Page 37 of Lost and Bound
After a beat, everyone actually did what Matt told them. Even Calder, sort of, though he just crouched down next to me, right by my head. Ready to spring back up and into action, if necessary. He did retract his claws. Ian, grumbling and still red-faced, let Nate tug him over to the armchair in the corner—and subsided into silence when Nate pushed him into it and perched on his lap. Nate leaned over and whispered something into his ear that cleared Ian’s expression a little.
I had to look away quickly.
“I’m going to get him that water,” Arik said unexpectedly, with a sweet smile for Calder that made me wish I had the strength to growl too, and headed into the kitchen. Calder’s brother? They looked nothing alike. And Nate thought it sounded like bullshit…while Matt seemed to be having issues of his own with their little reunion scene.
Calder let me take the glass from Arik’s hand, and I propped myself up enough to get it down, feeling like a freaky zoo animal with all of them staring at me.Watering time for the undead monsters, kids! Don’t miss the show.
I set the glass down on the coffee table, and Arik resettled next to Matt—not without brushing his hand over Calder’s shoulder as he retreated, something that wasn’t lost on Matt by his deep frown. The tension between Arik and Calder was almost thick enough to touch, like they couldn’t wait for all this bullshit with my death and resurrection to be over so they could…I didn’t know what. Talk, maybe, hopefully, and not more clinging. That embrace could’ve been brotherly, I guessed, although…it wasn’t any of my business, though, was it? Calder was my temporary mate. He didn’t belong to me.
Even if he was the only person in this room who seemed to give even a passing fuck about me, and wasn’t that ironic.
“Okay, let’s hear it,” Matt said. “From the beginning.”
I took a deep breath, and I pulled myself up so that I could sit and face them, at least.
And I told them.
Chapter 9
A Second Chance
I didn’t leave anything out. Maybe I should have. Maybe it would’ve let me keep a little of my pride to skip over the fact that I couldn’t shift anymore, or that I’d given up hope, or that I hadn’t resisted what Hawthorne and his people had done to me in stoic silence, or with dry, cutting, sophisticated commentary à la James Bond.
And maybe it was more than a little petty of me, that I took a horrid, vengeful pleasure in watching Ian’s eyes widen and his fists clench, claws extending even though he was clearly trying to keep them under control. To see Matt grow grimmer and grimmer, his shoulders so rigid they were like boulders. To see Nate turn away, swiping under his eyes to try to brush off the tears.
I didn’t want their pity; it made me sick. But their guilt, their remorse? Ireallywanted that, so much that it made me even sicker.
Maybe I wasn’t Jared—their Jared. I felt like I was, and I wanted to scream at them that I was, that they were wrong. Instead, I told them everything that had happened to me, all the pain and horror, while I was alone and abandoned. And no matter who I was, it made them as sick as it made me.
I didn’t leave out anything that had happened before Hawthorne kidnapped me, either, although I didn’t get into the details of how I’d slept with Nate partially at his father’s behest—that would be implicit. And they probably already knew I’d worked with him. Even if they didn’t, they deserved to, whether they blamed me or the version of me they’d almost certainly buried way up in the hills, in an old graveyard we used because even though it wasn’t on our pack lands, it had an ancient oak on it that some fairy had given to one of our ancestors in a treaty, and it was tradition.
My body was lying under that oak, rotting away.
I had to swallow again, desperately, as more bile rose up. I kept it down this time, barely, and Calder handed me the water glass without a word. I drained the last of it.
“There’s not much more to tell,” I rasped after I’d handed the glass back. “Calder needed a boost to get us out, so we mated.” I was leaving out some details of that episode, so sue me. I couldn’t go there, not with this particular audience. My cousins. My ex, who was with one of the cousins. Calder’s…who the fuck knew what, who was clearly with the other cousin. Calder himself. Fuck. “He used our combined magic, got us out. Killed them all. And here we are.”
Arik’s green eyes narrowed to slits. “That last bit’s a little sketchy.”
“It’s the truth,” Calder said.
To my great surprise, given how intimately he seemed to know and trust my mate, that didn’t instantly smooth Arik over. He cocked his head, looking from me to Calder and back again. “You could both be imposters,” he said, sounding like the words were being dragged out of him. “You don’t—you’re not the same. You could be…fuck,” he said, and rubbed at his temples. Matt’s arm around his shoulders tightened, Matt’s fingers stroking over Arik’s upper arm.
“No, I’m not the same,” Calder said. That yearning colored his tone again. He was looking at Arik, not at me. He’d stayed right next to me the whole time I was talking, but he’d been looking at Arik. “They had me longer than they had Jared. Much longer. And whatever they did to me…I’m different. But I’m the same individual.”
His phrasing was clearly very intentional. Maybe they’d changed him, but there was only one of him.
Not the case for me.
At least my duplicate was dead, and I didn’t need to fight him to the death for my place in the pack, or something, like in some crappy movie. Or share my life with him.
His life?
Fuck.
“It is sketchy,” Matt said. “You come to us with this story. Claiming to have, what, left this mysterious prison in ashes behind you? When for all we know, you’re brainwashed, or enchanted, and this is some kind of trap. We shouldn’t have come in the first place,” he added heavily. “But—” He gestured with his free hand, indicating…what?
“But what?” I demanded. “If you think this is a trap, that I’m trying to get you killed, lure you in for Hawthorne, why the fuck are you here?”
