Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
“I don’t understand,” I forced out. “I don’t understand any of this!”
“We’re sorry, Daze,” Orion said, speaking to me with more compassion and kindness than he had in... ever. “This wasn’t supposed to happen! Cygnus was supposed to order me or Badr to go first, and then we’d launch the attack. He wasn’t supposed to call Paxton. Why did he do that?!”
“Plan? What plan?”
“I knew Cygnus would have hostages,” Badr said, looking back at Edric hugging and comforting his sister. “I told the guys to play the part of broken, cowed, prisoner so that we could get them out of this safely. I’m sorry, Daze”—true sorrow that he’d never feel for his father etched in his face—“that it didn’t work.”
My eyes filled thinking of Ava, Melisent, and Paxton all lost to Cygnus’s obsession and hatred.
“I can’t believe this,” I whispered, holding Paxton tighter. “I just got him back and now he’s gone. What am I supposed to do now? What—?”
Paxton bolted upright, gasping.
Orion and Badr jumped back. Miriam fell over partially shifting. Screaming, I swung—slapping him across the face.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Oh my gods, I’m sorry.” I threw my hands around him, peppering every inch of his face with kisses. Hope bloomed in my chest, chasing away every trace of grief and sadness. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were dead.”
“I was dead,” he muttered, giving in to my kisses very quickly. “I met Luame. Mean wolf.” Paxton rubbed his backside. “She took a bite out of my ass and yelled at me, ordering me to get back to your side and help you at once.”
“So why didn’t you!” My smooches took the heat out of my snap. “You scared the life out of me. I thought I lost your forever.”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Paxton stood up, putting us both on our feet, then reached down to help his mother.
I clung to him for dear life. I had no intention of letting him go again.
“It’s over, Daze.” He softly kissed my forehead as Orion, Badr, Nyx, and Edric fell in around us—all hugging me tight. “It’s finally over.”
Chapter Nine
“Where do you want me to start?” Badr asked, addressing the trees out the window.
“After you buried me alive and left me for dead would be a good start.”
The six of us were in my chambers. The guys were scattered around various parts of the room as though they didn’t know how to come together after being on opposite sides for so long. But I was there, wrapped up under my covers, so they were too.
Badr nodded, still not looking at me. “After I left you, I ran from the grounds and went to hide at a friend’s house. I kept waiting for someone to come for me—arrest me—but no one did. While I waited, everything you said to me replayed over and over again in my mind.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t believe my father or the alpha council could do those horrible things. I believed that easily,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe that the brother who told me everything would leave out the little tidbit of him being murdered while on the hunt for a soul stealer, all so he could protect his unborn child.
“It was too big a secret to keep from me, especially when he knew that secret affected me too. I refused to believe he wouldn’t have told me, but then one day, it occurred to me... that he did.”
My brows snapped together. “It occurred to you that he did tell you the truth? What does that mean?”
Badr sighed. Coming away from the window, he perched on the end of my bed—meeting my gaze head-on. “After Castor tracked me down and we got to know each other, he told me about his life growing up and I told him about mine. Castor had it all. Butlers, chefs, grand playrooms, and a treehouse in the backyard that might as well have been a treemansion.
“I told him I didn’t grow up with any of the above, but I did sometimes wish for a treehouse.” Badr cracked a smile. “So what did the sentimental geek go out and do? He paid a forest wolf to build a treehouse in the woods halfway between our houses. I told him you don’t give your fucking seventeen-year-old brother a treehouse for his birthday, but he just laughed at me and said, I’d better meet up with him in there at least once a month, or he’d track me down.”
A laugh, just like Castor’s laugh, left his lips. “We hung out there for a year, but then Cygnus sent him to Europe and Mom sent me away for alpha training. After that, we still hung out, talked, and called each other, but we never went back to the treehouse.
“It didn’t occur to me until I was holed up in my friend’s basement, trying to make sense of things, that if my brother had to tell me something and he wanted to make sure no one else would find out—”