I did with Torrez, but that seems all fucked up as it is, so maybe it doesn’t count. Anyway, my point is I get that you aren’t happy about the situation with Enoch and his coven, but stop acting like I did this on purpose.”
“Torrez isn’t the problem here, and neither is your magic choosing another mate. The issue is that coven,” Bastien tells me. At the same time, Ryker asks, “What do you mean the situation with Torrez is fucked up?”
I turn to Ryker. “I mean he has our runes on him, but none of us have his rune. I don’t think the connection is there yet, and I can’t tell you why.”
“Maybe it’s because he’s a shifter; it’s possible your magic works differently with him than it does with casters,” Sabin hypothesizes.
I shrug my shoulders. “Maybe, who knows? We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.” I turn to Bastien, his hazel eyes still stony. “Like I said, I understand that you all have an issue with Enoch and his coven, but I’m not going to throw them aside and leave them to get picked off because you guys have bad blood. You can either trust me and the magic that brought us together, or not. That’s your choice,” I tell him, finality in my tone, and I hate that I can’t say for sure which he’ll actually choose.
I’ve been independent and on my own for so long, but I’ve just started to see what my life could be like if I had more. If I had them. Part of me wants to say, “Fuck it, I am who I am, my magic is what it is, take it or leave it.” And the other side of me is terrified that this has pushed them too far, too out of reach, and nothing I can do or say is going to pull them back into me.
“And what about trusting us?” Bastien counters, pulling me from my worried thoughts. “We are telling you that we don’t trust them, and yet here you are, going against that and defending them.”
“Because my experiences aren’t your experiences, Bas. You all grew up together, and you compete against each other, and you just don’t like each other. I lived with them; I’ve trained and fought with them. I don’t have the same hang-ups that you do. I don’t trust Lachlan or Silva, but I accept that your experiences with them are different than mine. I have never, and will never, ask you to turn your back on them just because I don’t like or trust them.”
“Yeah, but that’s family, that’s not the same thing,” Knox argues. “And you can say that you trust Enoch and his coven all you want, but you went after them just like we did when you first saw their markings. Doesn’t that prove that deep down you don’t trust them either?”
I rub my hands over my face and take a minute to collect my thoughts. “The word family doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it does to you. However if I apply your logic, Knox, then Valen and Bastien are biologically connected to Silva and his coven, so there’s an exception for them. But I might be magically connected to Enoch, Kallan, Nash and—yay for me—Becket. So wouldn’t the same exception apply?”
“Why are you fighting so hard for them, Vinna? What’s really going on here?” Knox asks, and I don’t like the tinge of suspicion or accusation in his tone.
“I have no idea, Knox. I didn’t intentionally mark them, so whatever it is you’re accusing me of right now, shut it the fuck down. I haven’t done anything to earn the betrayal that’s leaking out of your eyes.”
Knox runs a hand over his face, and my chest aches. How the hell is this all going so wrong? This is me he’s talking to. I take a step toward Knox and reach for his hand, but he crosses his arms, physically shutting me out. I’m so surprised by his denial that I’m not sure what to say. It’s like he’s taken something fragile and beautiful that I’ve given him and smashed it on the ground, and now I’m staring at the pieces, desperate to put them back together but with no idea how. I just look at him, shocked and suddenly lost.
“I don’t trust them,” Knox tells me.
“I don’t either,” Bastien agrees, and his stance mirrors Knox’s.
I step back and remind myself that, as much as