Page 70 of Broken Fate
“To see if you are beginning to understand.”
“Understand what?”
Kiel’s grip on my jaw, and my wrists, loosened. “Why I am the way I am. You once told me to let others in. To share. To be open.”
“I did,” I confirmed. “Is that what you’re doing?”
He shook his head. “I’m showing you why Idon’t. The pain, the icy dagger, slowly twisting on the left side of your stomach, keeping the wound raw, ragged, and unforgettable. You feel it.”
My hand rose to clutch at that same spot. “I do,” I whispered.
“That is why I am the way I am.”
I opened my mouth, but he cut me off with a single raised finger. Slowly, he paced across my room, then back.
“The darkness that sits inside you, always just on the horizon, a wall of shadow and blackness threatening to swallow you up, looming over you, waiting for you to falter, to give in and let it take you. You see it.”
I shivered. “I do.”
“The simple wish, the thought, repeated over and over and over in your mind and your heart, about how you could just do thatonething differently. Thatonetiny action that would change it all. You’ve seen it, analyzed it, worked it out backward and forward, trimming it down to the smallest possible thing you could do that would affect the outcome. You know of what I speak.”
“I do.”
“Thatis why I am the way I am,” he growled. “Because we can undo none of this. We cannot unfeel anything. We cannot look away from it. All the Alphas do, all they haveeverdone, Jada, istake.From you. From me. From all of us! They take, and they take, and they take. And eventually, there’s nothing left to take. There’s nothing left to let others in to see. Eventually, there’snothing left.”
His voice had dropped to a whisper, filled with his own agony. A pain that I now, regretfully, understood better than anyone should ever be forced to understand.
“They took your family, too. Didn’t they?”
The little flinch, the quick glance away, the tightening of muscles. Kiel didn’t need to speak to give me an answer. I knew.
“A long time ago,” he said eventually, staring past me at something only he could see. “They took everything from me. More than they have taken from you, hard as that may be to believe, and I do not fault you if you don’t.”
There was an echo of his grief flowing through his words, giving life to his claim. He didn’t say it to make our grief a contest. But to show how thoroughly the Alphas had destroyed him and everything in his life.
“Now, I fight back,” he said, finding his strength again. A slow breath slid from his nose like a stream of emotion leaving him. Kiel straightened upright, rolling his shoulders, meeting my eyes. He was back in control. “That is why I will do whatever it takes to bring them down. To stop them.”
I nodded. “You’re right. I’ve done enough lying around, being useless. It’s time to fight back. To leave any reservations behind.” I laughed. “After all, what else do I have to lose?”
Kiel frowned as one hand landed on my shoulder. “You have us,” he corrected. “And we have you. True, we’re not what was taken from you, but this thing we fight for, they can’t take that from you, Jada. They can’t take your ability tochoose. Yes, they can imprison you, torture you, but no longer will you march to their drums. Be a good little cog in their false society. Your mind is your own. Don’t you forget that. It’s what makes you so special.”
There was a tiny hitch in his last sentence. So small I almost missed it, but he was right there, and there was no one else in the room to distract me. So, I saw it. Felt it.
“Thank you,” I said quietly and put my arms around his chest, leaning my head against him and squeezing tight.
Kiel stiffened. I squeezed a little harder.
His arms came up around me slowly, tentatively, crossing over my back as he wrapped me in a giant hug. The strength that had once been used to hold me immobilized against my will now held me close in its protective embrace.
But when he rested his chin on my head, a little rocket zipped down my spine, lighting nerve endings on fire.
Every inch of me pressed to him was suddenly an exposed and vulnerable piece of me. The air around us thickened, and the muscles of Kiel’s spine tightened under my fingertips.
Something had just changed between us. Something important and utterly terrifying in its enormity.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The barriers continued to come crashing down a moment later when one of his hands started to stroke first my back and then my head.
