“You don’t think it’s strange that he never once contacted any of us?” Bree gently asked her.
The woman’s face went hard. “I don’t think he’s dead, if that’s what you’re really asking. A man like Paxton … sometimes they need to go their own way for a while.”
“And you’re so sure he’ll want Bree if he does come back?” asked Elle. “I mean, yeah, she’s his true mate. But he never treated her as if that meant anything to him; as if she meant anything to him. He left her. He never once contacted her. Never said he’d one day be back. To me, that doesn’t say he has much interest in taking a mate.”
Bernadette’s eyes flicked to Bree. “Tell me you don’t believe that, too. Tell me you haven’t given up on him.”
Bree only sighed.
“You’re his mate, Bree. The other half of his soul. He needs you more than you can ever know.” Which was as close as Bernadette would ever come to admitting that Paxton hadn’t been normal. “You can’t give up on him. You can’t move on with your life as if he shouldn’t be a part of it.”
“If the situation were reversed, if I’d left him, would you have expected him to put his life on hold for me? Especially if I’d given him no indication that I ever meant to return?”
“He’s alive, and he’s close.”
Impatience rushed through Bree. “Well, what’s he waiting for? Why lurk in the background?” she challenged. “He’s gone, Bernadette. I’m not saying he’s dead. I’m saying I don’t believe he intends to return. I don’t think he ever did. And I’m sorry, but I won’t live my life alone just because it would make you feel better if I didn’t commit to someone else. Would you really ask that of me? Would you really ask that I grow old alone?”
Bernadette stared at her, breathing heavily. Then she slipped off the stool and stormed out of the house.
His mouth downturned, Ruben gave Bree a helpless shrug and then followed his mate.
Calvin lingered. “Don’t feel bad about being straight with her. It’s not your fault that she didn’t like what she heard.” He gave her shoulder a supportive squeeze. “Take care of yourself.” He nodded at Elle before striding down the hallway and letting himself out of the house, closing the front door behind him.
Elle let out a long breath. “That was brutal.”
“And draining.” Bree raked a hand through her hair. “I need gin. Pink gin.”
Elle grabbed two glasses from a cupboard. “Calvin’s right; you did the right thing in being straight with her.”
Bree pulled the bottle of gin out of the wine rack. “I shouldn’t have snapped at her, though. She’s hurting.”
“She’s delusional is what she is. I love my aunt but, God, listening to her ramble on and on about how great things will be when her golden boy comes home …” Elle plopped some cubes of ice into the two glasses she’d placed on the countertop. “It’s honestly uncomfortable to see someone live in such denial.”
Bree retrieved the pack of strawberries from the fridge. “Paxton made sure he was his parents’ favorite by being everything they wanted him to be and more. He made them feel like good parents. Made it so that they’d never believe he’d be capable of hurting someone for the sheer pleasure of it. If he was my kid, I wouldn’t want to believe him capable of that either.”
“I don’t blame Bernadette for clinging to the hope that he’s alive, or even for kidding herself that he’s normal. But expecting you not to have a life purely because he’s not around to be part of it? That’s just shitty. I mean, she doesn’t even like that you have one-night stands. She only overlooks it because shifters need touch, social and sexual. But if any of your flings had developed into something more, she’d have lost her shit.”
“Probably.” Which was another reason why leaving the pride seemed best for Bree. Slicing up strawberries, she said, “Ruben and Calvin probably believe Paxton is dead. But unless Bernadette believes it, she’s unlikely to support me having any sort of a life with someone else. Moira sure won’t.”
“Those women definitely won’t support you starting something with Calvin, so I hope he doesn’t decide to finally act on his little thing for you—it’ll just make everything worse.”
“His thing for me?” Dropping slices of strawberry into the glasses, Bree frowned. “He’s flirty, sure, but he’s like that with everyone.”
Elle shook her head. “When you’re not looking, he sometimes stares at you with a covetous glint in his eye. It’s kind of sad that his brother—your actual true mate—had no interest in you whereas his twin feels the opposite.”
“I’m not convinced he’s into me that way, but whatever.”
Elle glanced at the framed photo of Paxton that lay on the kitchen island. “What are you going to do with that?”
Bree cast an uneasy look at it and poured the pink gin into first Elle’s glass then her own. “Is it wrong that I want to dunk it in paint?”
“Nope. If anything is dunk-worthy, then it’s that.” Elle lifted her glass. “Hey, what would you do if …”
Bree sipped her gin. “If what?”
“Well, I truly do think that Paxton is dead, but if he was alive, if he came back and tried to claim rights to you, what would you do?”
“That would never happen. Not just because Paxton cares nothing for me, but because he thinks mating bonds are traps. Plus, he wouldn’t want to risk the mating urge kicking in and stealing the choice from us. He was only around me when I was too young for it to be triggered. Now that I’m an adult, a simple case of us making eye-contact could start it.”
The mating urge was rumored to be a literal urge to fuck that was so intense and overpowering it threatened to take away a person’s willpower. The arousal wouldn’t go away until the mating was done. “If that happened, I’d spend my life perpetually horny, because there’s no way I’d let that man claim me. No way. And why are we discussing such depressing shit?”
Elle shrugged and sipped her gin. “It was the only thing I could think of that would distract you from painting. My arms are killing me.”
Bree rolled her eyes. “Weak, weak, weak.”
“Blame the Antichrist,” said Elle. “I’ll swear he uses the dark gifts imposed upon him by his true father to slowly sap me of my strength and, in doing so, make himself infinitely stronger, because no amount of eating or working out seems to improve my fitness level. I’m telling ya, he’s draining me slowly but surely.”
Staring at her friend, Bree shook her head. “Sometimes I think you’re joking when you refer to Damian as the Antichrist. Other times, I find myself wondering if you believe he is in fact—”
“A vessel in which evil incarnate dwells? I have no reason to doubt it. Do you?”
Well, yeah, because Bree was normal. Sort of. But she simply sipped at her gin and said, “No.”
“Then let us pray the Apocalypse does not occur until after our generation has passed on, because all on the Earth are prophesized to perish—that doesn’t sound fun to me.”