Page 79 of An Empress of Fire & Steel

“You are shutting me out, Bry.” His tone changed, causing her throat to dry up as he looked at her. “You…you can’t just shut everyone out because Eli is gone.” He looked at the floor and then back to her. “We are all hurting, but how we get through this is together, like we always have. You know the law of the pack.”

The lone wolf is never really alone, for all wolves howl at the same full moon.

The pack. Her pack. Her father’s pack.

“I am not shutting everyone out.” She pulled her shoulders back. “That’s not what I am doing.”

It had been different since Eli had been murdered under the Blood Moon; she couldn’t deny it, and neither could Roman. A part of their family was broken, and it would never heal. A part of their pack was gone and would never howl at the same moon as them again, not from this world.

Roman finally came through the threshold of her door, his long arms hanging loosely by his side. His sandy hair looked darker in the dim light of her room, and he took a deep breath. “I know that’s what you are doing because I want to do it too.” A muscle under his eye twitched. “I want to shut everyone out too, Bry. But I won’t.”

She didn’t know if the lump in her throat was due to their twin connection or because the wolf instincts picked up on how each other felt, but she could feel it low in his heart—that deep sorrow, unnerving and rattling.

Loss.

“Stop thinking you know everything that goes on in my head.” Breighly squinted her eyes at him.

He huffed a laugh. “Praise fucking Vanadey that I don’t know everything that is going on inside that mess.” Roman let a small, wolfish grin appear as he pointed to her temple.

Her mouth twitched up identically to his.

His strong throat bobbed with emotion. “But seriously, don’t shut me out. I need you.”

“I won’t,” she said, the lie thick in her throat. “I am not shutting you out. I just need to be alone sometimes, and that’s something the pack doesn’t get.”

Breighly knew she had shut down the very minute Eli’s body set sail down the River of Vanadey. It had felt like part of her had gone with him, out into the broken sea of Thorin that swallowed his body whole. Breighly knew she needed to be strong, just like her brothers would be, as the eyes of the Shifter community were on them. Just like she needed to be to earn the respect of her faction as the only female of the Baxgroll family.

But she was well and truly fucking that up, unable to tame her conduct.

So she suppressed every feeling—no matter how big or small—that she could sense creeping into her heart.

“Waylen is worried about you too,” Roman said. “You are even more feral than normal.”

She let out a half laugh as she kicked her way through the mess in her room. “I am not feral.”

Her father had always joked about how he had three sons, but the most feral of his children was his daughter—his princess.

“You are wildly feral at the moment.” Roman walked in and closed her door. “And can I just say, I was about three seconds away from coming in here the other night and slitting your throat.”

She combed her golden hair behind an ear as the mortification of her drunken antics with her hunter “friend” surfaced. “I am sorry about that.” She tried to sound as sincere as possible, but her sassy attitude won the battle—as usual. She cringed again, thinking how she would feel if it had been reversed, and tried again, “I am sorry. Truly, Roman, I am.”

If she had heard Roman doing what she had…

Ugh, the sick almost travelled up at the thought of it.

“You should be sorry.” He glared at her. She knew how much it would have taken for him not to charge into her room and end the Warrior of Thorin there and then. “You are lucky you don’t have the room adjacent to Waylen. And even luckier that he is out on business with Father.”

A shudder crawled up her spine as she thought about how much of a blood bath that would have been.

It could have resulted in one of them dying.

She sighed and flung herself onto her bed, which was, of course, an untidy mess.

Her head was a mess. Her room was a mess. Her life was a mess. Everything was a mess.

A snigger came from across the room and suddenly Roman flung himself onto her bed too, and they lay there like they had when they were kids.

“I think you kissed about twelve different people in La Luna the other night.” Roman stifled a laugh. “It’s a good thing you are running the place and not Waylen. He would have killed all the creatures hanging around you.”

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