no how.
“It’s okay,” she soothed again. “I’m not going anywhere.”
It relieved me that she understood, but also, that wasn’t enough. “He hurt you,” I rasped. “He deserves to be punished.”
She gulped. “I don’t want to bring any more shit down on me, Austin. You don’t know how long I’ve been scared, how long I’ve been living with the idea of him catching up with me, and now I’m free of that to a certain extent—”
“That isn’t enough. I want you to be wholeheartedly free of him. To know that he isn’t out there, waiting in the shadows to catch you.”
“But death is so final,” she whispered. “That was what I learned when I was spluttering away on my own blood at Ollywood’s.” Her hand moved up and over my throat, cupping me there. “Then you appeared. You and Ethan, and I knew I was dying, and I had this feeling inside me, a feeling that it was too late to be overjoyed by the sight of you.” She shook her head again. “No, I don’t want to bring bad karma on us. He can stay in the shadows, and if he comes, then I’ll show him just what it means now that I’m a gadji.”
My lips curved despite themselves. “You’d take him down yourself?”
I had to admit to being impressed.
Merinda, Eli’s mom, shit, my mom, hadn’t been that way. She’d been defenseless in some regards, refusing to fight…
Huh.
I figured there was a metaphor there.
She’d refused to fight in all walks of her life.
To the point where she’d given her baby boys over to a woman who wasn’t fit to be a mother, simply to keep the peace.
What the hell kind of peace was it where your sons weren’t under your roof and were in another’s home?
What kind of mother let the man in her life overtake the needs of her children?
“She must have thought she was acting for the best,” Sabina muttered, but I heard her anger and knew she was saying the words simply to make me feel better. However, her words were laced with her dubiousness.
I grunted. “I think it was the wrong choice.”
“Me too.”
“I think she did it because she was ashamed to have twin sons.”
She growled under her breath. “This is so stupid. I’ve never heard anything—”
“What isn’t stupid about hate? How can we hate someone for the color of their skin? For their religion? Even as a shifter, beneath it, I’m still human. That connects us all, unites us. We forget that, and we shouldn’t.”
She huffed under her breath. “My joker’s turning philosophical on me.”
I grinned, loving how she could snap me out of a funk with barely a few words.
Of course, I thought that deserved a reward, and wanting to change the subject to nicer things as well as wanting to forget some others, I gripped her tighter in my arms, and when she squealed, evidently aware of my next move, I laughed as I hurled her into the air so she went flying into the pond.
When her squeal morphed into a whoop of joy, I had my confirmation.
This woman was perfect for me.
Eight
Sabina
This place was nice.
Really nice.
I mean, I’d lived in dumps my whole life, and Eli’s pad was beyond dope. It was like something from an architectural magazine, it belonged on a show or in a book for interior designers.
But this place?
Didn’t have walls or a roof.
If anything, it had a sky that was always the same color, between dark and light, it was rarely cold, and it was just perfect because I was at one with nature.
All my life, I’d lived in cities, and I’d had to move from place to place, not just because I was on the run, but because that was the traveler life.
To think that I could stay in the same place and end my nomadic lifestyle was so overwhelming that at times, I’d just reach for Austin and have him hold me tight.
That was a constant too. Just as the light never changed and the temperature stayed perfect at all times, he was there.
At my side.
Of course, it fit that when I rolled over after having a nap, he wasn’t there.
When my hand reached out, patting beside me where he’d been earlier, our legs tangled together, our upper bodies curved into each other, and I found him absent, my eyes popped open in surprise.
Not distress, because I knew he’d be near, but just shock.
He was turning into my second skin, and I liked that.
In fact, the