Page 28 of Ruined Wolfsbane

“What the fuck, Kai! I told you to stay away from her. Not fuck her!” Ronan whisper yells, trying not to wake Briar. “She’s our friend! I told her I’d take care of her tonight. Fuck! Why couldn’t you fuck around with someone else? And since when do you fuck college girls?”

Ronan paces in front of the bed, shoving his hand aggressively through his hair. He looks torn up, tugging at the ends of his hair.

On one hand, I feel bad that he’s so messed up over something that didn’t happen. On the other hand, I’m pissed that he’s acting like Briar doesn’t mean everything to me. “First, I didn’t fuck her. I don’t fuck drunk women. Second, I didn’t fuck around with her. She’s mine.”

Ronan scoffs. “What? She’s your girlfriend now? Yeah, right. You’re her professor. And we all know you don’t do relationships. For fuck’s sake, Kai!”

“No. She’s mine. And Xander’s and Bastian’s,” I tell him evenly. His eyes eventually light with understanding at what I’m trying to tell him. I can’t say it outright, not with so many ears here.

“Oh shit,” he breathes. “How long have you known?”

“Since the first day of class.” I knew she was mine as soon as I caught her intoxicating scent.

“Why haven’t you marked her?” Ronan’s face is wrinkled in confusion. If this were a normal situation, I would have marked her within hours of meeting her, but nothing about Briar or her situation has been typical.

“Because she doesn’t know.”

“She doesn’t feel the pull to you?”

“I’m pretty sure she feels the pull, but she doesn’t know what she is.”

Ronan leans against the wall, looking dazed at that. It’s practically unheard of for someone not to know what they are. Something is very wrong in her life for her to be clueless.

“How does she not know?”

“I don’t know, Rone. We’ve been trying to figure that out.” Even with all three of us working on it, we still haven’t gotten any closer to knowing why. It’s like Briar Wylder’s a ghost. We can’t find anything more than basic info on her. Until we figure out why she doesn’t know, we don’t want to say anything about it to her. It’ll be a shock to learn she’s not human. We want to have answers for her to explain why she never knew what she was.

Ronan pulls his lips between his teeth, trying to decide whether to say something. He comes to a decision as he softly informs me, “I think someone’s hurting her.”

I stiffen at his quiet statement. “What makes you say that?” I bark, angry at myself for potentially misjudging the threat to Briar.

“At least once a week, Briar walks stiffly between classes. She’ll wince when she sits or puts on her bag. She also eats way more than usual on those days, like her body’s working overtime to heal something.” Ronan takes a breath before continuing. “Rory and I have been trying to get her to spend more time with us. We don’t know what else to do other than keep her away from whoever is hurting her.”

Ronan hangs his head, like he’s ashamed he hasn’t been able to do more. He’s not the one who should feel bad.

I am.

I’m the one that’s supposed to protect her. Yet, I’ve been letting her get hurt every week for months?

Fuck!

I need to calm down. If I get any angrier, I’m going to wake her up. Judging by the dark circles under her eyes, she needs all the sleep she can get. Closing my eyes, I count down from ten in my mind. When I’m calm enough to talk quietly, I tell Ronan, “Thanks for letting me know. We knew something was going on, but we didn’t think it was an active threat to her.”

“I just wish we could do more for her.” Ronan pushes the heels of his hands to his eyes. His mouth is turned down, and he looks almost as devastated as I feel.

“You’ve done what you could, Ronan. Don’t beat yourself up.” It’s the truth. He’s just a kid, a decade younger than me, and she’s not his. There really isn’t much he can do. My brothers and I, however? We can and will put a stop to it. I’ll give Briar today. Come Monday, she’s telling us what’s going on. Her time to keep secrets is over.

“You spending the night?” Ronan asks.

“Yeah, and I don’t think it needs to be said, but keep this to yourself.”

“Can I tell Rory?”

“You can tell Rory, but no one else. Not even your parents. Ours don’t know yet. Your mom will run straight to our dad if she finds out.”

Ronan chuckles at that. His mom is a notorious gossip. She means well, but she loves to share big news with everyone.

It’s not that I don’t want my parents to know. They’ll be overjoyed when we tell them, and they’ll absolutely love Briar, but Briar should be the first person we tell. It feels wrong to announce it to our parents when she doesn’t even know.

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