Page 64 of Enslaved

I’ve never fainted a day in my life, but right now I wish I could. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to see the horror unfolding in the distance.

Before I hit the ground, Keane is there, his hands gripping my arms as he holds me up, his eyes staring into mine. “Briar!”

I swallow hard. “The café.” My voice breaks at the end, and I lose the battle to hold my tears at bay.

They slide down my cheeks and threaten to choke me. “She’s all I had left.”

He stares at me for several seconds. “It doesn’t mean she was in there.”

“She doesn’t take days off. Not ever.” My gaze returns to the remains of the Madden Grove Tearoom. Long tendrils of smoke drift from the burning building, as tiny figures stand at a distance. “I wasn’t there to do the baking, so she had to.”

Keane doesn’t respond.

“Diana must have thought I was the one in the kitchen.” Another tear slides down my face, but I can’t find it in me to brush it away.

Keane says something.

I don’t know what it is, because it doesn’t matter. This happened because I stayed when I should have left Madden Grove years ago. Maybe if I hadn’t been so afraid of being alone, I might have and Aunt Mel would still be alive.

Another tear slips free.

Deep inside, I feel the wild thing inside me stir.

“Briar!” Keane shakes me.

“You can let go now.”

I don’t know what he must see in my eyes, but it’s enough to make his grip on my arms tighten. “As long as you don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t do anything stupid,” I lie.

His stare extends, but I don’t break eye contact. Eventually, he pulls me to my feet and drops his hands from my arms before turning away. “Come on. We have—”

I throw myself down the slope.

A second later, a hand grabs the back of my nightdress and yanks me from the edge. “Let me go.” I struggle to break free.

Keane stalks away from the edge of a slope that probably would have killed me, to press me against the nearest tree. “What the fuck was that?”

“I have to go to town.”

“By throwing yourself down a goddamn fucking mountain.”

“It isn’t a mountain,” I snap back as tears form. “There aren’t any mountains in Madden Grove.”

And then it hits me what else there isn’t here either.

Family.

A sob escapes.

Keane stares into my face.

I feel his attention, but I keep my focus on his shoulder. Or rather, over it, at the smoke rising in the distance.

“I have to know, Keane,” I say. “I have to.”

He doesn’t speak for so long that I think maybe I was wrong all along, that wolves don’t care about family as much as I think they do. “One drive-by.”

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