Marianna
I’m not even out of the castle before my body succumbs to an immense wave of regret. I brace myself on the banister of a sweeping marble staircase curving down to the third floor, squeezing my eyes shut as I sink against the steps.
What is wrong with me?
I’m literally criminally insane, aren’t I? Blake is trying to help us, and I’m actively boxing him out, and for what? Unrequited feelings? A lingering ache of rejection I haven’t been able to dim?
The idea that had he just… grown up, been a fucking man about this… I wouldn’t have been through what I had to go through the past four years.
It should have been him by my side. It should have been his mark on my neck.
My phone buzzes repeatedly. My body curls with dread as I hang my head between my knees, resisting the urge to scream in frustration.
Female voices drift toward me from the hallway below. I lift my head as a trio of women in strange outfits walk past the base of the stairs. Their pants are made of what looks like leather but thin and seamless, held together by loops woven with braided string. The leader of the pack is obviously the young woman in the middle. She’s incredibly tall–as tall, if not taller–than Queen Maeve. Thick, impressively curly dark brown hair turns a deep red in the sunlight as she notices me, one of her eyebrows lifting in confusion when she sees my… tears.
She motions for the other two women to keep walking, saying, “I’ll meet you in the weapons room downstairs. Don’t let the guys taunt you into sparring, okay? The clinic is already sick of many of the guys they’ve been patching up the last couple days.” Her voice is deeper than I expected. Husky and warm, almost seductive for someone her age. She’s young, maybe an older teenager, but as she turns her body toward the stairs, toward me, I realize this woman is… not only tall, but insanely, impressively, muscular.
Her taunt biceps flex as she grips the banister, her thigh muscles strain against her strange leather outfit while she gives me a sympathetic smile. “Are you okay?”
Thundering footsteps surge behind me but stop abruptly. The woman looks up, and her pinched brow relaxes as she breathes, “Hey, Blake.”
Blake exhales like he’s out of breath. “Lexa. I didn’t know you were in town.”
“I brought some of the girls. We heard the warriors were bored, and their captains asked if we’d give them a show.” She shrugs, drumming her fingers on the marble railing. “And we did give them a show. Most of Captain Leed’s battalion is currently in the clinic getting stitched up.”
Blake sighs, unimpressed, but I’m watching the woman closely, perplexed. She’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen someone who looks like her. She’s exotic in a way I can’t put my finger on. Her skin is a deep bronze, but she has millions of freckles. Tiny braids are woven through her thick curls, some adorned with carved beads and small shells. Her eyes are a deep, stormy blue flaked with amber.
She smiles wickedly at Blake before inspecting her nails. “Captain Johnson’s battalion is next. They’re waiting for us downstairs. Apparently, they learned a thing or two watching us spar with Leed’s band of idiots and decided they want weapon play instead of hand to hand combat.”
“I’ll make sure the sparring area is… cleaned when you’re done.”
She smiles at him again, but then her eyes slide to mine. “Are you good?”
“She’s fine,” Blake says sternly–sternly enough that I bristle.
Lexa gives him a skeptical look but edges off the stairs and disappears around the corner. I rise, but Blake is suddenly beside me clutching my coffee stained sweater in his fist.
“Can we please talk for a moment? That’s all I need,” he grinds out in a low grumble. “Please.”
“I don’t think there’s anything else to say–”
“I broke up with you,” he whispers, his body closing on mine, “because I scared you. Because you looked at me like I was a monster, and I am, and I couldn’t handle the idea of ever hurting you with my powers. I was young and stupidly in love, Marianna. I was also young and untrained. I handled it poorly. I know that. I didn’t explain what was happening to me, but I thought I was doing the right thing, and looking back on it, I probably was.” I close my eyes, my chest quaking as he continues, “I warned you about what Skye could become. I hate that this is happening to her–to us, Marianna. I will make it better, but you have to trust me. I didn’t end things between us because I wanted to. I ended things because I had to. There was no other way forward for us.”
I take a step away from him. He straightens, his face etched in cold shadow–his mask of bored indifference a heavy contrast to the force and depth of what he just said to me. I wish he’d just show it, for fuck’s sake. The hurt. The anguish.
He never will. It’s not his style, is it? He wraps those feelings up tight, hoarding them away, pushing everyone as far away as he possibly can.
I wish I had the same ability.
“You moved on, and I was happy for it when I found out you’d found your mate,” he says with only a flicker of emotion behind his voice that betrays the words.
“I wasn’t–Dean marked me before I knew for sure,” I admit, meeting his eyes. My tears have dried. I feel weightless as I get lost in his gaze, which flashes with silent rage.
Blake is speechless for a moment. “He imprinted on you?”
I nod, wringing my hands before gripping the banister for support. “Can’t you just look into my mind and see everything for yourself–”
“I will not do that to you,” he cuts in sharply, his eyes dark and deadly serious. “Ever.”
“Sometimes I wish you would,” I whisper, closing my eyes as I take a deep breath and start walking away.
He doesn’t follow me this time. We say nothing about what happens next, whether I’ll continue training with him or if he’s going to tell his family our secret–about our daughter. I also left my sweater at the castle. He was still gripping it when I left him on the stairs, and the shirt he loaned me?
It smells like him.
I reach my house after an entire hour of walking aimlessly around Moonrise in no set direction. My shoulders are flecked with the glitter that was falling from the streamers being lifted and arranged for the mating festival that begins this weekend when I walk into the house, passing Mom, who’s sitting in the new armchair she wrestled me into buying.
