Page 135 of Cost of Courting

I need to leave and make sure I don’t touch anything, but, before I do, there is something I need to retrieve.

I hate this. Tears run down my cheeks, and I tremble as I walk away from her room to the small cupboard where she kept her broom.

The bag is right where she showed me. The letters and my letter that I gave her are inside and small things she wants given out. There’s no money, it’s nothing special, but she didn’t want her brother to have these mementos that mean something to her.

I promised.

There’s one other thing I grab. Her nurse’s bag. I might get in trouble if anyone finds out I took them, but she’s got meds that can help Luna.

I need them. Dot would want me to have them.

I go back to the room, and, from the doorway, I look at her one more time. I wish I could cover her up, give her dignity back to her.

“I love you, my friend. I wish I’d told you while you were alive.”

Instead, I back out of the house and retreat back to my backyard. On the other side of the fence, all the emotion I’d held in rises to the surface, and I collapse to my knees, sobbing for breath, loud, keening cries escape despite my best efforts to be quiet. I allow myself thirty seconds of pain, and then I pull myself together.

I shove a fist in my mouth to stop the keening. My grief, fear, and helplessness.

Where is my pack? I push on the bonds, terrified by the silence I feel.

I detect the faintest slither of feeling and go completely still, feeling it.

Pain.

It’s pain.

What?

I scramble up and race to the house, slamming inside and going straight to the couch. I jostle Luna, and when she doesn’t wake, I do it harder.

“Where are they? Please, Luna, please. Where is my pack?”

Her bruised and swollen eyes peel open, and she stares at me with a dead stare of someone who is retreating so far into themselves that they can’t come back.

“They came for Benson like he knew they would. He left clues for them. I helped. I put the letter in the letterbox. But I didn’t know what I was doing. He was trying to flush them out. Bailey he can sell. Benson said he can make lots of money in the black market for male omegas. I couldn’t get away. I was scared and hurting. He changed. Benson was mean. He hurt me and laughed when the others hurt me. I’m sorry.”

I grit my teeth so hard I think they might shatter.

I’m going to kill him for hurting her.

Just for that alone.

But my terror for Bailey has me almost frozen.

“They came. It was a trap. He knew they were coming. But you can’t go, he’ll kill you. He knows who they are. Knows they are Despair.” Her words are wispy fragments that I struggle to make out.

The information hits hard; I knew it. Of course, somehow, deep down, I knew it.

“I have to.”

Luna’s emotion bubbles up, and then she collapses in on herself. She’s resigned and hurt. The innocence I struggled to protect is gone. Ripped from her in violence and cruelty.

“I guess I let you down, didn’t I?” Luna whispers. “I fucked everything up.”

“No, this is my fault. I should have told you everything from the start. I should have been honest. Oh, Luna, if I could do it all again.” I palm a tear from my cheek. “It’s not your fault, never yours, Lu.”

“You were trying to protect me,” Luna whispers. “You always protect me.”

---