Page 90 of Cost of Courting

I open my mouth, finding the words that have been gone for so long. “She sold us out, Selene. She gave me to the Crimson Tiger cunt. He had me for weeks. It was too dangerous to bring a feral alpha back to you. If we could have, we would have been back here the day I got out.”

She stands there rigid, refusing to look at me. What is she thinking? Does she hate me?

I flick a glance at Bailey and find his eyes shadowed.

“We had to learn how to become different people. Controlled, calmer, less volatile. Alpha’s who took care of their own.”

“You should have come to me!” she howls. “If you were hurt, you should have come to me!”

“I would never, ever risk hurting you,” I whisper. “I’d rather your heart break and you hate me forever than give you even a single bruise meant for someone else, Selene.”

She turns away, washing her hands, but I get behind her and stop her movements, wrapping myself around her like I dreamed so fucking often.

“It was you I cried for. It was your name I called. All I dreamed about was coming home, but you have to understand, I could barely recall my own name.”

She shudders and leans back into me. I tighten my arms around her.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Selene. You are everything to us.”

“Who did you say had you?” Selene asks quietly. “Tell me everything.”

Chapter twenty-two

Selene

We sit around thekitchen table because this is not a bedroom or porch conversation. Mael still has hold of one of my hands, but I can feel him tremble every so often. Bailey is as in the dark as I am, but Edric and Kingston have lost all of their humor. The grim darkness of their expressions warns me this is not going to be pretty.

In fact, I’ve never seen them look so traumatised or broken as they do right now. What happened to Mael didn’t just affect him, it destroyed all three of them.

“Octavia came into our lives like a whirlwind, remember? She moved here with her mum.”

I grit my teeth, remembering her. She had the kind of tits you’d see on a pinup girl, wide hips, and an ass that guys young and old turned to stare at. The worst part was she knew what power she had, and she used it as a weapon, bringing guys and girls to their knees around her. Octavia was queen of her world.

We weren’t friends, but she was the only one who’d figured out what I was during a time I was desperate to keep my secret.

“I remember.”

“She set her sights on us, and, though we weren’t interested at first, when she came out wearing that dress, covered in that scent. How could we pass that up? Her only stipulation for agreeing to a pack was that we leave that night.”

“You agreed!” I say wrathfully.

“We did agree.”

“It was my dress.”

“You never wore dresses, crazy. How were we to know it was yours?” Kingston whispers. “We were stupid.”

“You tried to stop us,” Mael says in a toneless voice. “But we didn’t listen because bonds are important, and we never thought we would have them. We were feral over that scent.”

I try to pull my hand away, but he holds onto it tightly.

“In the car ride, she was quiet but really on edge. It upset Edric, who was the one who I’d had to convince to go along with this. When she demanded we stop at a hotel, I reluctantly agreed.”

Kingston clears his throat. “She wanted clothes and food, wouldn’t stop whining about it, so we took what money we had, and Edric and I went to go get food, while Mael stayed with her. When we came back, they were both gone.”

Kingston pauses, swallowing hard, his fist clenches and unclenches, and it takes him a couple of goes before he can speak past the emotion.

“The hotel manager denies seeing us, the security footage was gone, and we were alone in a place that we’d never been before. And then…” Kingston stops, shaking his head. “No one would even acknowledge Octavia and Mael even existed.”

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