Page 66 of War Games

I’m always breaking families, aren’t I?

Every single family I’ve ever been in.

25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Ilanded in the dark, thumping hard against the ground. I had to get up, but I wasn’t sure what was up or down. Everything was so dark. I was lost.

I won’t get anywhere if I don’t try… but I’m so tired. I’m so fucking tired.

I laid there for some time, just trying to get my energy back but it never came. Eventually, no matter how tired I was feeling, I knew I had to move. I fought to sit up, my back aching once again. My head hurt, pounding with a fierce headache.

I was alone. So terribly alone.

I thought of what I had just lost. Another family. Like a painting, it appeared before me, watercolors in the dark.

“Look at what you lost now,” my voice said to me, but not mine.

With a swallow, I turned to see Gwen, so human, fifteen years older than I looked. Everything I could have been if I had never been a werecat.

“What do you want, Gwen?” I asked, not getting to my feet. I sat on the dark ground, turning back to the watercolor of my werecat family arguing. The scene wasn’t the one I had justleft, though. It was Germany, Niko’s home, that he would have to give up. Subira stood against Hasan, a man bleeding, as my siblings chose their sides or stayed down, not wanting to get involved. They had been a perfectly fine family before me. Not perfectly happy, but okay.

I was the one who brought everyone to that point, standing with Dirk and Landon to protect them, to fight for them. To fight for my life with Heath.

I turned to look at a new watercolor image forming next to it. Another failure. Another broken family I couldn’t fix. A friend I couldn’t save. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t taken Fenris in. None of it would have happened if I could have noticed something was deeply wrong with him and helped him. If I could have saved him from himself, no one would have gotten so angry at each other.

“You really are a walking disaster,” Gwen said, exasperated, annoyed, and all too right.

“I just want to go back to Heath,” I said, pulling my knees to my chest.

“Really? You broke our family… Well, you tried to. You have been the bane of the werecat ruling family since the day they met you… Do you really think a third family is actually giving you a chance? Do you not remember something so important about how you even joined that family?”

“Please, Gwen, don’t…”

“You killed his son!” Gwen yelled at me, and that scene played out. Richard and me, fighting over Carey. “That’s what you do, Jacky. You don’t save anyone. You just end up hurting people.”

If we had known there was magic involved, we could have saved him, too…

“Why should he want you back? He finally got to see one son get married, but he’ll never get to see the other, thanks toyou.”

“Stop, Gwen. Please.”

“I bet every day Heath wakes up wishing he had me over you, someone more put together, who can manage money and business with a successful career and a shred of experience being a real mother. I bet Hasan does, too, wondering why he got the disastrous daughter instead of the one who actually saves lives,” Gwen hissed in her ear. “Just like our parents always were grateful for me while you were always giving them trouble.”

“You just didn’t care about them,” I said, shaking my head. “You were grateful for the attention and didn’t care about how Dad was treating Mom.”

“I didn’t want to see our family get broken. You did,” Gwen snapped. “From the beginning, even when you were little, you wanted to see the family break up. I never understood why you couldn’t just keep your mouth shut about it. It was like you wanted us to grow up the children of divorced parents.”

“Dad was cheating on her with her best friend! We were taught that was wrong! That people didn’t do that to each other! I was doing what I was told was right!” I screamed, holding my head as Gwen railed against me.

It was everything I had said to myself privately for decades—never good enough, never right enough. I was the one who broke everything, then I was confused why they hated me. Of course, I was. Every time.

“Why can’t you just mind your own business?” Gwen demanded. “It’s easier if you did that. You always make things a bigger problem than they need to be. You can’t just get with the program. You couldn’t even come help me, your own twin, without making it a bigger problem than it needed to be.”

“You didn’t understand what was at stake.”

“I was your twin! I’m more important than the rest of them. Why do other twins have someone who will stick with them through everything?—”

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