He pushes me.
He stretches me.
He helps me explore just a little bit more than I’m comfortable with, just a little more than I ask for.
Somehow, that makes me feel safe. I know Nash isn’t just protecting me. He’s guiding me, too. He doesn’t want me to face Jeffrey unprepared, so he’s teaching me the skills I need to survive.
I know Nash plans to challenge my brother as the pack leader. I know he plans to kill him or die trying. Somehow, it doesn’t bother me. It may be wrong or morally apprehensible but I can’t accept the idea of Jeffrey being able to hurt anyone else.
I won’t.
“Why now?” I ask him as we rest in a clearing. We’re lying in the grass, facing the clear blue skies, and it’s just the two of us.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you going to challenge him now? Why not after Elise died?”
“A lot went down with the pack at that time. I had to leave. If I had stayed, things would have been bad. I was sick, I was weak, and I was emotionally distraught. I was in no place to lead the pack. Even if I could beat him, which I couldn’t at the time, I wouldn’t have been a good leader.”
&n
bsp; “You never actually told me what happened with your cousin, you know.”
“Nobody knows exactly what happened with her. Jeffrey claims her death was an accident. No one really believed it, but most of the pack is too scared to say anything. I’m the one who found her. She had just died.” He pauses, his voice full of emotion, and my heart breaks just a little bit more.
He found her?
Losing someone you love is hard enough. Finding them just a few minutes too late?
How do you ever get over that?
No wonder Nash is so damaged, so broken. He’s had a hard life, a tougher time than anyone should ever have to have. Still, he’s strong. He keeps fighting. He keeps going.
“These friends of yours, the ones who want you to challenge him,” I speak slowly, trying to find the right words. “You can trust them?”
“With my life?”
“Then where have they been?”
“We meet on the full moon,” he says. “They missed the last one. The next one is tomorrow. They’ll be there. They have to.” He balls his hands into fists, then releases them, as if he’s quietly trying to convince himself that everything is going to be okay.
I place my hand on Nash’s and he loosens his grip. Everything is going to be okay. I try to convince him through my touch. I try to show him just by being here.
Everything is going to be okay and we’re going to get through this together.
“The thing about shifters is that there are still politics at play. They’ve had to lie low in order to keep as much peace as possible in the pack. They knew I planned to come back, but I needed to gather more information about Jeffrey, needed to find out more. Before you came along, I didn’t even know his real name, love. You filled in so much back story for me that now I feel like I actually have a fighting chance.”
“What do you mean? I’ve barely told you anything.”
“The kind of man who would kill his grandmother isn’t the kind of man who should be leading a pack, baby. You showed me that. Before you came, there was still part of me that wondered if I was overreacting. Part of me still wondered if I wasn’t just a little bit crazy for thinking these things. Now I know. Now I know he has to be stopped. He’s not going to go away. He can’t be ignored. He’s been so bold and he’s getting more so. I can’t help but think he has some really bad plans for the future, Scarlett. I don’t want to give him the chance to let anything happen.”
Nash’s words sink in and I close my eyes. Suddenly, the bright sky doesn’t seem so bright. He’s right and I know it. Jeffrey has some evil plans. Neither one of us knows what his end game is, but we both know it can’t be anything good.
The time has come to fight.
And fight we must.
Right now, though? Right now, I just want to think about me and Nash. I just want to think about how good he makes me feel. I just want to think about how this week, I’m on top of the world.