by May Dawson
My lips pulled into a thin line.
“You’re not as tricky as you think you are, Jensen,” he said. “Or maybe we know each other too well.”
I wasn’t sure if the thought of being known that well was a comforting one or a worrisome one.
Tyson chewed his lower lip. Was he nervous? I’d never seen Ty nervous before.
I’d been in a rush to get in and see Maddie, but now I broke off. “Ty. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, widening his eyes innocently in an automatic expression that was not remotely convincing. I wondered if it fooled everyone else better than it fooled me.
“Are you upset because Maddie was trying to protect you?” I demanded. “Because you can’t go in there feeling sorry for yourself. She needs you.”
“Wow,” he said. “Pretty sure I never said I felt sorry for myself.”
“You didn’t have to.” Then I threw his words back at him, even though I didn’t mean them harshly. “Maybe we know each other too well.”
To my surprise, the faintest smile tugged at the corner of Tyson’s mouth. “Wouldn’t that be a miracle.”
Last year, my first year at the academy, Tyson and I hadn’t gotten to know each other at all. I’d formed tight, strong bonds with a lot of the guys, cementing my role here at the academy. But Tyson, while he was well-respected and friendly to everyone, had seemed like a loner to me at the time. I hadn’t wasted my time with him.
Funny how things change.
“I think Maddie’s in danger,” I said. “So I need you not to freak out about the…”
“Beating?” he supplied. “If you weren’t freaked out yourself, I imagine you’d be able to say the word.”
That was irritatingly insightful. Not what I expected from Tyson. But all I said was, “She’s tough.”
“Tougher than she should have to be.” That guilty expression flashed over his face again.
I figured any of us would have lost our minds in that pit, seeing one of our own hurt.
“What danger?” he demanded.
The door flew open then. Maddie stood in the doorway, looking exasperated. “Why are you two arguing on my doorstep?”
Her face was blotched with pink, and her bloodshot eyes from crying brought out a green shimmer in her deep blue eyes. My heart dropped. I’d known she’d be hurt, but it was different from seeing it.
“It’s not your doorstep,” I said, indicating the space with a sweep of my arm. “It’s the hallway.”
She wouldn’t want my pity.
“Maddie,” Tyson murmured. He reached for her, but then hesitated, as if he was afraid he’d hurt her. His own face crumpled.
What the hell? Why was Ty taking this so hard? There was something else going on, something no one had told me, and my mind raced.
But I also had to get these two out of sight before anyone saw either of them falling apart. I shooed the two of them into the room—Ty gave me a confused but irritated look, but moved—and then shut the door behind me.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded. “I need to get Rafe and Lex in here ASAP to talk about tomorrow’s fight in the pits, but you two are both acting weird.”
Maddie shook her head, widening her eyes innocently. She wasn’t any more convincing than Tyson.
“It’s my fault,” Ty said abruptly.
“Tyson,” Maddie said. “Come on.”
She glanced my way, furtively, but I caught it. She wasn’t just afraid Ty was blaming himself for something when he shouldn’t.
She was afraid of what Ty would say in front of me.
“What’s your fault?” I asked slowly, suddenly sure that Maddie hadn’t thrown that bo in a temper tantrum. There was more to the story here.
The thought that Maddie had lied to me shook me, worse than I would’ve expected. I expected everyone to lie, now and then, when the weight of the truth was too much for them to carry.
A strange sense of betrayal, something I hadn’t felt a long time, stabbed into my chest, and I tried to shake it off. I should give her the benefit of the doubt.
“You couldn’t help what Harrington did,” Maddie told Ty firmly.
I would’ve believed her words at face value, if it hadn’t been for the way she’d glanced at Ty.
I’d been so eager to help Maddie get through what she’d experienced with the tawse, and now suddenly there was a wall between us.
But there shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t expect that much honesty from anyone. So why was my heart beating a little too quick, as if I were angry?
