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And as long as I’m under Maxim’s control, there’s no way he’ll let me call the shots, even for a minute.
Which means the best thing for my domineering, control-freak mate is for him to stay as far away from me as possible. At least that way, I won’t have to fight him to do what I need to do and hopefully neither of us will get hurt.
Because even after everything that’s happened, I don’t want him hurt. I really, truly don’t. I want him to be around for a long, long time.
I shake my head and zip up my pack.
“What?” Diana asks. “Do you think that’s crazy? That I might have to step up some day?”
“No, not at all.” I wince. “Sorry, I was just…thinking things I shouldn’t.”
Like that Maxim and I might have a future.
Maxim and I might be fated, but he isn’t my mate, and he never will be. It doesn’t matter that a part of me loved being with him last night and is dying to be with him again—without drugs or lies or betrayal or anything else in bed with us. Just him and me, skin to skin, breath to breath, with his touch making me feel pleasure unlike anything I imagined possible.
That part of me is weak; it’s a primitive, biological compulsion I’ll eventually learn to overpower with my logical mind.
But in the meantime…
“I need to find a pharmacy,” I tell Diana as we start back toward the sidewalk. I’ve never taken the morning-after pill before, but it made my friend Belle so nauseous she threw up in the trashcan during Chem lab and couldn’t eat anything but plain bread for a week.
Hopefully it will be easier to avoid compassionate thoughts about Maxim when I’m sick to my stomach because he tried to knock me up against my will. Because Diana’s right—what he did was a violation, no matter how compelling the motivations for his behavior.
But wouldn’t you have done the same?
If it came to a choice between honoring Maxim’s wishes and saving thousands of pack members…
If you truly believed betraying him was the only way to keep those innocent lives safe…
I squeeze my eyes shut and then open them again, focusing on the people in front of us on the sidewalk, on the sky turning apricot as the morning sun rises higher, on the puff of my breath in front of my face, anything to keep my mind in the here and now, where it belongs. I don’t have the luxury of second-guessing things right now. I chose to run with Diana and face my enemies without Maxim, and I believe it was the right choice.
He would never have been by my side, anyway. Maxim doesn’t see me as his equal. He sees me as a commodity to control or a problem to manage…or occasionally as something precious he needs to protect.
A wave of pain-tinged longing washes through my chest, summoning a growl from low in my throat.
“I would ask if you’re all right,” Diana whispers beneath her breath. “But obviously you’re not. Because we’re on the run from my psycho brother and possibly in danger from my other psycho brother and the world could be ending and the guy you’re in love with turned out to be a huge dickhead.” She puts an arm around my shoulders. “Though to be fair, most guys I know are dickheads. Except Jacob.” She lets out a soft squeak of excitement. “I hope you like him, too, Willow. He’s so precious and gorgeous and sweet and wonderful.”
“And in a cult,” I remind her. “And he thinks I’m evil.”
“No, he doesn’t. Not anymore,” she says. “I convinced him that you’re one of the good ones. And he swears he didn’t know about the explosion in the theater. He doesn’t think Bane and Kelley were responsible for it, actually, he thinks it was just some kind of weird coincidence. But either way, he’s not on board with hurting people. And he’s open to the fact that Bane and Kelley might not be as perfect as he’s been led to believe.” She pulls her arm from my shoulders, tugging at her lip as she adds, “But, he would also really like it if we could be open. Just a little bit.”
She cuts to the right, and I follow, frowning up at her as we swoosh through the automatic doors leading into a brightly lit pharmacy. “Open in what way?”
“Well…” Diana trails off, her gaze skimming across the rows of shelves. “There. It’s in the women’s aisle next to the condoms. My human friends from school always ask me to buy their condoms for them. And tampons and pads. They’re so embarrassed about shit like that. I mean, having your period and sex are natural. Why are they so grossed out? It’s weird.”
“Because they’ve been taught to be grossed out and ashamed by their culture,” I say. “And don’t think you can throw me off the scent that easily, Miss Chatterbox. What do you mean by open? What does Jacob want us to be ‘open’ to?”
Diana leads the way down an aisle lined with pink packages full of feminine hygiene products to a section in the center. “Okay, don’t freak out, but…I sort of promised him we’d go to one of their meetings before he drives us to the border.”
