Page 20 of Tides of Fate

So, instead, he crouches low and hides his face in his arms.

If he can’t see Nix, maybe Nix can’t see him.

What? It works for toddlers.

He hears a sigh, then soft footsteps in the grass, and a flood of soothing vanilla rolls over him.

Nix drops down beside him, tipping Jamie over so they’re both sitting, feet nearly touching the calm, clear water of the pond.

“Jamie, look at me.” His mate’s voice is deep and soft.

Jamie can’t deny him anything, no matter how much he wants to right now.

Warmth surges around his heart as Nix leans in and kisses him softly.

“I’m sorry I’m fucking this up, Nix.”

“You are a bit—but not in the way you think. You couldn’t be further from the truth. There is no way Luca said you were a terrible alpha. Not possible, because my baby is wise and observant and, above all, an excellent judge of character.”

Nix smiles, but Jamie will not be swayed.

“And as far asdeserving anyonegoes, well, we all have a say in that, don’t we?”

“You have to admit that I handled your…accident yesterday pretty badly.”

Jamie has long since stopped blaming Gideon for Nix’s injury. Gideon would never have hurt their mate on purpose. But that isn’t even what had made Jamie so angry.

No—it was that Nix had been hurt at all.

And now, he was opening himself up to even more hurt. To someone far worse—someone who wanted to hurt him and worse.

Gideon was just holding the door open so Hayes could waltz in and take Nix from him. Again.

And he’s doing it at Nix’s request.

“He’s going to take you from me again, and I can’t—how am I going to do this life without you? When I thought you were gone before, I tried to have a good life. I love all of them so much. They saved me,” Jamie chokes the words out past the lump in his throat.

“But there was always this black hole where I knew you should have been. Where you could have been if I’d made different choices. And when I found you again—”

They both know what he’s not saying, and Jamie can’t get the words out. They’re too fresh.

He whispers the next words, “It will kill me.”

It’s not an exaggeration. Jamie will let the wolf take over for good, and he will burn the world down, dying at the end of a police showdown.

Nix’s eyes go wide before he looks away, his gaze on something Jamie can’t see—isn’t sure he wants to. It’s quiet in the aftermath of Jamie’s confession, with only the sound of the water lapping at the edge of the pond disturbingthe uncomfortable silence.

“I won’t do it, then.”

Jamie’s relief is so strong it drowns out everything else.

Nix won’t meet his torturer on a field of battle and fight to the death?

He looks dead serious when he says the words, and if Jamie were anything but relieved, he’d have noticed the dull delivery—the absence of vanilla and how his beautiful gray eyes lose their light.

He’d have noticed how Nix’s shoulders sag just slightly, how his hands go slack at his sides like he’s letting go of something he hadn’t realized he was holding on to.

But the burst of joy Jamie experiences is visceral. He has visions of Nix safe on the sidelines while he or Gideon takes Hayes’s heart. It’s not a new vision—Jamie has imagined it any number of ways. Always with Nix safe with his mates, and Jamie or Gideon down on the field, bloody in triumph.

---