“I’ve got to talk to Rafe and Lex,” I said. “Expect a team meeting ASAP. You two…sort out whatever this is before then.”
“Jensen,” Maddie said, as if she could tell there was something wrong.
But I just gave her that same cool smile I gave everyone, nodded, and headed out the door.
No matter what happened tonight, I had to make sure I was ready to watch her back tomorrow.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Maddie
I didn’t want to ask Tyson what was wrong. From the guilt-stricken look on his face, he realized what protecting him had cost me.
As if he wouldn’t do it for me too, a hundred times over.
“Ty,” I said softly, hoping to distract him. I bobbed up on my toes and pressed a gentle kiss to his hard-angled cheekbone, catching his shoulders with my hands to steady me. “Just the man I wanted to see.”
His body trembled slightly under my touch, and his hands didn’t rise to grip my hips like he usually would have. Maybe he was afraid of hurting me now.
“I’m not breakable,” I teased him, shaking his shoulders playfully, or at least trying to—he was so muscular that I failed to do more than make his upper body sway faintly.
“Let me see your back.” His voice came out flat, but he didn’t meet my gaze.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “I get hurt worse than that all the time when we’re training.”
“Maddie,” he said, his voice stern, but there was a hitch in it that gave him away.
I’d been ready to rip Rafe apart after I saw Jensen’s welted shoulders. I chewed my lower lip, studying his face. I worried he’d hate himself the way I’d hated Rafe in that moment.
“Only if you promise me you won’t blame yourself,” I said, reaching up to touch his chiseled face. “This wasn’t your fault. At all.”
He snorted. “If I had control over my magic…”
“The magic you just discovered? Don’t be stupid, Ty,” I said. “You’d do anything to protect me, wouldn’t you?”
His gaze finally met mine, his eyes troubled. “Of course.”
“Then show me the respect of letting me do the same,” I said. “I’m not here to be protected like some fragile princess. I’m one of you.”
“Sure, you’re one of us,” he said hotly. “You’re tough and dangerous and I’ll always want you with me in a fight. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re my girl, and I want to take care of you. You can be both. The badass and the princess.”
“I never said I couldn’t,” I said. He was infuriating me right now, and I took a step back, folding my arms. “I just want you to realize that I’m not breakable.”
“It’s got nothing to do with seeing you as breakable,” he said, his voice hot. Then he shook his head, as if to clear it. “But, everyone is breakable. People get hurt, scarred, they die…”
He cut himself off. It seemed like he was struggling to bottle his emotions, to stay in control.
Then he said, calmly, “It doesn’t change how I feel, just because I’d follow you into battle or depend on you to watch my back in a fight. We’re not always at war. When we aren’t, I want to open doors for you, bring you gifts, treat you like a princess. Letting some asshole beat you because I fucked up…”
He shook his head.
“That asshole was looking out for me,” I said, because I didn’t want him to hate Rafe. “I did what I had to do to protect you
. Your death or the tawse, it’s simple fucking math, Ty.”
“Not to me.”
He was maddening, but I set my jaw and forged on. “Then it was simple math after that too: I leave the academy or I take the beating. If he hadn’t done it, if Lex didn’t, someone else would have. I’d rather it was him.”
My voice came out clipped. Ty started to break in, but I raised my hand to silence him. “We all did what we had to do today. We did the best we could—and you did, too. Now it’s just time to move past it.”
Ty hesitated. “I will. Just show me.”
I shook my head. I didn’t believe that for a minute. If Ty saw the bruises that covered my shoulders now, I wasn’t sure he’d ever forgive himself or Rafe. I needed all of them to be a team. We had to stick together if we were going to survive Clearborn now and the covens whenever they came for us.
I knew he wanted to protect me, but he was so destroyed by what had happened, beyond even what I’d expect from my protective men. It made me think of the confession he’d made in the car about his father. He’d seemed like he’d put that behind him so quickly.
Too quickly.
