Page 56 of Corbin
He lifted a hand and gently stroked her cheek. “You didn’t do it. I’m happy and relieved to know that now. I’ve been blaming you all this time. I wanted to know why you would do that to me instead of simply ignoring me.”
A tear broke free despite how hard she’d tried to hold onto her composure. In high school, humans had called her the ice queen. They judged her every action and played mean jokes on her.
None of those kids ever saw the lonely girl who suffered in silence and tiptoed around to keep from being exposed as a shifter.
Corbin had seen her. He’d been the only person. He’d offered her the one thing all her father’s money couldn’t buy, and that was friendship with someone of her own kind.
No judgment. Genuine kindness.
The minute she’d read the note about meeting him, her heart had told her this one belonged to her.
In return, Corbin had lost his freedom and his future.
“I could never ignore you, Corbin. I never noticed another boy except you.”
He lifted a hand to her face and wiped away her tears with his thumb. “Even in my angriest moments, I still missed you.”
She gripped his hand and held it against her face, wanting to keep him close. “You have no idea how much I hoped you’d show up one day.” She held on to his hand and lowered it to her knee.
“You weren’t happy to see me today,” he reminded her.
She sighed heavily. “I have so much going on and thought you had been sent by someone trying to pin the security guard deaths on me as well as Archie, the badly injured one. I’ve tried to do what I can to figure out what is going on.”
His tone perked up. “Do you know who is behind the attacks?”
“Not yet. I keep expecting SCIS to show up any day,” she admitted.
“Oh, hell no. We will figure out what’s going on.”
We. She had never been part of awe. It felt so good to have someone willing to step into her dangerous world and offer his help. She put her other hand on top of the one holding his and marveled again over the only important thing at this minute.
A happiness she hadn’t felt since the last time she’d seen him surged through her, filling her body and heart with fresh hope for a real future. She’d battled alone so long to save her female shifters, to stand against Leszek, to build a theater for her vision of charity events, and to ... make it through every day to start another one.
Life should be about more than surviving.
Corbin had undoubtedly faced worse obstacles to survive. She would be there for him now too.
He seemed content to just be with her.
She was still awed over what he’d done for Kesa and her pup. “You said upstairs you’d delivered babies twice in the past while working in a remote area. Were you talking about your time with that Romanian creep?”
“Yes. I spent the first year in Romania. It was a bad situation for many of us, especially women they brought in to be traffickedor who lived in villages he entered and demanded they feed his people. The first time had been after he’d captured a female shifter to sell who turned up pregnant. None of the human men wanted anything to do with her. She’d been moaning and moving slowly for hours before being ordered to feed us. Her water broke, and they started yelling. They were going to beat her.”
“Oh, no. What kind of monster would do that?”
Corbin gave her a sad smile. “The worst kind you never want to meet.” He continued, “I got up and asked Vlad, the leader, if he wanted her to live. No other question would have gotten a yes answer. He nodded. I told him if he’d let me, I would help her with the baby. That was the longest night of my life, but she gave birth and survived. The next time, it was another shifter female, and Vlad ordered me to deliver her baby. While working with her, she told me that right before Vlad captured her, a healer had said her baby would have to be turned. She did her best to explain what I needed to do, but I was terrified of killing her and the baby with my lack of experience.”
He took a couple of deep breaths and blew them out, then washed a hand over his face and shook his head as if clearing it. “It did not look like the baby and mother would make it at all. If she had died, then Vlad would’ve beaten me senseless, but once I started, I couldn’t have stopped if Vlad had been kicking me. I could feel the baby and closed my eyes to shut out all distractions. I turned it.” He smiled at her a bit sheepishly. “Hearing that baby cry was the greatest sound of my life.”
“I am so glad you followed me tonight.” She reached over and brushed a loose lock of hair off his forehead, admiring the man he’d become. “I was terrified I had condemned Kesa and her baby to death by my lack of resources. Thank you for all you did even after I had sounded more like a shrew than a friend.”
His smile remained but softened into one that lit hope in her chest.
They sat that way for a while, then he glanced around and asked, “How did you get involved in all this?”
See? No one else wanted to know what she cared about. “My father had allowed me to shift and let my wolf run in a national park while we were on a road trip out west. The bodyguards stayed with him. My wolf, Pixie, was deep in the woods when she heard a child cry out and changed directions. I was sixteen and had never seen Pixie rush toward danger. She’s not dominant, but she ran straight to where a woman was beating a small boy with a stick. He acted like he was trying to get away, screaming for his mama.”
Corbin guessed, “It sounds like she was capturing him.”
