312
Tony
My breath hitched in my throat, in disbelief and a hope I couldn’t deny. My heart pounded against my chest. Her eyelashes trembled. Her brow twitched. Quillan went still, leaning closer, holding his breath.
Then, her eyes fluttered open. They were different now, pools of molten starlight, shimmering with a bright green, like fresh grass. I caught the scent of something like spring in a deep ancient forest rising from her. Time seemed to warp, the air buzzing with a tangible energy. Our gazes locked, a bridge of unseen threads snapping taut between us. Emotions rushed and tumbled through me, a torrent of electricity and magnetism pulling me closer, drowning out the world in a dizzying kaleidoscope of sensation. I could hear, feel, and see everything around me. I felt like if I just reached out a little with my mind, I could feel her, hear her thoughts.
Anthony?
I shuddered at the way her mind felt against mine. My heart hammered against my ribs. This pull, this undeniable tether, it was… primal, possessive, unlike anything I'd ever known. This had to be the mating pull. I couldn’t describe it as anything less than all-consuming, burning through me.
Ginevra.
Her eyes fluttered.
“Mommy! Your eyes are different!”
She turned her head. Her whole face lit up, and she sat up, pulling Quillan into her arms so quickly that we almost knocked heads, but I knew somehow to pull back before she had even seemed to be about to move. Quillan squeezed her tight. I stood back, dizzy with the feeling still.
What was going on? The pull I felt with Lucy hadn’t been anything like this. By comparison, I couldn’t even call it a pull. My stomach lurched with disgust. A jolt of horror shot through me. In all our nights together with Lucy, I'd never felt this. Never this raw, this consuming. How could I have felt anything at all for her when this primal feeling came just from meeting gazes with Ginevra? My head pounded like a screw was driving into my skull.
I could feel it bubbling up, this feeling—I’d felt it before. I knew it. Not the night I’d given her the necklace, but the last time I’d seen her.
I shuddered. What was happening? Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.
I put my hand over my mouth and stepped back. There was no doubt that this was the mating pull. Everything in me was on fire in a way I never wanted to end, but the horror, the sense of uncanny unknown, and disorientation were making it hard to focus.
Questions swirled in my head, a whirlwind of confusion battling with the undeniable, terrifying truth. I met Ginevra’s gaze, still glowing with that unearthly light. There was no anger, no judgment, nothing but understanding and gratitude. She pressed Quillan’s head into her shoulder and rocked him gently. Her eyes were glossy with tears.
“Look at you… Did you wear green to come see me?” She asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. Daddy, too.”
She glanced at me. “I noticed… It’s a good color on him, too.”
My stomach jolted.
Her lips twitched, and the door behind me opened.
“Nora?” Ginevra asked.
“You brat!” Nora cried, watery. She pushed around me and streaked across the room to throw her arms around Nora. I stepped back.
“Behind you.”
I whirled around to look at Matt. He leaned in and grinned. There was no heat in his gaze, nothing out of the ordinary, not even surprise as he looked at Ginevra.
“Little miracles,” he nudged me. “Should I be calling you Prince Charming these days?”
He turned, and his eyes widened as our gazes met.
“What’s—”
I grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the room. “We’ll be back,” I said stiffly, uncertain if any of them heard me.
I pulled Matt into the hallway.
“You look scared like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Panic clawed at my throat, constricting my breath as I grabbed Matt by his shoulders.
"Easy—"
"Did you? Did you feel it?" The question tumbled out, choked with raw desperation. "When… When you were with her?"
Matt blinked, his brow furrowed in confusion. "Feel what, Tony? What are you talking about?"
The denial felt like gasoline on the fire of my terror. I paced the hallway, hands raking through my hair as if to pull out the tangled mess of thoughts swirling within.
"The pull, Matt!" I hissed, keeping my voice as low as possible. "The mating pull! Didn't you feel it when you looked at her? The connection, the… the raw need?"
He shook his head, his gaze filled with concern. "Tony, calm down. Just start from the beginning…"
I couldn't. The fear, the panic, was consuming me. Waves of guilt and disgust. I felt adrift and overwhelmed, like the mountain of the past three years was suddenly being dropped on me. I didn't understand. I couldn't make sense of any of it.
I pressed my hands to my ears and grit my teeth, clenching my eyes shut. I felt Matt's hands on mine. My feet moved. I sat, or Matt put me in the seat, and slowly, like the slow drip of water, the pain started to fade. I could breathe around it. The clarity that settled in my mind grew heavier. Layer after layer of something peeled back, and I could think again in a way I barely remembered being able to. The clarity trembled on the edges, but it was enough.
Oren was a liar.
Everything I knew, everything I'd been taught about the werewolf virus, about being an alpha twin, about all of this was wrong. Matt and I didn't share a mate. Who knew what else was a lie?
"Lucy," I gasped, a fresh wave of disgust twisted through me. "What do I… What could I… How could I…"
I felt sick. I was going to throw up. I could taste her skin, her sweat, I could hear her moans, and see her glossed-over and vacant eyes looking at me. I could hear the words that were so unlike me.
I would have never said anything I'd said to Lucy to Ginevra. Ever, and not just because I was pretty sure that Ginevra would knock my lights out if I ever tried.
I had never…
Women's faces flashed through my mind. So many to count, nights of sleeping with random faces—escaping and chasing something. What had driven me to go out every night like clockwork?
The sounds of the world snapped back, jolting me out of my thoughts. The fresh waves of shock crashing over me settled. I slumped into a chair, my head spinning. My gaze fell on Matt, crouched down in front of me, his eyes narrowed and watching me. There was a soft glow over his face, over his hair. What was that? Glitter? A play of light? Was my vision just going wonky because of the stress?
"How could I have felt nothing for Lucy?" I asked, my voice hollow and distant. "I don't understand…"
"Deep breaths, Tony," Matt said gently, placing a hand on my shoulder. "Talk to me. Start from the beginning."
"What are we supposed to do about Lucy?"
It all felt like ash and guilt, even if part of me didn't want it to feel that way.
"Leave her alone."
I frowned and looked at him. His gaze searched mine. "What?"
"Leave her alone," Matt said again, softly.
His words struck a raw nerve, echoing the turmoil within me. It made sense, but I… I couldn't.
"I can't," I choked out, the voice barely a whisper. "I can't just…"
Silence descended, heavy and thick, as I tried to search for the words and the reason. It eluded me. Matt's eyes, searching and concerned, met mine.
"Why not, Tony?" he asked, his voice gentle.
I could see in his eyes that he already knew why, but I couldn't answer. It wasn't guilt or anything that I could definitely say came from within, but something else.
"I…"
I pushed for the answer, but the more I pushed, the further away it went. And that made me angry, made me feel worse, and completely out of control. How hadn't I noticed it before? This wall that was in my mind that I couldn't get past and couldn't say how it got there. It felt twisted and completely foreign to me. She was eighteen. My stomach lurched again. How had I not even thought about it? How had it not bothered me until now? It felt like I didn't know my own mind. I shuddered at the disgust rolling through me.
"Think about it," Matt said softly.
But the unease lingered and spread through me. I needed the answer for my own peace before anything else happened.
"Tony… I think we should—"
"Excuse me." I looked up. There was a woman there in a lab coat. She entered the room. I frowned. Something at the back of my mind pricked.
Log in with Google Account
Chapters
Favorite
Settings
