and painless, I swear.”
“Put. Down.” She wreathed every word in ice. “You want me to get a DNA test to find out if he’s my brother before you kill him.”
“I don’t want to do anything,” he shot back. “Eden, you quit your job and he broke a fucking table. How far from the edge do you think he is?”
“I don’t know where the edge is! Is it that quick a jump from breaking a table by mistake to having to die?”
Zack had been born a wolf, lived with that superhuman strength all his life. Nothing he broke could be by mistake. But in her position, Jay would probably have to turn it around too, if only because the knowledge was terrifying, and accepting it unthinkable.
He took a deep breath. “I didn’t say that, and it’s not about the table. You know it isn’t.”
“I know. It’s about what we have to do, and what we can live with.” Pain twisted her features, a sad echo of the agony trembling across their bond. But even now he could feel her pulling away. Fighting to put up walls, to block him from her heart. “I can’t stand by and let you kill him. I can’t live with that.”
The new distance between them hurt, but Jay hid it behind the blankest mask he could manage. “It isn’t a subjective matter, Eden. Zack has been putting as much space between him and the rest of us as possible, but it’s not enough. If he keeps on the way he has been, at some point, he’ll become too dangerous.”
“Then I’ll find a way to stop it.” She turned her back on him and tipped the box upright, as if the conversation was over. “I’ll have the dining table from my house brought over tomorrow.”
“Eden, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Make plans to fix the things that are broken?”
“No, you—” Don’t push so hard you push him away. Don’t blame yourself if you can’t change things. Don’t get hurt. “Nothing. You do what you have to do.”
She picked up a framed photograph of her and her father standing with Zack at his graduation and shook the broken glass free. It bounced on the floor with a sad clink. “I’m not a helpless little girl anymore. I’m not going to let him get hurt this time.”
And the demons plaguing Zack were the same plus some, death and destruction and the kind of failure Eden could only now begin to suspect existed. “Let me help you.”
“You can get the broom,” she said, her voice devoid of any emotion. Flat and careful, as smooth a mask as her face. She was good at pretending.
“Damn it, I’m not talking about the glass.” But she’d already placed the broken frame in the box and started for the door. Jay raised his voice. “Just stop for a second and listen.”
She hesitated in the doorway. “I don’t know if I can take many more words right now. I’ve made a lot of hasty decisions today already.”
Take your own advice, dumbass. Don’t push. “All right. Okay.”
Tears brightened her eyes, but she didn’t ask for comfort. She turned her back on him and walked away.
Her sadness lingered longer than her anger, and it wrapped around him as he grabbed the broom and began to sweep the glass from the floor. He could have waited, hidden the truth from her. Pretended Zack was fine, that Jay had never seen the flashes of desperation in his eyes, never listened to his pleas for mercy and offered his promise to handle things.
In the end, Jay didn’t have to pull the trigger. It was the sort of work Colin had taken upon himself so many times before, eliminating threats with brutal efficiency. Except it was killing him, bit by bit, and having him take on what was rightly Jay’s responsibility could only push him farther down the path to losing his soul, and maybe even his mind.
No. Eventually, Jay would have had to stand before Eden and have this same conversation. Better now than later. Now, when the cut could be quick and clean.
Mostly.
Chapter Fourteen
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
The word pulsed with every step she took, a self-loathing refrain pounding in her head. Unshed tears stung her eyes and formed a lump in her throat. She took the long way around the house because she didn’t know what to do when she reached the barn. She’d left half of the contents of her box strewn across the dining room floor for Jay to sweep