Chapter 117

Fuck me. Everything hurt.

Everything hurt in a way that made me want to crawl into a fucking hole and disappear. My wolf echoed my sentiment, growling deep in my chest.

Fuck. There went that plan out the goddamn window. Had to assume Lane had a fucking reason for doing it.

I blinked slowly to make my vision clear and found myself staring at our dining room chandelier. How the fuck? I lay there, listening to the conversation in the house and picking out the voices that I could. Gabby. Lane. Finn. Nolan. Small and incredibly odd group.

“Are you going to keep pretending to sleep?” Genevieve’s soft voice in my ear made me smile. I rolled my head to see her watching me with her arms crossed and her chin resting on them. God, she was fucking stunning.

“I love you,” I whispered. That pretty fucking smile was my reward. “Fuck, you’re so fucking pretty.”

“I love you too.” She brushed her fingers through my hair, and I sighed, my eyes sliding shut. “You almost died.”

“Do you hate me?”

“I’ll never hate you.”

“You should,” I told her in earnest. “You deserve—”

“Stop talking, Killian Byrne,” Genevieve interrupted. “You’re just talking stupid.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

“I kind of like that,” she said with a small laugh.

“Don’t get used to it,” I scoffed. No way in hell was that exchange of power happening. I liked bossing my bratty little sub around. Giving up on trying to categorize what fucking hurt and what didn’t, I sat up. The process was fucking torture. I kept the momentum going and forced myself off the table. Genevieve was there to steady me as I swayed. I took the chance to wrap an arm around her and bury my head in her neck as the pain hit like a fucking truck.

“Take it easy, boy,” Lane said. “You’ve been through hell, and all the magic won’t fucking help.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. My nerves were shot and on fire, making my stomach roll.

“Tell me you love me,” I muttered into her neck, desperate for a distraction.

“I love you,” Genevieve replied. Her arm tightened around my waist, and I groaned. “I’m sorry.”

“Say it again.”

“I’m sorry—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Tell me you love me again.”

“I love you.” I could hear the smile in her voice. It did things to calm the storm inside me and made the pain more bearable. “What do you need?”

“The bathroom,” I grumbled. And the chance to take full inventory of just how badly fucked up I was. If it matched how I fucking felt, I had to look like complete shit.

“Do you need help?” Finn offered.

“You going to hold my dick for me?” I replied just to get a laugh out of him. The tension in the room broke. Thank fuck. I didn’t need the serious shit on top of the feeling like shit.

Saying I looked like shit was a goddamn understatement. Jesus fuck I look like death. If death looked like someone beat it with a meat tenderizer. At least I’d heal. Even now, I could feel my wolf doing its fucking job on the inside. I splashed cold water on my face and leaned on the counter, sighing heavily.

The fact that I was alive was a fucking miracle. Whatever the fuck Lane did, he’d done it well. Though, I had fucking questions—very particularly about that goddamn statement that Sadie only needed to kill me, my brothers, and my cousins to kill an entire species. That was fucking news to me, and I needed answers fast. That changed the entire fucking game.

“Here,” Genevieve said as she opened the door and slipped inside. “I brought you these.”

She held out clean clothes in one hand and my medication in the other. I smiled at her thoughtfulness.

“I still don’t fucking deserve you,” I told her quietly. In one swallow, I downed the medication without hesitation. She scoffed but said nothing as she offered me the clothes.

“I figured you’d want something more comfortable,” she replied. “We didn’t undress you, so your pants are a mess… I just figured you’d want to do it yourself. Unless you wanted Lane to undress you. He just took care of the… of where she…”

Her lip trembled as she struggled to finish her sentence. I took the clothes from her and set them aside. Not giving a fuck about my own pain, I gathered her in my arms and dragged her close to me.

“You can hug me, princess,” I whispered as I felt her hesitate in touching me. She sank into me, and I bit back a groan. My pain was worth her comfort. “I’m sorry, Genevieve.”

“There was so much blood…”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. Fuck, I never wanted her to see that. She leaned back, and the expression on her face was unreadable as she searched my face—for what? I didn’t have a fucking clue.

And then she fucking hit me.

Hard.

In the goddamn shoulder.

The pain raced through every fucking bone in my goddamn body. I moaned, doubling over the counter for support.

“You idiot!” Genevieve exclaimed as she hit me in the shoulder a second time—hard enough to damn near take me out by the knees.

“Stop hitting me!” I growled viciously.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she demanded. The aggressiveness in her voice was both off-putting and a fucking turn-on. My dick couldn’t decide which. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed!”

“I was trying to save the fucking pack!”

“You were taking the easy way out!”

“How?” I shouted. “How the fuck was this the easy way out?”

“You dying is the easy way out!” Genevieve yelled back. She raised her hand to hit me again, but I grabbed her wrist with a dark growl. “You can’t fight this alone, Killian! You can’t! You have to trust others. You have to… you have to let people help you. You have to let us help you!”

“And what are you going to fucking do, Genevieve?” I asked, seething. The audacity of this woman. “Are you going to fucking fight her? Kill her?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” She huffed out an angry breath. Fuck me, she never looked hotter as she glared at me and crossed her arms. “You can’t just do everything alone, Ian. You’re going to get yourself killed for no reason.”

“Protecting you isn’t no reason,” I snapped.

“But there are smarter ways to do it than the way you did,” she retorted. With her free hand, she touched my cheek. “Say whatever you want, Killian, but you know there’s better ways to do it than running in without support.”

“I don’t know a better way,” I admitted.

“You called Lane and Beau for a reason,” she said.

“I didn’t fucking call Beau,” I replied quickly. “I’d never fucking call Beau. Not in a million fucking years—”

“My point, Ian!” she interrupted. Her expression softened as she ran her palm down my neck and over my chest. The simple gesture was ridiculously comforting. “You have to find another way. You can’t keep doing this. Not to yourself, not to me, and not to us. We deserve better.”

“My job is to protect you,” I reminded her. “I’m not about to let something happen to you.”

“And my job is to keep you from doing something stupid,” Genevieve stated. I smirked. That was one hell of a task for her to take on. And from the expression on her face, she knew it too. Quietly, she added, “We deserve a future. You and me. Together.”

I wanted to argue—I really fucking did—but the sadness in her voice wrapped around my heart ten times over. It fucking hurt because she was right. We deserved some kind of future that didn’t involve fighting for our lives and near-death experiences.

But for the life of me, I didn’t know how to fucking give that to her. Not with Sadie threatening our entire future.