Page 8 of Inheritance
Maybe I wasn’t meant to love anyone. Or to be loved. Maybe I wasn’t actually meant to have a mate, and the Fates had made a mistake pairing her up with someone as emotionally fucked as me. I had to assume that was the case because Ama deserved far more than I could ever give her.
I brought nothing to the table but pain.
When a fist closed around the collar of my shirt and yanked me up, I groaned but tried to stand. The person let go as I turned to face them, and I found Jace standing there with a knowing look on his face. He turned, and I followed after him, not bothering to fight the conversation he seemed to want.
Somehow, someway, Jace had managed to keep his cool. He was pretty much the only one.
I followed, looking around the temporary camp we’d set up at the base of the mountains last night—something I barely remembered after the point where I’d realized Ama was gone. We would be packing up soon and crossing through the mountain pass, hopefully unnoticed by the Kingdom of Pura.
I shook my head at that, wondering how a land that I had called my home for so long could feel so strange and alien. I didn’t want to go back, and not because I didn’t want to fight in the war. No, I didn’t want to go back because there was nothing for me there. There was nothing for me anywhere.
When Jace opened a tent flap, I stepped in after him. He immediately tossed me a towel, which I swiped across my face to get the mud off. Looking around, I realized we were in a tactical planning space, a large floor map taking up the center of the room. I sat down on one of the chairs as Jace rifled around for something, seemingly caught up in his own thoughts and no doubt also annoyed with me. Well, he was probably not just annoyed with me. He was probably furious, and I couldn’t blame him.
I was the reason Ama was gone. This was my fault.
“Drink this.” Jace slapped a leather sack against my chest that contained some sort of liquid.
“What is it?” I asked as I unscrewed the cap and chugged, my nose wrinkling at the smell and the taste of lemon that sat uncomfortably in my throat. When I was done, he took the bag back silently, leaving me to my thoughts, which was unfortunate.
“You’re a dumbass.”
I nearly bared my fucking teeth and growled at his words, but he wasn’t wrong. I knew he was about to give me shit about fighting with his men, and I had zero interest in hearing it. I had spent all of yesterday coming to terms with what had happened with Ama, and in order to fix the resulting feelings of guilt, anger, and fear about the situation...I’d decided to fight.
The hybrids had been more than happy to pit people against me, and with each punch I’d gotten to the face, everything had become just a little hazier. My mind had slipped into memories of moments with Ama, and I’d found myself hating that almost every single one of them was negative. Why was I such a devildamned bastard? Why couldn’t I manage to do anything right?What was wrong with me?
“I wouldn’t suggest asking that question right now,” Jace leveled, and I realized I must have said that last part out loud.
“It’s my fault she was taken.”
“Yes.” Jace’s throat produced a threatening noise that he tried to cover, but I knew his Hellhound was fucking pissed at me. I mean, everyone was furious at me, but at least Jace could be in the same space as me without wanting to kill me.
“I don’t know—“
“You need to man the fuck up, Nico.” Jace’s words were calm and clinical. “I’m not saying you can’t feel whatever the fuck it is you’re feeling, but you need to accept what happened and stop fucking sulking. You being upset or hating yourself does nothing. It doesn’t bring Ama back, it doesn’t help the war—it does absolutely jack shit, and you are just making people angrier with your inability to function. Get your shit together, and stop acting like a child. You are now the leader of a fucking house, so act like it.”
I blinked, honestly a little stunned by his words...then realized he was right.
I was acting like a spoiled fucking kid. I was so caught up in my own self-pity about problems I’d caused that I wasn’t doing jack shit to fix them. How could I expect a woman like Ama to ever care about someone who couldn’t even care about themselves or the house they were supposed to lead?
“I—“
“Don’t want to hear excuses,” Jace hissed, his eyes darkening. “The six of you need to get your heads in the game. I don’t care what you feel right now. You have a right to feel it, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is Ama and this war. If you aren’t going to help with one of those two things, you might as well fuck off.”
“And you’re so much better?” I sneered.
Jace’s face went serious, “I’m not better, but I am acting like a capable adult right now instead of some scared kid. I am trying to keep my shit together with my mate missing, heading into a war for a kingdom I don’t respect, and traveling with a group of men who keep trying to convince my mate to stay the fuck away from me. All of you know exactly how Ama feels about you. You fucking rejected her, Nico. You have no one to blame but yourself. You want to be angry? Fine. Be angry at yourself, but get it together because if I can manage, then so the fuck can you.”
I wasn’t sure if there was any one sentence in particular that made me understand the depth of his words, but his statement as a whole was like a punch to the gut.
“Fuck,” I ran a hand over my face. “Fucking hell, you’re right.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted, feeling a sense of dread invade my stomach.
“We get her back,” a voice I recognized said.
The voice was angry and filled with enough malice as it echoed through the tent that I actually found myself concerned that Colt, who had just stepped through the tent entrance, would try to kill me.
