Well, Hunt didn’t blame Sabine for being pissed. The truth hurt.
Hunt sighed and was about to set his phone back onto the nightstand when it buzzed with a message from Isaiah. Thoughts???
He knew Isaiah was asking about Celestina’s appointment. Too early to tell, he wrote back. Too early for hope, too.
Isaiah answered immediately. She’ll be here tomorrow evening at five. Try to play nice, Hunt. She’s not Micah.
Hunt sent back a thumbs-up. But sleep was a long time coming.
Bryce gazed at her bedroom ceiling, listening to the wet, labored breathing of the male beside her.
Her mom and dad had bought her lies—hook, line, and sinker. Of course, it meant she’d be getting up in four hours, but it was a price worth paying. No news about her engagement had been leaked yet. She could only pray it wouldn’t until their train was out of the city.
Ithan shifted slightly, the sound of the blankets loud in the silence. It was strange to have him here, his scent filling her nose. So similar to Connor’s scent—
“I could have slept on the couch,” Ithan said into the darkness.
“I don’t trust Athalar not to smother you with a pillow.”
Ithan huffed a laugh. “He holds a grudge, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
Silence fell again, thick and heavy. She’d wanted Ithan right where she could see him. It was as simple as that. Wards on this place or not, she wasn’t about to leave him unguarded when Sabine and Amelie might change their minds about the paperwork being too much trouble. She’d lost one Holstrom already.
“Danika had me keyed to the locks,” Ithan said. “Right before … everything. She showed me this place—wanted me in on the surprise. That’s how I got in.”
Bryce’s throat clogged. “Oh.”
“Is it true that Danika helped you make the Drop?”
Since her voice had been broadcast through the Gates into every part of the city, it was common knowledge that Danika Fendyr had something to do with Bryce’s Drop, but rumors about exactly what ranged widely.
“Yeah,” Bryce said. “She, ah … She was my Anchor.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Me neither.”
His breathing thinned. Bryce said, “I … Ithan, when I saw Danika during the Search, she told me that the others—Connor and Nathalie and the whole Pack of Devils—held off the Reapers to buy her time to be there with me. They saved me, too. Connor saved me.”
Ithan said nothing for a long moment. When was the last time they’d spoken like this? Calm, quiet. Without hate spewing like acid, burning everything it touched? Then Ithan said, “He loved you more than anyone.”
Her heart strained. “He loved you more than anyone.”
“He thought you were his mate.”
Bryce shut her eyes against the punch that slammed into her gut. “In the wolf sense of the word?”
“What other sense is there? Yeah, the wolf sense.”
There were several definitions of the term mate—though Bryce supposed that to Ithan, to a shifter, only one mattered: one’s true lover, predestined by Urd.
The Fae had a similar concept—a mate was a bond deeper than marriage, and beyond an individual’s control. The angels, she knew, used the term far more lightly: for the malakim, it was akin to a marriage, and matings could be arranged. Like breeding animals in a zoo.
But for Connor, if he’d thought Bryce was his mate … Her stomach twisted again.
“Did you love him?” Ithan whispered.
“You know I did,” Bryce said, voice thick.
“We waste so much time. Maybe it’s our curse as immortals. To see time as a luxury, a never-ending ocean.” He loosed a long breath. “I wasted a lot of it.”
Bryce couldn’t tell what he was referring to. “Real poetic of you.” Ithan let out a soft laugh. In the air-conditioned dark, Bryce asked, “Why did you quit sunball?”
She felt Ithan tense, the mattress shifting. “Because it’s a stupid game,” he said, voice empty, and turned onto his side with a groan.
Bryce had no idea how to respond. So she closed her eyes, rubbing idly at the scar on her chest, and prayed for Luna to send her into a dreamless, heavy sleep.
7
“This is bullshit.” Ruhn paced the ornate rugs of his father’s study as the grandfather clock in the corner chimed two in the morning. “You know it’s total fucking bullshit.”
Lounging in a crimson leather armchair by the darkened fireplace, the Autumn King said nothing. The experiments and nonsense he worked on day and night boiled and bubbled away, the sound a steady hum in the background.