But I take one look at the doctor’s face as he approaches, and I know that all my fears are about to come true.
2
ATHENA
Once again, the only possessions I have left are the ones I already had with me before the house burned down.
I’m glad that I’d convinced Mia to bring me some of my things, or I’d have nothing but the clothes and shoes and other items that the boys had picked out for me when I’d first been brought here. Fortunately, among those things there’s a knee-length black dress, probably the same one I’d worn to my father’s funeral. It’s hanging in the closet, staring back at me as I sit forlornly on my bed in my underwear, trying to get up the nerve to put it on.
There’s a knock at the door that makes me jump. For the past few days, in the time between the doctor telling me that my mother had passed away and today—the day of her funeral—Dean and Cayde and Jaxon have mostly left me alone. That’s not to say they haven’t been looking out for me, though.
I’d fallen to the floor when the doctor said those words. I’d slipped out of the seat I was in as if I’d been boneless, slithering to the tile like Jell-O, and the wail that had come out of my mouth hadn’t been anything human. It had been like the scream I’d heard from my mother the day our house burned down, except so much worse. It had been so fierce, so raw, so full of unvarnished grief that even the doctor had stepped back as Cayde and Dean and Jaxon surrounded me like a wall, protecting me from what was just beyond them.
My mother, dead. Funeral arrangements that needed to be made. I was all that was left of our family, but I couldn’t begin to get my thoughts together or even speak, let alone decide on things like graveyard plots and coffins and floral arrangements.
They’d tried to insist that only I, as her next of kin, could do it. But occasionally, there’s perks to fucking the sons of the heirs. Dean and Cayde both strong-armed their way into making the decisions, which is why I’m sitting on the bed right now with no real idea of what’s going to happen today. I wouldn’t even know where to go, except that there’s only one funeral home and one cemetery in town.
Once they’d gotten me home, tucked warmly into bed, they’d taken turns sitting up with me just like the night they’d brought me back from my kidnappers. After that, they’d given me space, making sure meals were delivered up to my room and I was left alone. No phone calls, no visitors, just me and four walls and my grief. They hadn’t made any attempt to touch me, which was both bad and good. I’d probably have ripped their balls off if they’d tried—but part of me craves a release too, just like I had after I’d healed from my abduction. A way to free all the clawing emotions inside of me, to ease the turbulence. A way to let go, just for a little while.
Soon, I’m going to ask them for that. But not yet. Today, I have to put one foot in front of the other, and make it through the service, and the funeral, and all the way to tonight.
Tonight, I can grieve. And tomorrow?
I don’t know about tomorrow.
I have bereavement from class, which means I don’thaveto go, but I don’t know if I want to take all of it. I’d fallen far enough behind after my abduction, and now this is just another way for me to slip even further. It won’t affect my grades, of course, but I still stubbornly want to earn my grades, even if Cayde and Dean are happy to fix that for me.
The knock on the door comes again, and I get up a little weakly, walking slowly to the door to open it. I half expect it to be one of the guys, but instead it’s Mia standing there in a black dress very like the one I’m trying to convince myself to put on, her hair pulled neatly back into a braided bun and her blue eyes soft and worried.
“I thought you might need some help,” she ventures softly, and I nod, stepping back and opening the door a little bit wider so that she can walk in, blinking back tears.
I haven’t really cried yet. I’ve screamed and I’ve wailed and I’ve shaken until I thought my teeth might rattle out of my head, but I haven’t really cried. My eyes have been burning with how much Iwantto cry, but I can’t seem to manage it. It’s as if I’m subconsciously terrified of the floodgates that will open if I let a single tear fall.
Mia walks directly to the closet, pulling the black dress out and draping it over the bed. “Come on,” she says gently. “Let’s get you dressed. The funeral is starting soon.”
“Did the guys call you?” I ask numbly as I shrug off my oversized t-shirt, letting it fall to the floor and standing there in front of the mirror in just my black hiphugger panties, my small breasts bare and nipples hardening in the chill of the room.
“No.” Mia scoops the t-shirt up, throwing it in a nearby laundry hamper and wrinkling her nose. “Okay, maybe you need a shower first. Fifteen minutes, Athena. Wash your hair or don’t, but if you linger in there for too long I’m coming in after you.”
Anyone else might think that she sounds bossy—and thisisbossy for Mia—but I know better. She’s my best friend in the world—has been, since the day I set foot on the campus of Blackmoor Academy—and she knows what I need right now. She knows that I need someone to push me, to get me through this, or I’ll crumble and fall apart.
I’ve always prided myself on being the strong one, the one who held my mother and I up even when things were awful, the one who didn’t just give in. But everyone has a breaking point. I’d thought that mine might have been the abduction, but I’d managed to come back even stronger from that nonetheless. But this—
This might be mine. I don’t know how I’m going to keep going. A tiny part of my brain that still somehow manages to think is screaming that we want revenge, but I’m not even so sure about that anymore. What good is revenge, when people keep dying all around me? Who else are they going to take while I keep pushing through my quest to bring the Blackmoor men to their knees?
Mia? Dean? Cayde? Jaxon?
They’re whittling away at the people who could mean anything to me. Natalie, gone long before I ever knew about her. Her death wasn’t related to me in any way, couldn’t have been, but then there was my father’s, the death that started it all. They tried to kill me—I can’t help but think it must have been them now, the Sons or the fathers of the three heirs, or both. They’ve killed my mother.
The list is getting far too short.
And I’m very afraid Mia will be next.
I want to linger in the shower. It’s felt impossible to even think about getting in the last few days, but now that I’m under the hot water I want to stay here forever. It feels like a good place to hide, under the hot spray, soaking into my hair and running down my face and shoulders and arms and body. I want to disappear into the steam curling around me, sink to the shower floor and just hide here.
Hide away, forever.
Fifteen minutes, Mia had said. It doesn’t feel like enough. I force myself to wash my hair, rubbing shampoo and then conditioner through it twice until it feels squeaky clean, and then I pour my berry-scented shower gel onto a bath pouf, scrubbing it over my skin until I’m pink from the effort.I should be clean and presentable for her funeral, at least,I scold myself. I can’t turn up to my own mother’s funeral looking like a street urchin.