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Fiona’s expression is one of pure horror. I’d laugh if I didn’t feel bad for her.
“Why can’t I go?”
“Because you’re the reason this is all happening,” I remind her as gently as I can. “I’m going out today to try to find a way to make this all workable.”
“Wait. Can I talk to you first? Upstairs?”
She’s being so painfully polite I find it quite adorable. I don’t think she exactly knows how to do it, how to form the words. It’s harder to ask for something nicely than it is to demand it from a servant, or stab it from a victim.
“Of course,” I say, escorting her upstairs. I wonder whether or not to praise her. I don’t want to be too patronizing, but when she turns her eyes up to me I feel an intense wave of fondness for her effort. “You did very well this morning,” I tell her.
“Yeah. Well. Tinker can’t fuck up cereal,” she says, immediately making herself sound significantly less good than she’s actually being.
“What did you want to talk about?” I try ignoring the sass. Maybe she’ll work out how to behave herself in the absence of having her brattiness fed.
“Are we really going to keep living like this? Just one bedroom to ourselves?”
“No, baby. I’m keeping you here because it’s a safehouse. Those who are here are here to look after you. Hades, Tinker, Jacob. There are others, too. But they’re keeping you safe.”
Her lower lip extends in a pout. “I can keep myself safe. I can deal with anybody who wants to come after me.”
“That’s what you think, but I can assure you that isn’t true. The people who will want to end you are not going to fight you in an alley. They’ll put a bullet in you from a hundred feet away.”
* * *
Fiona
I shiver at that brutal little sentence, knowing that he’s right. My mother and father died in what seemed like accidents, but we knew better. We never really knew precisely what got them killed, but my mother was the first one. They came for her, I think, to try to keep my father in line. And it didn’t work. We’re not controllable.
“We could go to another country,” I say. “There’s so many of them.”
“Maybe. But not yet. There’s too much in motion, and you are safe here because they don’t know you aren’t here. You are famous, Fiona. People will look for you. They will find you. And they will try to kill you.”
“So we’re going to hide forever?”
“No. We’re going to ensure that those responsible for the deaths in your family pay. We’re going to make the world safe for us. And then we are going to walk boldly in the light, safe in the knowledge that there are no threats coming for us.”
I sigh. I’m trying so hard to be good, mostly because I am still tender from the consequences of not being good last night. I feel a bit guilty about all of that, now that morning has come and it’s been pointed out to me that all of this is for me and about me, so really, why aren’t I happier about it. They don’t say the last part out loud, of course. But I can see it in his eyes. He wants me to be grateful for all of this.
I can’t muster it. I guess he thinks he saved me yesterday, but the thing is, no matter what, I would have fought my way out of the situation. If these guys hadn’t turned out to be working for him, I would have annihilated them and everyone else I had to on my way out. My pack would have been put on notice that their alpha she-wolf was on a very particular rampage.
Instead, he’s taken me away and stuck me here and he wants me to be happy about it.
I don’t want to stay hidden. This is a small house made smaller by everyone in it, and there’s a part of me that wants to be out and seen in the world. I used to think I didn’t care about the fancy parties and the way everyone wanted my attention and my presence was important, if not mandatory. But now my social world extends to a lounge and a kitchen and probably not even the back yard.
“I’m going to restore you to the life you previously considered acceptable,” he says, drawing me into a hug. “Just try to act mostly human today, okay? Be good for Jacob and Tinker.”
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m five. I know how to behave like an adult,” I say.
“Your version of adulthood mostly seems to be murder,” he says, dropping a kiss on my head. “I’m going to take care of business. You stay here, and be good.”
“What do I get for being good?” I play into his little metaphor about me being the good little house… whatever. Not wife, because we’re not married.
“You get to be able to sit tonight at dinner,” he says, giving me a stern look as he releases me.
“Wow,” I laugh. “That’s fucked up.”
He smiles at me, and I feel butterflies in my stomach. He means every fucking word he says. He’s turned into an absolute tyrant as an alpha, he won’t let me get away with anything, and he won’t let me be wild, or murderous, or get trafficked. He won’t let me do anything except be here in this boring safehouse that doesn’t even have a movie room. It only has a lounge, with a television that looks like it was designed for ants. Barely takes up a fraction of the wall.
