Brax thinned his lips into a tense line, then stared at Aaron. “You’re fucking lucky she’s as nice as she is, or I’d make sure she was the last thing your worthless ass ever thought about.”
With that, Brax turned and stormed out. Knox peered between Aaron and Brax, his expression less violent but no less angry. He bared his teeth in an expression that wasn’t even close to a smile before following his brother.
Aaron’s color had paled, his skin a white that said he’d taken the threat to heart. It was good, because too many people didn’t realize just how serious Brax was, how willing to follow through. In our world, those kinds of threats weren’t empty. “Seems like you moved on, too.”
“I spent a whole year alone. Of course I moved on.”
He nodded. “I get it.”
But did he? “We weren’t right for each other,”I wrote. “We were together because our parents told us we should be. Can you really say you loved me? That you would have chosen me if it had been up to you?”
He looked as if he might argue the point, but no words came. After a long moment, he let out a rough laugh. “I guess not. I think in the year you’ve been gone, I’ve learned a little, too. What’s perfect on paper isn’t always right for us.”
That hit me, the truth of his words. Aaron and Iwereperfect in theory, both from important, well-connected families. A marriage between us would benefit both of us, but that didn’t matter in the end. A marriage between us wouldn’t make either of us happy. I wasn’t sure why that hadn’t ever occurred to me in my old life.
Maybe it was because happiness hadn’t been a real thought of mine before. Larkwood had stolen everything from me, but I had rebuilt myself from the ground up. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn’t.
That changed everything.
Aaron wasn’t a bad man, but he wasn’t right for me, and I wasn’t right for him. We both needed to find our own paths, and that fact allowed me to release those lingering entanglements, the what-ifs, the hurt from how things had gone between us.
“I’m not mad,”I wrote. “We were who we were, and we’ve both grown and changed. We aren’t right to be together, but I’d still like to be friends.”
He stared at the words, as if taken back by the honesty there. After a moment, he offered me a sad smile. “Yeah, I’d like that, too. Why don’t we get Moa back in here and find a good place for you to hide while we work out a plan?”
I nodded, grateful to move forward, to let go of our past and look forward instead. There were enough problems ahead of me that I didn’t need to wallow in the past anymore.
Chapter Nine
Hera
I peered around the house, feeling totally out of sorts. The place was huge—far larger than was reasonable, considering our short stay—and that shocked me. In my old life, I’d have found this house unacceptable. The idea of staying somewhere without staff for the basic upkeep, the idea of living anywhere with such cheap furniture would have been a huge downgrade.
Now, though? After a year in Larkwood, this all struck me as unnecessary opulence. The house was a single-family home with five bedrooms, all on one level, and decorated with simple, usable pieces.
The idea of staying somewhere Aaron knew about made me uneasy, but he’d explained that the place was used as a short-term rental by a friend of his. Aaron paid his friend in cash and said he had a woman flying in, so he wanted to keep it off the books.It was as good an excuse as any other.
Kit and Deacon had left to buy food, both putting in contacts Moa had given them to hide their unique eyes. Since no enemies had survived our fight with the soldiers, no word should have gotten back to the Warden about them defecting, which meant they were safe for a while from having their faces on the news.
Brax and Wade checked out the property, figuring out escape routes from the house should we need them.
It left Knox and I inside, and he was still behaving oddly. Ever since the fight, he’d hardly looked at me, hadn’t met my gaze, hadn’t said more than a word or two to me and only when he couldn’t get out of it.
It meant when I walked toward the kitchen and glanced into his room to find him sitting on his bed, his head in his hands, I hit my limit of ignoring it. I snapped to get his attention, then signed,“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” His voice came out rough, and in his words, pain and hunger hit me.
“You clearly aren’t fine. Are you hungry?”
He let out a nearly feral sound, one that would have driven me backward if I didn’t trust him so much. He stopped it as soon as it started, and nodded sharply once instead. “It’s not your problem, though.”
“Of course it is! If you won’t feed from me, fine, I’m not going to force you, but you still have to feed.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to go feed from some stranger. I don’t want to betray you like that.”
“It isn’t a betrayal.”
“Sure, it is. I’m tired of doing things I don’t want. I’m over it.”