by Tracy Wolff
“Oh, really?” I stare at him incredulously. “Taking care of each other isn’t what the bond is about?”
“Each other being the operative words in that sentence,” Hudson snaps.
My phone dings, and I pull it out of my pocket and read the message from Jaxon:
Jaxon: Please don’t ever do that again.
Three dots blink and then disappear, then start blinking again, as though he’s reconsidering what he was about to text. Finally, my phone dings again.
Jaxon: Thank you
I text back a quick love you and good night, then put my phone away.
“He thanked you for giving him your strength?!” Hudson throws his hands in the air. “Quite the mate you’ve got there, Grace.”
I whirl on him. “You know what, you’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve talking to me about the mating bond when you were okay with letting your mate die to bring you back.”
Rage explodes within me, pure, towering rage that threatens to melt every single part of me. It’s mind-numbing, stroke-inducing, completely catastrophic, and for a brief moment all I can think about is tearing the world apart.
Seconds later, it disappears, just like that. And that’s when I realize, it wasn’t my fury that I was feeling at all. It was Hudson’s, and it was incandescent.
It takes a few more seconds before he’s willing—or able—to talk, and when he does, it’s in a voice that is eminently reasonable and twice as terrifying because of it.
“First of all,” he tells me, “I didn’t ask Lia for a damn thing. Do you think, for one second, I wanted to end up here, like this? A prisoner in your head, a front-row spectator to whatever the hell it is you and Jaxon have going on? Alive but not?
“Second, Lia was not my mate. And third, you have a hell of a lot of nerve accusing me of anything when you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”
And just like that, my brain melts all over again. This time, it’s not from anger, though. This time, it’s because the pain underlying all that fury is all-encompassing—and impossible to witness without flinching.
It burns away my own anger, leaves me feeling bereft and anxious and like there’s something I just don’t understand.
The fact that I want to understand is shocking enough. The fact that I want to help is mind-blowing. Except, also not.
“Hudson?” I reach out quietly, hoping to find a way to break through the pain.
But even as I call his name, I know that he won’t answer. I know that, trapped in my head or not, he’s already gone.
66
Frenemies Are
Forever
Once Hudson disappears, I’m at loose ends. I have so many thoughts, so many feelings, that I can’t process them all, so I end up pacing around my dorm room for, like, ten minutes. Eventually, I figure out that he’s not coming back anytime soon, so I do the only thing I can think of to help myself get to sleep. I take a hot shower, hoping, if nothing else, that I can drown all the bizarre feelings roiling around inside me.
After a long shower that does absolutely nothing to settle my nerves or my stomach, I put on a tank and pajama shorts before heading back into the bedroom. Macy’s there, sitting cross-legged on her bed with her earbuds in and a notebook open on her lap. She waves at me but doesn’t try to talk, which means she must be studying.
It works for me, because I don’t have much to say right now. I have so many emotions whirling around inside me that it’s a miracle I can even think, let alone speak.
But then I realize Hudson must have come back while I was in the shower, too, and somehow that makes the emotions better and also worse at the same time. I don’t question it, though. Not now.
He’s slouched in the chair by my desk, the book he was reading earlier open on his lap but his gaze trained on my every movement. He looks wiped, and one glance tells me he feels the same way I do—too raw to want to discuss what was said earlier.
“So, No Exit isn’t quite the scintillating blockbuster you made it out to be?” I ask archly.
Hudson shoots me a relieved look. “I’ve already read it. Several times. Existentialism is so…”
“Last century?”
“Please, have you seen the world news lately?” he asks dryly.
“Good point,” I agree as I walk over to the bathroom sink and squeeze toothpaste onto my toothbrush.
When I’ve finished brushing my teeth and putting my dirty clothes in the hamper, I gratefully flop myself down on the bed. Training for the Ludares tournament with the others was more fun than I’ve had in a long time. But now, after that and sending Jaxon energy, I’m totally exhausted.
And I’m pretty sure I have a couple of major muscle groups that are going to hurt a whole lot tomorrow. Flying definitely uses muscles I didn’t even know I had.
“Did you have fun?” Macy asks, taking off her headphones the second I get settled.
“So much fun. Did you?”
“Oh my God, yes! I can’t believe I’m on a team with Jaxon and Flint and Gwen and Mekhi! I never imagined I’d find myself on such a badass team my first year being able to play. We’re totally going to win this tournament.”
“We have to win the tournament,” I remind her. “We need that bloodstone.”
“We will. Don’t even worry about it.” She pauses before clearing her throat. “So did you, umm…” She coughs. “I mean, did you…” She coughs again, then finally manages to ask, “What did you think of Xavier?”
And because Hudson’s diabolical nature has obviously rubbed off on me, I respond with, “Xavier who?”
Hudson snort-laughs but must realize I plan to chat with my cousin for a bit because, with an arched brow, No Exit magically appears in his hands once more, and he opens it up to somewhere in the middle.
