Page 92 of Wild Thorns

A weakness. I was a weakness. Of course, I’m a fucking liability.

I thought about the creature's smile. The way it had looked at me. She smells like all of you.

"So I'm in danger," I said. "Because of you. OR you’re in danger because of me. Because I got involved with—" I stopped. Laughed, and it came out broken. "God. I really know how to pick them, don't I?"

"Serena—"

"No." I held up a hand. "I need a minute. I need—I need to think."

"Why didn't you?" The question burst out of me, sharp and accusatory. "Why didn't you tell me? Any of you? Before I—before we—"

Before I let your brother finger me on the kitchen floor while I was technically dating you, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. Before I fell asleep in your arms night after night without knowing what you were.

"There are laws governing our exposure to humans, and honestly, we were afraid," Eli said quietly. "That you'd react exactly like this. That you'd run."

"BUT I SHOULD RUN." The words hung in the air. I hadn’t meant to shout. "Isn’t that exactly what I should do. Pack my shit and drive until I find somewhere normal, somewhere safe, somewhere without—" I gestured at them, at the blood, at the carnage still visible in my yard. "Without whatever the fuck this is."

None of them tried to stop me. None of them argued, pleaded or made promises.

Callum just looked at me with those golden-brown eyes, human again, but I'd never be able to unsee what I had seen tonight, and said, "If that's what you need to do, we won't stop you. It’ll hurt like fucking hell, but we won’t stop you."

It was the exact wrong thing to say.

Or maybe the exact right thing.

"You won't stop me," I repeated.

"No. If you want to leave, you leave. We're not—" He stopped. Swallowed hard. "This is a family, not a prison. We're not going to trap you here, Serena. We're not going to make you stay."

Marcus had never said that. Marcus had made it clear, in a thousand small ways, that leaving wasn't an option. That I belonged to him. That trying to run would only make things worse.

The triplets were telling me I could go.

And somehow, impossibly, that made me want to stay.

"I'm not making any decisions tonight," I said finally. "I can't. My brain is—" I gestured vaguely at my head. "I need to sleep. I need to process. I need to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do with any of this."

"Okay," Jasper said. "That's okay. We'll be here. Whenever you're ready to talk."

"I want you to leave," I said. "Not— Just tonight. I can't—I can't have you here right now. I need to be alone."

Something flickered across Callum's face. Pain, maybe. Or understanding.

"We'll be in the main house," he said. "If you need anything. Anything at all."

I nodded. Couldn't speak.

They stood. Walked down the porch steps. Paused at the edge of the yard, looking back at me with those matching expressions of desperate hope.

Then they were gone.

I closed the door. Walked to my bedroom and lay down on the bed without bothering to change my clothes or wash the blood from my feet.

I stared at the ceiling for hours.

Werewolves. I had been fucking around with werewolves. Literally.

Was I in love with them? Or was I just repeating the same pattern, falling for dangerous men who would eventually destroy me? Was my attraction to the Voss boys any different from my attraction to Marcus? Was the same broken part of me seeking out people who could hurt me?