Chapter 179: Rhys
“See? I’m fine, Gracie.” I said after Sawyer came back and said everything looked good.
“Good.” She answered, pecking my lips. “I don’t want you to be broken.”
I smiled against her lips. She was cute when she was worried. Her terror of the situation had faded fairly quickly, but I had a feeling she would have dreams about it tonight. Everything was so messy that I didn’t even know where to begin with anything. Allies were supposed to be trustworthy. They weren’t supposed to be double-crossers. Yet, we couldn’t trust anyone for any reason. We could barely trust ourselves.
“Are you tired?” I asked as I grabbed her hand, and we started making our way out of the clinic.
She nodded, and I knew she was pretty talked out from the day. I was proud at how far she had come, but I also knew that she still needed to go at her own pace, and not what me or anyone else wanted.
We were passing the office floor when something caught my eye, and I stopped and backtracked.
“Michael?” I called out in confusion.
The kid was standing outside my office looking nervous as hell, holding something in his hands, which he quickly hid behind his back as he turned to face us.
“Alpha King,” He responded, sounded slightly panicked. “Grace, I thought you were still in the office, I was trying to get the courage to knock...” He confessed.
“We went to the clinic, is everything okay?” Grace asked gently.
“Oh, are you hurt?” He asked in panic, looking her up and down.
“No, no,” I answered, waving him. “Grace just wanted Sawyer to check my arm. She healed me earlier, and my wolf is working on finishing the job, she just wanted to make sure there wasn’t more damage done than we thought.”
The kid breathed a sigh of relief. He had really been scared that something had happened to Grace, but I couldn’t blame him, Grace was wonderful in every sense of the word. I was less of a concern, but he wasn’t wishing me harm, at least, I didn’t think so anyway.
“Is there something we can help you with?” I asked, when he didn’t say anything else.
His eyes darted around the hallway, looking for anywhere to run before he finally nodded, brushing his blond hair out of his face.
“I have a confession.” He looked to my office door and then back to where Grace and I stood. “Can we not talk out here? I don’t want-”
“Of course,” Grace said gently, cutting him off as she moved straight for the office door as if she knew what he was going to ask before he did. “Please, sit wherever is most comfortable.”
He immediately went to his usual spot on the floor but hesitated when he got there.
“We can join you on the floor, or you can sit in a chair, it’s okay whatever you prefer.” Grace told him kindly.
She was meant to be a mother. She was such a caring and kind person. She had no idea what Michael was going to ‘confess’, but she still wanted to make sure he was comfortable. She was still taking care of him even if it whatever he was going to say wasn’t going to be good.
Michael lowered himself to the floor, never taking his eyes of Grace, as if silently seeking her approval.
Grace tugged on my hand and led me to spot a few feet away from Michael and plopped down. I lowered myself to the ground a little more carefully. I was a fairly tall guy, so getting on the floor on a good day wasn’t the easiest, and even though my fight with Alpha Raymond had ended rather quickly, I was still a little sore. Which I did find a little odd because I had had way worse injuries in my life than this scratch, yet it seemed to be getting the best of me.
Once we were all settled, Michael reached behind him and pulled out a vanilla envelope and handed it to me with shaky hands.
“I’ve been the one putting them on the front steps,” He confessed. “My dad has been giving them to me whenever I meet him in the woods. He said they were important, but I’ve never seen their contents. You said they were disturbing... Can I see what’s inside?”
It all came out like word vomit. He didn’t take a pause to breathe, he didn’t seem like he could. He laid it all out there in the only way he could manage, and I understood that, even if I never had the luxury myself.
“Why did you do it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
“Because it was what I was told to do. I was scared... I am scared. I know that Grace understands how the Red Blood pack works, but the program is a whole different level of crazy. I was trying to keep my siblings out of it, at least my youngest sister anyways. Two of my siblings were added to the program when I got sent here on a suicide mission. They needed to replace their losses. But Claire... He promised he wouldn’t let her go if I did what he asked. She’s not strong like the others...” He took a deep breath collecting himself for a moment. “Anyways, I thought the envelopes of all things were harmless. I thought they would just have vague threats or something.“
“They have a lot more than vague threats in them, son,” I told him.
“Oh.” He looked crestfallen. Like he had been hoping for the best and not letting himself think about the worst. “I’m sorry. You saw what he was like, Grace, I don’t know what I was supposed to do...”
I raised my brows. Grace saw what he was like? But neither of them were paying attention to me.
“Hey,” Grace said, leaning forward on her knees, and lifting his chin, so he was forced to look at her. “It’s not your fault. You were put in a bad situation, and you were doing the best you could with what you had. But you have us now. And we may not get everything right, but we do it together from now on, okay?”
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