Gently, I asked, “This isn’t really about the strapping, is it? About what happened in the pit? At least, it’s not just that?”
His face crumpled again, just for a second, before he got control again. He didn’t cry, though, and my heart lurched. Maybe he’d feel better if he let me hold him while he fell apart.
Maybe he didn’t trust me that much. Not that way. It’s hard for a man who’s grown up in a world like ours to let himself grieve, even if the alternative is destructive. A pit of fear grew in my stomach as I watched him struggle.
“I always get people hurt.” His voice came out raw, gritty. Then he shook his head, before spinning and heading for the door.
He seemed to want to pretend he hadn’t admitted that out loud.
“No, you don’t.” I struggled to come up with words that would make everything better. “You protect people. You take care of me, Ty. I took care of you for once…you need to be okay with that.”
But maybe there were no words that would make everything better, at least not tonight.
“You’re right,” he said, but he didn’t sound convincing. “We all did what we had to do. Nothing to do now but move on.”
“Right,” I said, even though I felt like I should say something else, something that would break down his walls. I forced myself to smile, trying to make things relaxed between us again, even though I was speaking to his back. “Maybe I didn’t deserve it, this time, but let’s be honest. I’ve done plenty of things that would’ve earned me a beating under Clearborn’s new regime.”
His jaw flexed. I shouldn’t have said that. I felt desperate to fill the silent void between us.
“If you want to make me feel better,” I said, “you could come back here and kiss me.”
He looked at me over his shoulder. “That’s not going to fix things. I’m still out of control…”
“You just need practice,” I said. “I’ll help you.”
“I think it’d be safer for you if you stayed far away from me.” His voice was bleak.
My heart dropped at his words. “Tyson…”
He yanked the door open, about to storm out. I followed him, a sudden rise of fury replacing my heartbreak for him. I had to get through to him, and I was mad at myself that I couldn’t.
And I was mad at him for trying to walk away when we both needed each other.
But my men were standing in the hall. Tyson stopped abruptly, staring at Jensen, Rafe and Lex, who were in the lead, the others crowded behind them.
“Team meeting now,” Lex ordered.
“It’s not a great time,” I said drily.
“I don’t care,” Lex said. He glanced at me again, a second look, then his eyes softened, as if he wouldn’t have said that if he’d seen my tear-streaked face earlier. But he went on anyway. “We’ve got trouble.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Tyson
The guys crowded into Maddie’s room. Rafe gave a long look to the makeshift double-king bed we’d formed across one wall. When I followed his gaze, the memories of the other night with Maddie, Jensen and Penn rose in my mind, but this time, instead of being a pleasant dream that I’d been dwelling on since, I felt ashamed. I didn’t deserve Maddie.
Lex leaned against the door while the rest of us took seats on the bed or on one of the two desk chairs in the room. Rafe stood next to him, arms crossed over his chest. Both of them looked bleak, even by their standards, and tension settled in my stomach.
“I was in the cadre meeting with Clearborn fifteen minutes ago and he let us know we’ll be fighting three patrols versus three tomorrow. We’ll fight hand-to-hand, any tap-out counts as a death for the purpose of the game.” Lex said. The news didn’t seem to match his grim tone. “Any other day, it’d sound like a good time.”
“It doesn’t, though, because I heard about tomorrow’s three-on-three match already,” Jensen said. “Because Garmond told Duncan about the plan for tomorrow and the roster, which puts us against Duncan’s pack.”
“Why?” Penn demanded.
“Bear in mind this is second-hand information,” Rafe warned. “But Garmond and Duncan come from the same pack. Garmond has a grudge against Piper Northsea he’d love to take out on her little sister, and Duncan…”
“Is as useless as tits on a bull,” Chase finished.
“Yes, that,” Lex said. “We think they’re going to go after Maddie, try to hurt her.”
Anger boiled through my blood at the thought.
