CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
When I woke again, Roane was on the edge of the bed. He sat with his elbows on his knees and his hands cradling his head. I scooted beside him and looked at his back. Not long ago, I would've itched to caress it. This day, I felt nothing.
"I'm numb."
He looked at me. "I know."
I lifted haunted eyes to him. "I should feel something. I've tried to fight this. I try to feel something and sometimes I do. I feel guilty. I look at my friends and a part of me doesn't feel
like I'm friends with them anymore. What's wrong with me?"
As his hand reached for mine, I heard him sigh. "I feel it too."
"I don't like feeling like this."
"Your mind is preparing you for what's going to happen. Bad things are going to happen."
I didn't want to hear him, but he was right. My body had started to shut down. Emotions weren't going to help me anymore. "I don't like being this way. I'm becoming a robot. I don't even care what's going on anymore. When Kates kidnapped Emily, I was so irate. I was hurt by her betrayal, but now she could betray me again and I wouldn't blink. What does that say about me?"
Roane pulled me to his side and pressed a kiss to my shoulder. He murmured against my skin, "I think it means that we're going to survive. Whatever happens, we're going to survive."
"I should feel. I don't feel anymore."
He kissed my forehead with a sense of desperation. "We'll get there. I promise."
"What about Emily?" I felt him tense beside me, but I had to ask. "I know Pete is my enemy, but she's in love with him. I saw their connection. It's deep, really deep. And she's my roommate. She was a good friend to me."
He pulled away and stood to cross the room. His voice was distant. "If she's with him, she's with him."
"What about Kates? She still loves Lucan, you know."
Roane's eyes pierced mine. I could feel the struggle in him, but he shoved me out. "I'm sorry. I can't lie to you. You're going to lose friends. What do you want me to say?"
His words whipped me. They stung.
He added, "I am sorry, Davy, but this is what war is. And we're in one. It started with Lucan and then it began again with the wolves. They'll be coming back. I moved us off my territory so that he would come."
"What are you saying?"
"I want the Alpha to come. Then the Roane army will be coming too, and then my brother. We can't survive all of them. Not all of us are even going to survive this first round."
Something in his voice made me cold. I heard everything he said. He said it before, but it was how he did it now. He was trying to tell me something else. He wanted to prepare me for something. I could feel his regret. It went deep, down to his bones, but he wouldn't let me in. He used to let me in. We wouldn't even have to speak out loud, but now he was a stranger again. It seemed so long ago that we had shared a bed.
My gut twisted inside. "What aren't you saying to me?"
Pain flared in his coal eyes, but it was gone quickly. Regret replaced it and then a steel wall slammed over it. He stood upright. "I'm saying to you that you're going to lose some of your friends. I've tried to shelter you from this, but I can't anymore. You're not just a human anymore. You're the reason for all of this and you've been taking a backseat. This is when you stop crying about the war and start becoming a part of it."
"You haven't wanted me to be a part of it." I couldn't believe him.
Roane hissed back, "Because you haven't wanted to step up. You've had this 'poor me' attitude the whole time, even before I met you. I felt it in the library that day and I hated it. You act like a victim. That is what’s going to make you a victim."
My mouth fell open; I couldn't form a single thought. How dare he—how dare—He was right. I couldn't fight it anymore because he was right about everything. I had been feeling sorry for myself this whole time.
"You stopped transitioning awhile ago." Roane brought me back. His voice was soft now. "Since you came back from wherever you were, you've been ready. You came back ready. You just didn't want to admit it. That's why you've shut down. That's why you can't feel anything and I know that you've been forcing yourself to ignore it. I could feel that from you too. You don't trust your friends anymore. You want to, but you don't. Stop lying to yourself."
My mouth snapped shut. Each word hurt more than the last. "It's a hard pill to swallow. I hate when things change, especially when I have no control over any of it."
"That's life." His eyes were hard. "Deal with it."