But I still remembered. Ihadasked him to leave, and the reason why was fresh in my mind still. His beast was impossible to control when I was around. I hurt him. Every time he was near me, he was in pain.
Had he been inthis muchpain when I told him to leave that morning, too? Because it literally felt like I was being cut wide open.
It felt sofinal.
I told him to leave. Now he told me to leave. It wasdone.
“Go home, Teddybear,” he whispered, closing his eyes as if the sight of me tortured him.
I didn’t let myself think at all—I just turned around and walked down the stairs as fast as my shaking legs allowed.
I heard the door slamming shut even before I was outside the fence, feeling like a damn fool.
“Teddy!” someone whispered from behind me, and I jumped, startled. Derek was coming from the side of the house, sneaking on his tiptoes as he looked at the closed door.
Shaking my head, I walked out the gate and waited for him on the sidewalk.
“What are you doing?” Why was he sneaking out of his own house? Was heafraidof Dominic?
“Nothing, nothing,” he said, putting his hands in his back pockets. “You’re pink again. I like it. I like pink.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Derek. How are the kids?”
“They’re cool. Fighting, arguing—you know,” he said and shrugged. “He’s grumpy.” He nodded his head at the house.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head.Grumpywas the right word for Dominic—at least one of the right words to describe him.
“Not his fault,” Derek said. “Not his fault, Teddy.”
“No, I know.” And that didn’t make it suck any less.
“What you got there?”
I looked at him to see that his eyes were on the bottle still in my hand. My heart skipped a beat.
“This is, um…” This was what I even came here for. To help Derek. To give him his wolf back. To heal him from whatever magic those high fae had put on him. It was a long shot. It could be something completely different from the magic that made Crackdown, but still…
I looked up at the house, too, much like Derek, terrified I’d find the door open and Dominic in the doorway, looking at me. But he wasn’t there.
And Derek was. He was right in front of me, moving every second,nota werewolf like he should have been, but a man on the verge of losing his mind completely.
Who was Inotto help him when I had a small chance of doing so?
“This, Derek, is what I came here for, actually. To give this to you. It’s a mixture my mom made. I used it to erase the effects of Crackdown from my body.”
His brows shot up. “Cool.”
“It’s pretty disgusting, but I thought it might help you…you know.”
He shook his head. “I don’t.”
“Help you with the magic that was put on you when you were a kid, Derek.”
At that, he stood perfectly still for three whole seconds. His unblinking eyes were on me, and then slowly, they landed on the bottle.
“Impossible,” he said, in the exact same way Dominic said it, that for a moment I wondered if I was dreaming this. If it was deja-vu.
But Derek slowly reached out a hand to grab the bottle…and I let him.