“The burned woman?”
I nodded solemnly. “Her name was Morgan. She was a werewolf in the Eastern pack, and when the necromancer invasion happened in New York, she was with us. She… she tried to kill me, and I did that to her.”
Memere wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes weren’t closed, but she was looking at the wall now, as if it pained her to meet my gaze. I couldn’t blame her.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“Because I didn’t remember any of it before,” I snapped. I knew none of this was his fault, but did he have to be so fucking nice to me right now? I was a goddamn monster. “I tortured her, Wilder. I made her suffer in unimaginable ways. No wonder she wanted revenge. She deserves it.”
“Genie.” Instead of a soft, comforting tone, he sounded annoyed. I was surprised. “Stop this. Right now.” His voice carried the same intense, undeniable command to it that Lucas’s had in my memory.
An Alpha’s voice.
I bristled.
“I killed her,” I said again, as if he hadn’t understood my words the first time around.
“I don’t care.”
“You should care. I killed her, I killed someone.”
“She tried to kill you. I’m not trying to make excuses on your behalf, baby, but I think that’s a pretty damn good reason to kill someone.”
I shook my head. “It’s not okay.”
“No, it’s not. But you’re still blaming yourself for something you can’t even remember doing. I can smell the guilt coming off you. No wonder you cursed yourself. You spent all these years carrying this around without realizing it, and you haven’t given yourself a single opportunity to be forgiven.”
“I don’t deserve forgiveness.”
“Oh shut up. Seriously.” He grabbed me by both arms and held me firmly so I couldn’t pull away. “You are blaming yourself for something you did without even knowing it. Do you blame yourself for the rabbits you kill when we hunt? Do you blame any sensible animal for defending itself with whatever means are on hand?”
“N-no.”
“Then shut up. You were defending yourself. It doesn’t matter that you are spooked by the results later. At the time, your body knew it was in danger, and it reacted in whatever way it needed to in order to keep you alive. That’s nature. You didn’t seek her out to kill her. You didn’t do it for fun or for money or for some other sick nameless need. You’re not a monster. What you did was natural. The only thing that makes it so messed up is that you have means of defending yourself not many others do.”
I stared at him slack-jawed. I wanted to protest and give him a million different reasons why he was so wrong, that I was a nightmare creature not to be trusted, but I couldn’t. The truth was, there was some merit to what he was saying. I hadn’t wanted to kill Morgan. I hadn’t even been mentally present when it happened. I’d been so fucking scared I had totally shut down, and my body had protected me by running on pure instinct.
Now, there was an entirely different mix of problems that revolved around what my subconscious was capable of when I was backed into a corner, but the heart of his statement was legit.
I just wasn’t sure I was ready to forgive myself yet.
“Forgiveness isn’t the problem,” Memere said quietly from the other side of the room, as if she’d been reading my mind this whole time.
“I feel like I have plenty of problems to go around,” I said.
“The real trouble is that the curse on your head isn’t one you can break by saying some pretty words and reversing it. This isn’t even something I can help you with.”
“Then how do I break it?”
“The curse will only be broken one of two ways. Either you will commit those following you back into the earth, or they get what they want.”
I blanched. “You mean if they kill me.”
“Yes. Killing the one who cast the curse would resolve everything.”
“Peachy.”
She got to her feet slowly, grabbed her cane, and rubbed the wall nearest her. “Now, let’s go find the idiot friend of yours who has himself lost in the bayou, shall we?”