Ken’s hate of her hadn’t done her any favors in winning them over. At this rate, he might have nailed her as an outsider amongst her former friends and family for good.
She stood there, awkwardly playing with her fingers, while Ryel said goodbye to everyone and thanked them for coming. She wished she could run away with them, find Joanna, and bury herself under a rock for a few hours.
But this wasn’t over yet.
Before long, Ryel turned his attention back to him. He wore a small, sad smile when he looked at her. “You look terrified,” he observed. “Don’t be. I’ll make them all come around, and we’ll get out there to check if the goblins are here or not in no time.”
Beth’s shoulders relaxed with relief. “Thank you. But … what about Ken?”
“He’ll come around. You two are mates, aren’t you? That doesn’t go away with time, or distance. The only time he needs is to realize what an idiot he’s being by pushing you away. You’ll see.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Ryel took her by the arm and guided her toward the entrance of the meeting room. “Now, let’s get you and your daughter set up somewhere for the time being. I’m sure you’re exhausted and in need of some rest after that shit show.”
Despite everything, she threw her head back and laughed. “Tell me about it.”
Chapter 5 - Ken
Ken didn't care about his clothes: as soon as he parked at the edge of town, he shifted and let his jeans and ragged t-shirt tear to accommodate his large wolf form. Dark gray fur rippled across his arms, and he arched forward to burst into a run on all fours. And he hurried into the woods, letting trees blur around him as he went.
His anger throbbed inside him like an erratic second heartbeat. Beth had been gone for fourteen years—fourteen years! And then she appeared out of nowhere with a crazy story about goblins.
It had to be made up, that was the only explanation. She was looking for sympathy points because she ran off and then realized too late that it was a mistake, and the only way she was going to be accepted back into the community as if she had some big reason to explain it all.
Worse, most of the council seemed like they were falling for it after Ryel and Finn pushed so hard. Now their fearmongering was going to make everyone terrified that there were really goblins out there.
It was fucked up for Beth to appear out of nowhere and cause trouble like this. Didn't she know that the whole town was still getting over the long-term effects of the treasure sickness? Coming back to Silvercoast with scary stories about goblin hives in the woods was just going to trigger everyone and trap them in the past.
Maybe Rick had been right all along. Beth might not have been the woman Ken thought she was after all. The Beth he knew wouldn't have tried to stir shit.
Ken ran until the muscles in his legs strained, until he was panting and couldn't run anymore. The trees parted and he stopped to lie down in the grass, his breath ragged. And yet, despite how hard he was trying to convince himself that all of Beth's excuses were bullshit, he wasn't sure he even believed himself.
Was he angry that her story seemed far-fetched?
Or was he angry that she came back to town, and she went to see Ryel first instead of him?
If the situation had unfolded differently, Ken wanted to believe that he would have reacted another way. Instead of yelling at her from across the room, instead of feeling as though she was shredding his heart all over again by justexisting, he wanted to believe he would have taken her in his arms and let her tell him everything.
They would have cried together. He might have still been mad and hurt, but he would have been happy to have her back again.
After all, hadn't he dreamed of exactly that happening a thousand times over the past decade?
Not a single night went by without him dreaming of her in some capacity. Back in the years shortly after she'd left him, he'd often drank himself into a stupor hoping to forget about her. To forget about what life by her side had been like. But the alcohol had only made the nightmares worse, and Ken seldom drank anymore.
Beth haunted him, for better or worse.
He turned onto his back and stared up at the afternoon sky. The clouds were racing across the expanse of dark blue in the shape of a wolf. Those clouds were like him, racing to everywhere and nowhere at once.
Why hadn't Beth come to him first?Why?
If everything she'd said was true—that she'd forgotten her past—wouldn't she want to see him first? To see if he was real, that their love was real?
Or had she been afraid that he wouldn't accept her again? That he'd moved on?
At first, Ken had believed the only reason she wouldn't come to see him was that she was hiding something. That her story was a web of lies, and the fewer people who had access to the center of it, the less likely everyone was to see through it all.
After all, if she convinced everyone that the goblin threat was real, and they ran off into the woods to search for them and found nothing, she could argue that because it had been fourteen years ago, that the goblins must have moved. She could weave a story that kept her firmly as the unlikely victim.