Page 8 of An Oath at Midnight

He greeted Mags with a chin lift, and she forced a smile in response as she strode past.

I went after her, jumping off the deck and landing on the ground before she could get down the ladder. I stood in front of her before she could storm off. “Wait.”

I expected fire, her anger, because that’s what we did now, snapped and snarled at each other out of fear and desperation. Instead, when she looked up at me, that tiredness was back in her eyes. “It’s fine. Go.”

That look, the defeat in her voice, it fucking terrified me. “Mags—”

“Whatever it is you’re doing, just be safe, okay?”

I studied her expression, hating what I saw. Distance yawning wider between us. Every time I left her, every time I kept another secret from her, the canyon between us grew deeper, wider. “I want to tell you,” I said, but giving her that small amount was all I could.

“But you can’t, right?” Her gaze slid from me to the house on the other side of the yard, already checking out, already gone.

I’d taken the kind of oath that was binding for a lifetime. Only family, mates, could be told more. And though Mags meant more to me than anyone on this earth, she wasn’t family, not in the blood sense, and we weren’t mated. There was one other way—if she found out on her own. But the idea of her finding out that way? No, I couldn’t fucking stomach it. That’d be the worst thing that could happen.

What would she think if you did tell her? Would she still look at you the same if she knew the things you’d done? If she knew what you truly were? How deep your darkness truly went?

She pressed her hands to my chest, and at the innocent contact, my heart smacked hard against the back of my ribs. I wanted to pull her close, my instincts screaming for me to press my face to her throat, nuzzle her smooth skin, to breathe her into my lungs.

“Be safe,” she said and smiled up at me. It was forced, false. “I’ll see you when you get back.”

Then she dropped her hands and strode away, back to the house.

Rook dropped to the ground beside me. “Tell her how you feel or move the fuck on.”

My brothers had picked up I had feelings for her, but they didn’t know she was my mate, and I wasn’t in a hurry to tell them.

I ignored him, watching until Mags disappeared inside. If I told her how I felt, I’d destroy what we had now. Yes, it was volatile and shaky, but she still cared, she still wanted me around.

After what Clayton did to her, she’d closed off completely when it came to any kind of romantic relationships. They made her uncomfortable, even in movies. She’d turn off the TV if anything even remotely sexual happened.

Telling her the truth was the worst thing I could do.

I used to hope that one day she’d see it, feel it for herself. That I’d wait forever if I had to.

I didn’t wish for that anymore. I hoped like fuck she never felt it. I never wanted her to see the dark corners inside me, the twisted things in my mind, the things I needed to do just to stay sane. No, she could never see what I truly was, and if we were mated, there’d be no hiding it.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said.

Rook shifted, and took flight.

I did the same, following my brother.

What was another black mark on my soul?

* * *

Magnolia

The road to the keep was bumpy as hell. I gripped the steering wheel and tried to breathe through all the anger and pain. It wasn’t working. Only one thing would help me.

I parked, and as I walked up the steep track to the keep, a wolf howled in the distance, alerting everyone of my arrival. Since Iris moved here with her mate, Draven, she’d become familiar with the different howls the wolves made, different pitches and lengths, and she was walking out of the keep to greet me as I strode across the clearing.

Iris was the second oldest out of the four of us, she could talk to animals, take on their traits and also did this weird thing that wasn’t exactly shifting into an animal, but also kind of was.

She grinned. “I wasn’t expecting you. This is a nice surprise.”

I let her hug me, the coolness of her cheek brushing mine. The damage from her ex-boyfriend, Brody’s, attempt to kill my sister had left a permanent black mark on her face. I squeezed her in return, though it was hard today. When I was like this, full of banked rage, I didn’t want to be touched. I felt every scar as if it were a fresh slice, heard every twisted word that’d been muttered in my ear on repeat. The monsters were only in my head, but they were as real to me now as they were back then—when I’d made the biggest mistake of my life, breaking a blood oath and almost causing the death of my entire family.