Page 42 of Hate Me

“Skylar has been found.”

Well, shit

I paced the living room of King Manor.

I’d been pacing the damn space for the last twenty minutes since we’d driven back here.

Waiting the fifteen minutes before that which it had taken to get from here to the house had been a bitch of a thing, as we’d been in separate vehicles, so I’d had to wait until we’d arrived before Cas had given me all the details. He hadn’t wanted to do it over the phone.

And, given the classified nature of a lot of it, he hadn’t wanted to divulge any of the rest of it in a public setting either.

“I debated on whether to tell you when I first got word, but upon unearthing these details,” he said, gesturing at the surveillance photos of a goddamn killing ground, “It’s become clear that she needs help, the kind that requires a personal connection to be able to reach her.”

I grimaced and looked away from the gruesome photos.

Not because it was any squeamishness on my part, but because it was her who’d dealt all of that out.

She’d struggled with that side of herself before, but she’d managed to get it under control.

This, though, it was beyond all of that, she’d smashed right through it and taken things to an unimaginable level.

“This is beyond Onyx,” I finally managed to utter. “I mean, she was always able to handle herself, but this is something else. Being able to walk into that bar and take out half a dozen big motherfuckers like that… shit, Cas.”

“Yes, it’s clear she’s had additional training.”

“So, you want me to go in, reason with her, stop this ill-fated mission of hers?”

“Not you.”

“Of course it needs to be me. I was the closest one to her.”

“And now that closeness has been weakened by distance and whole lot of hate, Bastian.”

“You do it and she’s gonna just see it as you stopping her for the good of your own goal of taking down Elijah.”

“It needs to be Caleb.”

I came to an abrupt stop. “You’re serious?”

He shoved his hand through his hair. “Yes.”

“You really think he’ll just be willing to walk back into all of this, just like that?”

“I think it’s the in he’s been missing all this time, the invitation to come back in.”

Interesting. “Huh.” And then it occurred to me, the absolute certainty coming off him. “You already made contact with him, didn’t you?”

“I did. It’s in motion.”

“Jesus. Okay… good.”

He rose from the couch and came to me. “Now, I need to contain her, but you get to determine where that happens. Ideally, it makes sense for it to be here, a place she’s familiar with and comfortable with, which will make it conducive to being able to reach her. But if you feel that it’ll be too much for you, if there’s any part of you that’s worried it could become a tipping point for you, and detrimental to your recovery, there are other places I can put her up.”

“I actually think it’s just what my recovery needs, Cas.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“This lack of closure, it’s still weighing on me all these years later. Her being here will give me the opportunity long-denied to finally put it to bed.” I sucked in a breath. “To be at peace with it all. With Caleb being pulled back, we’ll be able to get that from him too.”

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