The Summer King Bundle 3 Stories - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,206

to the system as his gaze searched mine. “Are you okay?”

I started to answer, but his touch threw me for a loop, and all my hesitation slipped away.

Dropping the cuff onto the bed, I all but launched myself at Caden. If he were unprepared, he didn’t show it. He caught me in his arms and straightened, holding me tightly. He didn’t push me away. I buried my face in his chest, inhaling deeply. That didn’t mean that everything was peachy and perfect between us, but I needed him—needed to feel him, to smell him, to be held by him—and he was here.

That meant everything.

“Brighton?” he murmured, smoothing a hand through my hair and down my back as I felt his head turn. “Is she okay?”

“Physically, yes,” came Kalen’s answer.

“I’m fine.” My voice was muffled and probably barely coherent, but I didn’t lift my head. “I’m just…it was Tanner, Caden. It was him.”

Tension strummed through every part of his body as he said to Kalen, “Tell me what you know.”

Kalen did exactly that, but he didn’t know everything. I did. Forcing myself to put it together, I lifted my head and reluctantly stepped back. I told Caden everything Tanner had told me, and he went from tense to downright rigid when I got to the part about Aric.

I was pacing by that point, one arm curled over my stomach. “He kept saying that he thought he was doing the right thing—”

“He wasn’t,” growled Caden.

“I know.” I stopped, meeting his gaze. “I was going to kill him. I trusted him. My mom trusted him. You trusted him. But I was going to kill him.” Tearing my gaze from Caden’s hard one, I started walking again. “That’s when he grabbed the blade with a napkin and told me that Neal had left the city, but that he had to know that I was your weakness, and that Neal would’ve told others. He then told me—” I cleared my throat. “He told me that I needed to do what he’d failed to do. Protect the Court by never letting my guard down. And then he…”

“He sent himself back to the Otherworld,” Kalen picked up where I left off. “What will be done to him there will… It will make whatever we could do to him here look like nothing.”

A muscle worked along Caden’s jaw. “That knowledge doesn’t ease me. I want to watch the life seep out of his eyes.”

Kalen didn’t object to that.

Neither did I.

“Can you please sit?” Caden asked, and I stopped. “You should be resting, and nothing about any of this is restful.” He turned to Kalen. “Can you get Luce? I want Brighton checked.”

“Of course.” Kalen bowed and then turned to leave.

I sat because he was right. I felt okay, but none of this was exactly stress-free.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Caden asked.

“I feel all right. He didn’t try to hurt me.” I pressed my lips together. “At least not this time. Are you okay?”

Caden stared at me. “You don’t need to worry if I’m okay.”

“But I do,” I told him. “He said you were with Faye, handling Benji, and I know you trusted Tanner. Everybody trusted him.”

“I’m worried about you and the baby right now—”

“And I’m worried about you,” I cut in. “Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

His head tilted and, for a moment, I wondered if he was going to say anything. “I trusted Tanner as much as I trusted anyone. I never would have expected him to be behind this.”

“I still can’t believe it.” I picked up the cuff, turning it over in my hands. “I should be relieved that at least we know who was responsible, but I can’t feel that. I don’t understand how he thought this was the right thing.”

“Fear.”

I looked up at Caden.

“Fear is what made him think it was right.” He approached slowly, sitting beside me. “Some of the fae here have limited their contact with the outside world so much that the Winter fae and their Queen have become like…what do you call it? The thing that scares children?”

“Bogeymen?”

“Yes. That.” He turned his head to me. “It’s not that I don’t think they’re not a threat. They are, but fear and panic are far more dangerous than any creature out there. It’s the only reason I can think of that would’ve caused him to take this path. His fear of the Court weakening was far greater than his fear of what I would do to him.” His gaze dropped to the cuff.