Macy’s mouth drops open at my question. Like, literally drops open, and she sits there for what feels like ten seconds just staring at me, mouth ajar. “Xavier!” she finally says. “You know, the guy in the gray shirt? With the green eyes and the funny jokes?”
“No.” I shake my head, give her a puzzled look. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“How can it not ring a bell?” She sits up, all aflutter. “We just spent, like, ten hours with him! Xavier.”
“You know, you’re a terrible person,” Hudson says with a very British sniff as he continues to read. “Truly horrible.”
“Xavier,” I say musingly. “Xavier. Xavier. Xavier.”
“Yes!” she squawks. “Xavier! You know—”
“Do you mean the great guy with the gorgeous face who you were making googly eyes at all day?” I ask slyly. “The one who spent an awful lot of time showing off his muscles right in front of you? Yeah, I might have a general idea of who Xavier is.”
“Oh my God!” She throws a pillow at me, and when I dodge, she follows up with a stuffed animal, another pillow, and then one of her favorite bear slippers. “How could you do that to me! I thought you really hadn’t noticed.”
“How could I not notice him?” I chuckle. “He spent the whole day making everybody laugh and trying desperately to impress you.”
“He wasn’t actually trying to impress me,” she says, looking shy for what might be the first time since I got to Katmere. “Was he?”
“Oh my God, yes. At one point, Hudson and I were both convinced he was going to strip down and start flexing his abs right in front of you.”
“His abs and everything else,” Hudson adds dryly, looking up long enough to wink at me.
“Really?” Macy leans forward excitedly, even as she clutches another pillow on her lap. “You think so?”
“I know so. He was totally showing off for you. And I told you, I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Hudson asked several times if we were sure he was a wolf and not a peacock.”
My cousin laughs delighted
ly, then says, “You mean Jaxon.”
“What?” I ask, confused.
“Jaxon said all those things, right? Not Hudson.”
“No,” I tell her, even more confused by the question. “It was definitely Hudson, not Jaxon, who was paying attention to what was happening between you two—and who made all the comments.”
“Oh.” She gives me a weird look. “I didn’t realize you and Hudson…”
“What?” I ask when she trails off, looking awkward.
She clears her throat the way she always does when she’s nervous. Then says, “I guess I just didn’t realize you and Hudson had gotten so…close.”
67
Talk Darcy to Me
“Close?” I repeat as her words send a shock wave of…something through me. I croak out, “We aren’t close.”
“You aren’t?” she asks, and now she’s the one who sounds confused.
“Of course not!”
“Ouch!” Hudson says, turning a page in his book.
“Hush,” I snap back before focusing on Macy. “I mean, we talk, but that’s because he never shuts up.”
“Umm, double ouch,” Hudson interjects, slamming the book closed and walking over to the window. Suddenly, I’m worried our mutual truce might disappear again, and I honestly don’t have it in me to go another round with His Royal Snarkiness. At least not right now.
“I mean, yeah, he makes me laugh sometimes,” I blunder on. “And is strangely charming on occasion. And he notices everything about me and the world around us. And yeah, sometimes he helps me when I’m least expecting it, like when I was nervous about changing into a gargoyle or when I couldn’t figure out how to light the candles in the library or when I was—” I break off as I realize what I’m saying. What I sound like.
And that Macy is staring at me all over again, the surprise and discomfort replaced by abject, slack-jawed shock. It doesn’t help that Hudson has suddenly gotten just as quiet. More, I can sense him deep inside me, still and silent and listening.
“It’s not what you think,” I tell her finally.
“Okay,” she answers with a nod, and it’s totally not what I’m expecting. Then she stands up and crosses over to her pajama drawer. “I think I’m going to take a shower, wash off some of today’s grime.”
“You don’t want to talk about Xavier some more?” I ask as she heads toward the bathroom.
She smiles at that, a quick grin that lights up her whole face and finally breaks through the seriousness that’s been there for the last couple of minutes. “There’s not much to say yet,” she tells me. “Except…you liked him, right?”
“I really did. He seems great. And perfect for you.”
“Yeah.” She nods, the smile slowly dropping off her face. “I think so, too.”
As the bathroom door closes behind her, I go over our conversation in my head, wondering what could possibly have made Macy act so strangely. But there’s nothing there, except for her weird reaction to the fact that Hudson and I talk.
But seriously, what am I supposed to do? The guy lives in my head. Should I just ignore everything he says?
“Please don’t do that,” Hudson tells me from his favorite spot near the window. I think he likes it there because it makes him look like a brooding Brontë hero.
“As if,” he answers with another one of those proper British sniffs. “Brontë heroes are weak and pathetic and strange. I’m definitely an Austen hero.” He gives me an arch look as he lifts his chin and sticks out his chest. “Mr. Darcy himself, perhaps?”
I crack up, exactly as he intends, because how can I not? He looks so ridiculous posing there that I can’t help laughing and laughing and laughing. Especially when he adds a mock-offended face.