“There are supposed to be rules in the pit.” Maddie’s chin rose defiantly, as if she was doing her best not to react to the threat. “But it doesn’t seem like Clearborn and his staff of sadists care much about those.”
Lex looked troubled. “I don’t know. I think maybe we should go to Clearborn. Tell him what we know.”
“If he does, the kid from Duncan’s pack who told me might suffer,” Jensen said. “I say we take care of it ourselves. Two of us with Maddie, all the time.”
He glanced down at her—he was sitting right next to her—and I knew he’d already decided he’d be one of her bodyguards. Maddie didn’t even notice the protective way he looked at her. She was busy talking to Penn as the room erupted into debate about the best way to deal with the situation. As if it mattered what we decided—as if we were suddenly run by committee.
I wanted to be there protecting her with him.
And I knew I should stay away.
My lips twisted, and I ducked my head, sticking my hands into my pockets. I’d keep my distance—and I’d fucking bulldoze anyone who came near her. Duncan would pay tomorrow.
At least I could do that for her.
Rafe and Lex exchanged a long look. Usually, the two of them seemed to agree about everything—or at least they pretended to—but tonight the air seemed to shimmer with tension between them. Everyone else was talking amongst themselves, but I found myself listening to their quiet conversation.
“We go to Clearborn,” Lex said. “It’s reckless not to.”
Rafe shook his head. “Jensen’s right. We don’t have anything to go on here. Something Jensen heard from some kid who overheard it? Clearborn would laugh us out of the office.”
“And if someone gets hurt tomorrow…really hurt…” Lex said, his voice tight with irritation.
“Then it’s on me,” Rafe said. “It’s my call.”
“Since when?” Lex muttered.
“Since I’m the one who does the hard stuff,” Rafe snapped.
Lex stared at him, his jaw setting. “You’re really going to use that against me.”
“Yeah, I really am,” Rafe said. “Clearborn notices you’re not the one signing up to be the meanie.”
“You’re a real fucking asshole sometimes, Rafe,” Lex’s voice was so soft that I didn’t think anyone else would hear it.
“Because I h
ave to be,” Rafe said. “You weren’t there. Someone else would have done it to her, would’ve seen her fall apart…” A muscle ticked in Rafe’s cheek. “We’re not talking about this now.”
“Yeah,” Lex said. “Great.”
“But you know, in the end, Clearborn’s going to choose me.” Rafe said, his voice low and sure. “So I might as well start making the calls now.”
Lex’s eyes narrowed, and I could’ve sworn for a second he was going to hit Rafe. Then his lips parted in a disbelieving smile as he shook his head.
“Fine,” he said.
Rafe gave him another long look, studying him, but Lex turned his attention back to us.
“Hey,” Lex said over the noise of the room. “Decision’s made. Tomorrow we watch Maddie’s back.”
“Jensen and Silas will stay with her the whole time,” Rafe added, and if I hadn’t just seen the two of them stare at each other like they were about to come to blows, I would’ve thought they agreed one-hundred-percent.
“We don’t know about what we’re walking into tomorrow,” Lex said. “So even though we think Duncan’s going after Maddie in particular, we all look out for each other. Stay close.”
“Right,” Rafe said. “It doesn’t matter if we lose. I know we all want to put on a good show and make it clear that we’re the best team—”
“Yep, the one with the girl on it,” Maddie interjected.
Rafe smiled, just faintly, before he forged on. “But what matters tomorrow is that we all walk out together and fight another day. We stick together.”
“No wayward children tomorrow,” Maddie said. Penn was on her other side, and she absently rested her hand on his leg.
Penn turned to her, raising his eyebrows skeptically. “Why does everyone always look at me?”
Whatever banter passed between them next was lost to me. Maddie’s wayward children reminded me for some reason of Winter saying he’d come home to his children.
Was he talking about his coven?
Or was he talking about Maddie and me, there in the cage, both cursed with more magic than any shifter? The way he had turned and stared at Maddie right before he left haunted me now.