“Kept me accountable when I was going to make really stupid decisions?”
I frowned. “What stupid decisions?” I asked.
His dark eyebrows rose. “The foxglove?”
I had completely forgotten about that. “Okay, that would have been pretty bad,” I admitted.
“See?” He offered me a weak smile. “You’ve done plenty.”
“I also almost got you killed,” I reminded him glumly.
“But you didn’t,” he murmured. “We both came out of it okay.”
I let out a strangled sound that was part laugh, part sob.
It turned to all sobs when Elliot stood and carefully climbed up to sit on the hospital bed and wrap me in his arms.
I was tired—no, not tired,exhausted. That kind of bone-deep exhaustion that sucks all energy out of you and leaves you completely drained, all walls down, all self-control obliterated. With Noah safe, I just wanted to go home. To pick up the pieces of the life that may or may not be waiting for me. To collapse in the bed I shared with Elliot and just let him hold me together.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured into my hair. “I’ve always got you.”
I was startedawake from the nap I’d fallen into on Elliot’s chest by the door slamming open and Hart yelling “Those fucking fuckers!”
I gasped, sitting up sharply, then sucked in a second breath at the pain in my side.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Val,” Elliot snapped. “Have a little goddamn courtesy.”
I let out a long breath, easing the pain with the exhalation. “What happened?” I asked the clearly furious elf. He’d been released yesterday, and had—much to Taavi’s annoyance—immediately gone back to work. The smaller shifter had insisted on staying, although I hadn’t yet seen him today.
Hart stared at me for a moment, his expression conflicted.
“Fuck’s sake, Val, you came charging in here like a bat out of hell, and now you’re not sure if you want to tell us why? What the fuck?”
Hart’s ears turned a bright magenta.
“It’s fucking…sensitive, okay, dickhead?”
“Is Noah okay?” I asked immediately.
“Yeah, he’s fine. Holed up with the lawyers,” Hart replied immediately.
I thought for a minute while Hart stewed. “Then what did my father do this time?” I asked.
They both stared at me.
I sighed. “I don’t know what else could possibly besensitiveunless it involved either Noah or my father, and if it’s not Noah…” I let the sentence trail off.
Hart ran an agitated hand over his braid. “He—he’s dead,” he said, finally.
“Jesus, Val,” Elliot hissed.
“Suicide?” I asked, and they both looked at me again, this time with vaguely horrified expressions. I sighed. “Look, I didn’t love him. I didn’t evenlikehim. He made my life a living hell, killed my mother, and then tried to kill both Elliot and me. I’m not upset he’s gone.”
The color flushed from Hart’s ears to his cheekbones. “I mean, when you put it that way…” he grumbled.
“Was it suicide?” I asked again.
Hart sighed. “It was supposed to look like it, I think,” he replied, color darkening further. I immediately understood that it was a sensitive topic not because of me, but because ofElliot. Whose father had been murdered, and that murder made to look like a suicide by hanging.