“Don’t tell anyone,” I say when I finally stop laughing. “But I’ve never been a Darcy fan.”
“What? That’s blasphemy, I tell you, blasphemy!”
And now he’s laughing with me, his face all lit up, blue eyes shining. And I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.
“What don’t you get?” he asks, the laughter fading away to be replaced by a serious look that I can’t quite interpret. Then again, maybe he feels the same way about me.
“The fact that you can be like this with me and yet also be so evil. It doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s because you don’t want it to make sense,” he tells me, and this time there’s no mocking in the offended look he gives me as the rest of my sentence must register. “Evil? You think I’m fucking evil?”
And just like that, our mutual decision not to have this conversation fades into mist. “Well, how else would you describe what you did?”
“Necessary,” he answers, shaking his head like he can’t even believe we’re having this conversation. Then again, maybe I can’t, either.
“Necessary?” I repeat flatly. “You really think killing all those people was necessary?”
“Don’t do that,” he tells me. “Don’t judge me when you don’t know what you’re talking about. When you weren’t there. Am I proud of what I did? Not even a little bit. Would I do it again? You’re damn straight I would. Sometimes you have to do horrible, awful, terrifying things in order to prevent something even worse from happening.”
“Is that what you think you were doing?” I ask.
“I know that’s what I was doing. The fact that you don’t believe me doesn’t make it any less true. It just means that you don’t know shite.” He shoves a hand through his hair and turns to look back out the window. “Then again, why should I be surprised? My baby brother doesn’t know anything, either, and yet you trust him over me every single time.”
“What do you want me to say? That I trust you more than Jaxon? That I believe you over my mate?”
“Your mate.” He gives a sharp bark of laughter that sends chills down my spine, though I don’t know why. “Yeah. Why would you believe me over your mate?”
“You know what? That’s not fair. You want to pretend that it’s just your word versus his, but the whole school was so scared of you that they were literally plotting to kill me at the mere idea that Lia might be able to bring you back from the dead. People don’t do that just because they don’t like somebody, no matter what you want me to believe.”
“People fear what they don’t understand. They always have and they always will.”
“What does that mean?” I whisper, willing him to turn around and face me. “Tell me, Hudson.”
He does, but when our eyes meet, there’s something terrible in his. Something dark and desperate and so blindingly painful that I feel it nearly tear me in two.
“You think Jaxon has power?” he whispers to me in a voice that somehow fills up the whole room. “You don’t have a clue what real power is, Grace. If you did, if you knew what I could do, you wouldn’t have to ask me these questions, because you’d already know the answers.”
68
The Truth Hurts
My heart wedges in my throat at the certainty in his voice, at the darkness and the horror he doesn’t even try to hold back.
There’s a part of me that wants to ask him to explain, but there’s another, bigger part of me that’s terrified of the answer.
So I don’t say anything. Instead, I just lay on my bed, Macy’s forgotten pillow clutched to my chest, and listen to the sound of the water running in her shower.
For the longest time, Hudson doesn’t say anything, either. He just stands by the window, looking out at the dimly lit grounds.
Silence stretches between us, as fraught and frozen as the tundra in winter, untouched by even the smallest ray of light or warmth. It’s so cold that it’s painful, so empty that it echoes inside me, reverberating off every part of me until there’s nothing that doesn’t ache.
Nothing that doesn’t burn.
I’m cl
ose to the breaking point, desperate to say something—anything—to shatter the icy desert between us, but Hudson cracks first.
“You know, you really were adorable when you were five.”
It’s the last thing I expect him to say, and it has me shooting up in bed as surprise replaces the strange hurt I’ve been wallowing in. “What does that mean?”
“It means you looked adorable when you smiled with your two front teeth missing. I love that the first one fell out but that you knocked the second one out when you went head over handlebars two weeks later.”
“How do you know that?” I whisper.
“You told me.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I never tell anyone that story.” Because if I did, I’d have to explain about how that same front tooth ended up growing in really strange and gnarly because the baby tooth was knocked out too early, and before I got braces, everyone used to make fun of me for it—which is why beavers are still my least favorite animal to this day.
“Well, you told me,” he answers, sounding incredibly pleased with that fact. “And now I’m watching the home movies, live and in color.”
“What kind of home movies?” I ask warily.
“The kind where you look adorable in that navy polka dot dress you used to love to spin around the living room in. I particularly like the matching bow.”
Oh my God. “Are you in my memories?”
“Yes, of course.” He shakes his head, but his eyes are soft and the smile on his mouth is even softer. “You really were an incredibly cute kid.”
“You can’t do that!” I tell him. “You can’t just go into my memories and look at whatever you want.”
“Sure I can. They are just lying around, after all.”
“They’re not just ‘lying around.’ They’re inside my head!”
“Yeah, and so am I.” He holds his hands up in an obviously kind of gesture. “So you see what I mean about them just being here, right?”