“No more than he’s willing to take,” Hart replied. “No more than I’d take for Taavi, or him for me. But while he’ll do anything and everything, he doesn’t knowwhatto do.” He shrugged. “Neither do I. So unless you’ve got a bestie I don’t know aboutwith a psych degree, I’m gonna guess that therapy is probably going to be more helpful than beating your head against a fucking psychological wall.”
I didn’t want to hear it, but that’s what this whole shitty trip had been. Me hearing things I didn’t want to hear. Seeing things I didn’t want to see.
Marrying Elliot, which Ididactually want.
But everythingelse…
“She was a wolf shifter,” Hart said, then.
“What?”
“Rachael.”
I went very still. “They would have killed Noah,” I breathed softly.
Hart didn’t bother lying to me. “Probably,” he agreed. “They didn’t tell her why, though.”
“Because she was a girl,” I said softly, my voice thick. “Becausewomenaren’t meant to be hunters. Providers. They’re forbreeding.”
Hart said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say. It was, to borrow his phrase, fucked up. They’d killed my sister—who might as well have been a total stranger—because she’d had the audacity to be both female and a shifter. There was nothing you could say to that.
There was less you could say to a trans man whose family would have killed him for the same reason—and probably would have been happy to do it, given his insistence that he was, in fact, a man.
“You know what?” I said. “Fuck them. Just…Fuckthem.”
Hart blinked at me. “Absolutely,” he agreed, although I wasn’t sure how much of his agreement was because he actually agreed with me—which I assumed he probably did—or because I seemed somewhat unhinged and it seemed like agreeing with me was probably the safer idea. Not that I was a danger to him oranything. Maybe if I’d shifted, but my knee was still functionally useless, and I was pretty sure shifting would have rendered me nearly completely immobile from pain if I’d tried it. Not that I wanted to. My last shifted experience was… not something I’d ever care to repeat.
I didn’t exactly feelafraidof shifting—even my messed-up psyche understood that me being shifted had nothing to do with the fact that I’d been attacked. In fact, I’d have been attacked either way, and the only reason I was stillalivewas because I’d shifted. I just… needed to give it a bit of space, both physically and psychologically.
Hart would probably tell me that was something I should tell a therapist.
I’d think about it.
Elliot chose that moment to come through the door, carrying two big paper bags smelling of Chinese food.
Both Hart and I were more than happy to drop the topic of conversation in favor of dinner.
At least until Elliot brought it up around a mouthful of eggroll. “Did they kill her?” he asked Hart.
“Yeah,” came the reply with a glance over at me. “Ripped out her throat.”
Elliot scrunched up his face in a grimace. “Ugh. Poor girl.”
“Yeah,” Hart agreed.
Elliot raised his eyebrows. “That’s all you’ve got?”
Hart set down his plastic fork. “She’s Seth’s sister, for fuck’s sake,” he blurted.
“It’s fine,” I said mildly. It was fine. I mean, no, okay, it was definitelynotfine, butIwas fine with it being the topic of discussion so long as Hart didn’t start talking about therapy again.
I don’t have anything against therapy in principle. It was probably also true that it might be helpful. I just… I didn’t wantto talk about my childhood. The fact that I’d told Elliot about it said a lot more about how much I trusted Elliot than it did about my desire to talk about my childhood. Because if I hadn’t felt like I had no choice—if we hadn’t been driving down to this shithole—I wouldn’t have.
Not unless he’d asked or it had become relevant. Because I tried very hard not to think about it.
“It’s not fucking fine,” Hart grumbled.
“Not your call, Val,” Elliot said, and there was a slight undercurrent of warning in his tone, although he said it mildly.
