Chapter 80
Miss you.
It’s just those two words.
I stare at them for hours.
I draft a hundred different replies and delete them all. Because there is no right thing to say to the
husband-who-isn’t-my-husband who-is-my-captor/enemy.
If he’s looking at his phone I’m sure he’ll see the three dots that pop up and disappear as I type and
then click back to undo.
As night passes into morning, I sleep again.
It’s fitful. Filled with dreams that are more like nightmares, and memories I’ve bottled up since I was a
kid.
I cry.
I curl up and try tofort myself.
Because it’s going to take 48 hours for the results back from myb tests.
Two days to learn if I’ll live or if I’m right back to counting down the time left with my terminal illness.
I want to live so badly.
It’s some ingrained survival instinct, sure, but when facing my own mortality, I don’t want to d ie.
At some point, I get up and start cleaning. I organize clothes and move boxes and clean up the junk
that had been left behind-some of it by teenage me.
A dayter, there is another text. This one is also brief. It just says, Special Delivery.
What does that mean?
The answeres when my brother shows up at my room with Adam behind him.
They each carry a box. Really big boxes.
1
K
4
”
.
2
Adam sets his down first. “That blockhead beta just left these at the main gate.”
I’m pretty sure he means James.
And James is big enough to lug around both of these. The guy built like a silverback.
“Did you search them?” I feelpelled to ask.
“Of course, we did,” Liam snaps at me.
It’s a fair question. They’re essentially viting my privacy, but
is
on the other hand, they’re doing it for my safety.
“It’s like that a sshole thinks your own pack won’t feed you,” Liam mutters. Then he opens the box and
pulls out packages or protein bars and giant jars of peanut butter. There are sealed packages of dried
fruits and bottles of vitamins.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Adam says to me.
I know he’s thinking about me being locked away and starved for a week.
“What’s in your box?” I ask him.
He drops it and theponents inside ng loudly.
When Adam reaches in and pulls out knife after knife and then an assortment of weapons and
magazine clips, my mind goes nk.
“It seems your old lover wants to arm you against your own family.” Liam curses, “the ba stard.”
“It’s not that,” I say automatically.
“Oh, what is it then?”
I reach for a jar of peanut butter and a box of crackers. I have to be careful. Defending my family’s
‘enemy’ will only reflect poorly on me. But how sad is it that I trust a delivery of food from the man who
Belongs to (N)?vel/Drama.Org.
kept me a virtual prisoner for ten years, and don’t trust eating or drinking something from the kitchen I
grew
tr
up in?
‘Aaron lives by a very basic adage,” I tell them.
Adam nces at me confusedly.
“Keep your enemies close.”
Both my brother and Adam spend close to an hour inspecting everything that hade in those two
giant boxes. I want to ask them to stop or to leave, but decide to go a different route. I’m grateful they
don’t dissect what I said about enemies because they could probably apply that to themselves.
I trust my brother and Adam implicitly. But seeing Tobin in this house, walking around like he owned the
ce… maybe it’s not such a bad idea for me to have weapons.
Liam shakes his head. “We have an entire arsenal here. If you wanted a gun or knife, you could take
your pick.”
True enough. But Aaron offered. I didn’t have to ask. And if other wolves saw me arming myself, that
act could be misinterpreted.
“Thank you,” I tell my brother and Adam. “I appreciate it.”
It’s best that they know I am in solidarity with them, and that while I inwardly appreciate these small
gestures from Aaron, that I won’t be swayed by some si lly text message or a grocery
delivery.
I mean, really… I have my own phone. I am not a prisoner here. I can shop online for whatever I need
or get my a ss into a car and drive into the nearest city.
Unlike on Aaron’snds, I am not a prisoner here.
I hold the highest position in thismunity.
And it’s about time I did something with that power.