It must have worked, because he said, >
>
>
>
She was never sure how to describe her mother without talking about her father, which she didn’t want to do. Her mother’s courtesy and social graces had always existed in the shadow of her father’s standoffish perfectionism; he was the one who grabbed up every opportunity for power and money that he could, and she was the one who found ways to make that power and moneymatter. She created beauty and generosity out of the raw material of her husband’s greed.
> Iz said finally. >
>
She said shortly, >
You could tell him, her dragon murmured.You can trust him.
I know I can trust him. I think I trust him more than anyone.
She just didn’t know how to talk about her father when she couldn’t even decide how shefeltabout her father, and—even more than that—she didn’t want to risk Logan looking at her differently.
So she took a leaf out of his book and changed the subject.
*
AS HARD AS LOGAN TRIEDto keep the feral melancholy from creeping back up on him, it stole in anyway. In the hours after he told Iz all about Pebble, it all oozed back over him, offering him the chance to drown in it and just stop caring.
He didn’t mean to take it, but he just ... slipped.
It was almost impossibly hard sometimes to keep things light and optimistic. There were days when Iz’s jokes and stories and sheer golden presence were enough to keep him hopeful, days when he was sure the flaws in Sebastian’s system would eventually get big enough for him and Iz to exploit them. But his ability to believe in all that seemed to phase in and out like the moon, and right now, the sky in his imagination seemed completely black, without even a sliver of hope.
He wanted to be human for her, because she deserved human company—and because he knew it might scare her to see how far gone he had been before she showed up.
It seemed like the lowest possible bar:be a person. That was supposed to be automatic.
Not for him. Not anymore.
He sunk down into the basement of his brain, where his hellhound lived, and he let himself forget everything. He didn’t mean to, at least not consciously, but it happened anyway.
His hellhound’s way of responding to the world was simpler. It wasn’t like it was happy in Sebastian’s dungeon; its longing for fresh air and new scents was even stronger than his own. But even though it could suffer and worry, thewayit suffered and worried was different and more bearable. Humans automatically imagined the future, calculating what would happen whennowturned intolater. They did the same thing with the past, carrying around regrets, what-ifs, and even good memories that hurt because you couldn’t get to them anymore.
Hellhounds didn’t do any of that. They only existed in the moment.
When your thoughts and needs were simpler, it was easier to find some semblance of peace. He could be comforted by a full belly or a cool drink of water.
And pack.
Pack was the best comfort there was, and Logan had gone years without having one. He hadn’t expected his time in Sebastian’s cave to change that, but—
But nothing, a tiny bit of humanity resurfaced to point out. He technically didn’t have the right to count Iz as his pack.
Hellhounds—like most shifters with strong social instincts—had a loose conception of packmates, and their inner animals would happily accept different beasts and even plain humans. But pack was a deep bond, a bonded-for-lifekind of bond, not a label you just slapped on your closest relationship without any idea what the other person felt in return.
That was all very logical, but it didn’t stop his heart and his hellhound from both saying the same thing:Pack.
That was the word that echoed in his head and made him pay attention when he heard Iz’s claws scratching lightly against the stone floor.
It was a grating sound, like nails on a chalkboard, and one that his hellhound instantly disliked. But one look at her told him exactly why she had resorted to making it. He hadn’t heard anything else.