Page 25 of Wicked

She sits down at the small table next to the kitchen where the laptop and satellites I use for our missions are sprawled across the surface. I sit across from her, bracing myself for a lecture or at the very least, her disappointment.

After what I did to Candlewick tonight, I deserve it.

“Tomorrow, I’m going home,” she says.

“But we have a mission on Friday.”

“Yes. I’m rescheduling it until I can get Peter trained to take my place.”

Does that mean she’s retiring? I’ve known this day was coming for a while, but part of me wondered if it would take an accident or an injury to convince her to pass the baton to her son, Peter.

In the end, it wasn’t a broken bone or heart problem but me that pushed her past her breaking point.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She shakes her head. “No, I am.”

“For what?”

She picks up the string attached to her tea bag and swirls it around her mug. “H and Buddy are together now.”

I smile. H deserves someone who can appreciate how kind and thoughtful he is, and Buddy seemed completely smitten with him.

“Why are you sorry about that?” I ask.

“H was ready for Buddy. The moment he found someone his heart spoke to, he did whatever was necessary to be with him. He was ready for that level of intimacy despite what happened to him in the pits. So was Timber. He took on a family of blue bloods and an evil warlock for Andrew with no hesitation.”

But I didn’t do that for Candlewick. That’s what she’s saying.

“My mistakes are not your fault.” I can’t let her blame herself. It isn’t fair.

She sits there for a while in silence before she reaches out and rests her hand atop mine on the table. “Do you remember the day we first met?”

“Yeah.”

I remember the first time she walked into my hospital room like it was yesterday. I had just gotten out of the pits, and the world didn’t feel real yet. She didn’t seem real either. She was an alpha like me. Small like me too. But she walked across that room like she was six feet tall and sat on the edge of my bed as if she knew me.

“If you get dental implants, you won’t be able to take your wolf form,” she said.

“Who… Who are you?”

“I’m Anne. The dragon shifter who got you out of that pit.”

I stared at her, slack-jawed, not sure if I should believe her.

“I’ll be real with you. I’m here because a member of my team died. He was caught gathering information for the raid that set you free.”

If she had come at any other time, I think I would have reacted to her confession differently, but guilt was my constant companion in those first few days outside the pits. I felt guilty because of the sex. I felt guilty because I was still alive when so many others had died. And I felt guilty our rescue had somehow caused the death of Anne’s friend. It was all too much. I rambled a series of apologies to her, and I’m not sure they all made sense.

“You don’t need to say sorry to me,” she said. “That’s not why I’m here. I want to offer you a job. A stressful, illegal job that will require an unreasonable amount of overtime and likely kill you.”

The conversation still didn’t seem real. The social workers had made it clear it would be difficult for any of the survivors to get a job. We didn’t have high school diplomas, any experience with computers, or references.

“A job doing what?” I asked.

“Rescuing red wolf shifters.”

“W-what? I’m not… I don’t… I’m not qualified to do anything. I’m completely worthless.”

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