“Anna?”
I close myself in the bathroom. I strip out of my stained clothes and take a lukewarm shower, standing directly below the spray of water as my mind fizzles with the last of Blake’s magic. Dressed in a towel, I pad back downstairs, barely dry, my damp hair dripping down my shoulders and back, and Mom is in the same place she was before, but now her book is in her lap, her eyes honed on my wet steps into the kitchen.
“Where’s Skye?”
“Out back breaking rocks,” she says matter-of-factly, her voice growing closer as she moves into the kitchen. “Where have you been?”
“With Blake.” I gulp an entire glass of water and turn to her, arching a brow.
She rests her hands on her hips, mimicking my expression. “Why?”
“He was helping me train in mental shields. He said it was necessary to ensure Skye couldn’t continue breaking into my thoughts and memories. It didn’t go well.” I swallow hard, my mouth immediately going desert dry again. I turn to the sink, filling the glass again.
Her footsteps are light on the floorboards behind me. “Have you… talked to him?”
“Of course. Being in someone’s presence usually means having to carry on a conversation to some degree.”
“Anna, you know exactly what I mean.”
I turn to her, leaning my hips against the counter. “What do you want me to say? That he suddenly wants to be in Skye’s life? That he’s back? That everything is suddenly going to be all right again?”
Mom searches my eyes, her expression dimming, new lines crinkling around her eyes. “I never understood why–”
“We broke up?” I laugh, but it’s bitter. “Oh, he just explained that fully. Trust me. He broke up with me because he thought I was scared of him–”
“You were–”
“He lies, Mom. Blake has never told me the full truth about anything, and that hasn’t changed, which he just proved. Blake is only interested in protecting himself–”
Mom barks a shrill laugh that rings through my bones. “From what?”
“Feeling! Feeling anything!” I whirl back to the counter and discard my glass in the sink.
“He’s a young man, Marianna. You’ve always had such high expectations of him. Too high–”
“He never told me he had powers, Mom.” I whirl back to her, my eyes going glassy with sudden tears. “Not until he looked inside my fucking head and didn’t like what he saw.”
She searches my gaze, her brow pinching in confusion.
“Yeah, that’s what happened. He used his powers on me and decided he didn’t want to be with me anymore with no explanation, no reason why. He left, cutting off contact. Then I found out I was pregnant.”
Now her eyes are growing wet.
“I’d just turned eighteen.”
“I am aware–”
“And you,” I sneer, losing my grip, “found him and told him–”
“You were having a baby, Marianna. He needed to know.”
“It wasn’t your decision to make.”
“I am your mother. Do you really think I was going to sit there and let you suffer alone? Because you were suffering, Marianna. Immensely.”
She doesn’t mean through the pregnancy. No, I was… severely depressed. Those few months before Blake found out were hell–like I’d been dropped into a pool of depthless water I couldn’t find my way out of. It was like he was branded on my body, and I couldn’t shake his memory.
“He pushed me away because he knew–” I suck in a rattling breath, “he thought I wasn’t enough, you know? People like him, powerful people, people with standing–”
“He did not end things with you because of our low rank!”
“He’s a Mystic, Mom!” I shout. “And I’m just a wolf. That’s what this is about, clearly. I wasn’t good enough for him. I was a good time, an easy mark. He shoved me to the side when I found out about his gifts, and his play was over. That’s what happened.”
“Is that what he told you?” Mom is in utter disbelief and angry… but not at Blake. Her eyes are wild and narrowed on mine. “You can’t actually believe that.”
“He told me he loved me,” I admit. “Just now, at the castle, when I cornered him after he told me we were too close for him to train me effectively. We had too many shared, overlapping memories. And then he told me he was stupidly in love with me back then and scared–”
“Which is exactly what he felt–”
“Like you know–”
“He told me as much,” Mom says, her voice nearing a shout. “Within minutes, I might add, of finding out he was going to be a father at such a young age, Marianna. I’ve never seen someone look so devastatingly worried, and he wasn’t worried about himself. He was worried about you.”
I shake my head as my mind spins out of control. That deep ache of anxiety reels and riots through my body, threatening to drag me into the abyss.
“He was worried our baby would be like him!” My voice cracks over the words as the first tears trickle down my cheeks. “That’s all. He–he knows how dangerous he is, and now look at us, Mom. Skye is the same. He’s only around now because I can’t help her. You can’t help her, and we’re losing her every second that passes. You have to know that.”
Mom shakes her head.
I shrug, closing my eyes. “Blake will never care about anything other than keeping who he really is a secret from everyone, including me. That boy we knew, Mom, he’s gone. He’s as good as dead.”
“You’re delirious, and you need to go lie down–”
“Mommy?” Skye’s voice carries on a soft breeze coming through the open back door before she comes into view, her violet eyes the same shade and shape as the man she inherited them from. She looks from me to my mom, her face shadowed by confusion. “Grammy?”
“It’s alright, sweetie. Mommy’s not feeling well.” Mom cuts me a sharp look as she guides Skye out of the room.
Guilt nearly drags me to the floor.
I close myself in my room, change into a shirt and shorts, and sit on the edge of my bed. My purse rests on top of my dresser, my phone sticking out just enough I can see the blinking light telling me I have… hundreds of notifications.
It’s not work. It’s not from the academy. It’s not old friends from Crescent Falls trying to check in on us.
Which means I’m not as safe here as I hoped I’d be.