothing more you could sacrifice for us, simply because we were mated!”

“There’s the bond!” Alex’s voice rose to match his. “Damn you—there’s the bond. Another part of my soul that could be ripped out by the roots.”

My throat tightened in sympathy at the raw pain in her voice.

“Not with me.” Kam’s voice had gone quiet again, as he delivered the three devastating words.

His mating gland was still there, but it was useless after what had been done to the rest of his reproductive system in the slave pens. Jax had bitten him during a moment of passion, not realizing that Kam was left-glanded instead of right-glanded. Neither of them regretted the slip... but no psychic bond had formed between them. Kam’s body was too damaged.

Alex dragged her gaze away. Her complexion was pale as milk, highlighting the dark circles under her eyes from too many lost nights of sleep.

“I would still feel it,” she said.

The flat statement was irrational, in the sense that Kam wasn’t magically going to form a functioning mate-bond with Alex any more than he had with Jax. Yet it still cut me to the bone with its utter certainty.

I drew breath to wade into the fray.

“I respect that,” I told her. “Mating again—or not—is one hundred percent your own decision. What I need to find out is whether there’s a way forward for our two packs. You say you can’t stop Jax and Flynn from mating us. But you can—because we’re not going to mate members of your pack against your wishes, Alex.”

Alex was silent, still looking into the flickering flames rather than at either of us.

“I told the others that you have a say in what happens next, and I meant it,” I went on, more gently. “That’s why you saying ‘I can’t stop you’ isn’t going to be enough for us.”

Silence settled over the balcony, broken only by the crackle of burning wood.

“Why do you want this?” Alex asked. “Knowing what you know... knowing how badly things could go wrong... why would you sign up for that kind of pain?”

I did her the courtesy of taking a few moments to think about my answer. Eventually, I spoke, feeling out the words as I went.

“When Beckett was a prisoner of Enoch Sloane, being drugged and tortured... he wasn’t alone with his tormenters in that cell,” I said slowly. “Nikolayev was living every minute of that horror right along with him, lending him strength even as he mounted a rescue operation. You and Flynn had each other after Sloane captured you, but they could have separated you at any time. And neither of you had anyone on the outside to comfort you. There was no one to tell you help was coming and things were going to be okay.”

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