Case and I follow Rin out to the bonfire pit. I’m so full of misery right now. I can’t imagine not being with Rin. She’s gone from the little red head that held so much fascination for me when I was a child, to my teenage best friend and confidant, to my mate, to the mother of my pups, to the cause of my torment. I have literally shared every aspect of my life with her. Every major event, every minor detail, everything has had her in it. And now there’s the possibility that it’s over. I mean, I know that over the last couple of days, I decided that I was willing to walk away. Believe me, the irony isn’t lost on me. But, I thought that it would be because we couldn’t get it together. I thought that I would be leaving out of anger or self-preservation. I thought that I’d have some kind of righteous reason to be like, “Hey, I tried. And it just didn’t work out.” Never in a million years did I think that it would be like this. This is calm. Rin seems almost happy, not an

We start to go outside, but see that Rin is still out there, talking to Kesha now. Slade and Meredith are nowhere to be found, but it feels weird to have this conversation out where anyone can hear it. “You guys want to come to my room? We’ll get some privacy there.” There’s no ignoring the tremor in Chloe’s voice as she says this. As much as all of our minds are in turmoil with everything that’s happening, our bodies have no difficulties understanding what they want. The thought of being in a room alone with her, a room that is covered in her scent, has my adrenaline spiking, along with my breathing. “You sure, Chloe?” Sev asks. I can tell that he’s having just as much trouble fighting his body as I am. “Yeah. I mean, we’re just gonna talk, right?” Her words are confident, but her eyes are looking everywhere but at us. Honestly, I think that we have a snowball’s chance in Hell of keeping our hands to ourselves, but I’m gonna do my best. It won’t be hard if she doesn

Case and I sit in two chairs in Chloe’s room. She’s surprisingly neat for her age. I remember my mom yelling at me every time that she came into my room when I was 19 to clean my room. I never really got the whole cleaning routine down until we started to move from pack to pack, with barely anything to carry with us. We had to be ready to go on a moment’s notice, in case the pack figured out that we were a trio. It keeps you organized, whether you want to be or not.I missed being that young and carefree, having someone else worrying about the big stuff. Really, I just missed having parents that cared for me. Parents that loved me. Too bad that they didn’t try to reason with Case’s dad. Didn’t stand up to him when he threw us out of the pack. Thinking about my new mate, she never had that as a pup. One of the many reasons that I’m glad that we destroyed the Black Night Pack, but also a reason that I wished that we had made their deaths take longer.If she’ll let us, I’ll giv

Case kneels in front of me on the floor. “Chloe, we love you. Always have. More than as a friend or the little sister that Slade and Kesha see you as. More than as the protector that Rin sees herself as. We love you. We want you to be happy. If you think you’ll be happy with us, we will spend everyday for the rest of our lives making ourselves worthy of that choice. If not…” Case turns to look at Sev before looking back at me. “If not, we’ll complete the rejection.”My heart is hammering in my chest, making it difficult for me to breathe. The thought of being with them scares me half to death. I can’t imagine having that choice taken from me, having someone else decide what will make me happy. But the thought of being without them is even worse. The second Case says that, it’s like my heart stops beating in my chest. I desperately look back and forth between the two of them, begging them to say something else, to stop the pain that’s burning in my chest.Sev stands, putt

Despite everything that I have ever heard about werewolves, I actually really like them. I mean, I wasn’t going to automatically be a bitch to them like Celeste had been ever since we walked into the hotel. That just wasn’t my style. But, at the same time, I had always heard the stereotypes the werewolves were vicious, misogynistic, stupid, bloodthirsty beasts who only cared about fighting and mating. Granted, some of them were a little more hot headed than I was, but that could be said for most humans and witches. Gael, for instance, kept an even temper at almost all times. Diego was hilarious, as was Karamea, though in a more pointed way. Hakeem, Naomi, and Lily were actually very quiet, whereas Sandra and Liam were often fighting like an old married couple who required Bhakti to referee between them. Devin and Arya were extremely down to earth, even though they were demi-gods. And Charlie and Zak were very straight forward, but not rude. All of the males looked to their fe