Chapter 104

Kayla

That night, Nicholas, Noah, and I remained at the cabin to ensure Grace would not only be safe, but also to keep her company on her first night.

Dinner had long since been finished and cleaned up, and all of the lights in the cabin were off. The door of the wood stove was open, casting warm golden light across our faces and flickering shadows across the walls.

“If circumstances were different, I would say this place is almost cozy,” Noah said, leaning back on the sofa and sipping his wine. “We should all vacation here sometime. Big slumber party.”

Grace smirked and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Kayla said I should thank you, Nicholas. For being the one to set this place up.”

Nicholas glanced up from his glass. “She did, did she?” he asked, briefly looking at me. I wasn’t sure why, but something in that look made my face flush just a little. I quickly hid it in my wine.

Grace nodded. “Really, thank you. I feel better already. All those years in that cell…” She shuddered, her voice trailing off. When I glanced at her, I could just barely make out the shining mist of tears coating her eyes, threatening to fall.

Without thinking, I reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. “Everything will be alright, Grace. You’ll never go back there.”

She didn’t answer. I wasn’t entirely sure if she believed me. I wasn’t entirely sure if I believed myself, if I was being honest.

Truthfully, though, Grace was already looking leaps and bounds better than before. The hearty dinner—of which she had not two, but three whole servings—seemed to have returned some color to her skin and filled out the gaunt angles of her body.

She was gorgeous like this. I always knew Grace was pretty, but seeing her healthy and not terrified… it was like seeing a woman brought back to life.

Finally, taking a deep breath, Grace broke the silence between us once more.

“You know, when they captured me all those years ago, I held onto hope that I would escape,” she began. “Eventually, though, I began to lose hope. It’s funny.”

“Funny how?” Noah cocked his head.

She pursed her lips. “When you imagine a captor breaking a prisoner’s spirit, what do you imagine?”

“Torture,” Nicholas said quickly.

Grace nodded. “Exactly. I pictured myself only losing my hope if they began to pull my fingernails out or break my bones or give me black eyes. But they never did any of those things. They never hurt me. In fact, they just… left me there.”

Grace sighed and continued, “Sometimes, I wouldn’t see a soul for weeks, maybe even months, at a time. A tray of food would slide through the slot in the door three times a day, and that was it. And then they would come, and I would expect the torture to begin, but they would just ask me for information. When I didn’t give it to them, they would leave me.”

My chest tightened at the thought. “I can’t imagine how hard that must have been,” I whispered.

She shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad at first. I had a few books that they allowed me, which I read over and over. I dreamed. I meditated, I spoke to my wolf. But it compounds, you know? Eventually, you start wishing for the torture to start, if only so you can feel a connection.”

“But then you came,” Grace went on, gesturing to Nicholas. “You were such a fucking prick. You yelled at me, slammed your hands on the table, threatened me. It was the first real contact I’d had with another person in years.”

Nicholas’s face reddened. “I’m sorry. I was cruel to you.”

But Grace shook her head. “Don’t apologize. I actually looked forward to those sessions. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t withhold information just to make them last longer.”

I couldn’t help but snort into my wine glass at that. Nicholas shot me a warning glare, but Grace shrugged, chuckling along with me. “Either way,” she said, “I’m glad your interrogations led us here. And I hope we can work together for a better world. The sort of world that our mother’s dreamed of.”

Nicholas was silent at that. I was, too. What could I even say? This so-called relic of Luporath… It still sounded like nothing more than a kids’ story. And I didn’t know Grace’s mother or Nicholas’s mother, so there was no knowing what they thought, what they believed.

Eventually, Grace retired to her room, too exhausted to keep her eyes open. Nicholas and Noah took the floor in the living room while I took the couch, but it didn’t take long for me to notice Noah’s uncomfortable tossing and turning.

“Here,” I said, standing. “Take my spot.”

Noah glanced at me. “I won’t take the one comfortable spot from you.”

But I was already moving onto the floor, practically shoving Noah out of the way. “You’re still recovering from your coma,” I replied. “Take the couch. It’s just one night.”

Noah protested weakly, but when I wouldn’t budge, he eventually gave up and moved to the sofa, knocking out cold almost immediately. Nicholas had been silent throughout the exchange, laying on his back with his hands clasped behind his head.

Nicholas wasn’t sleeping, though. When I glanced over at him, his eyes were wide open and staring at the ceiling.

For a moment, I opened my mouth, wanting to say something—anything—to fill the silence. But no words would come, because truthfully, I had nothing that I could think of to say.

And neither did Nicholas, it seemed.

The silence between us stretched on, more awkward than I would have liked to admit. Every move Nicholas made seemed to set my nerve endings on fire, every accidental brush of his shoulder against mine as we lay beside one another making me stiffen.

If I was being honest with myself, I knew I didn’t need to give Noah the sofa. But something in me wanted to be close to Nicholas, if only so I could feel his warmth emanating across the narrow space between us.

Over a week had passed now since I had ended our romantic relationship, and there was hardly a moment that I didn’t think about it. I couldn’t help it. No matter how hard I tried not to, I just kept replaying that night in the shed with him as if I could relive it all over again.

I missed him. I missed the brief connection we had shared.

And most of all, I missed the warm way he used to look at me.

Nicholas wasn’t cruel to me now. He still treated me like his friend, his partner. But there was an ice wall between us, one that I could see through but was bitterly cold when I put my hand up to it.

And I feared that, although I had been the one to let it form, Nicholas was the one now who kept it cold.

But then, suddenly, he spoke.

“Thank you for the meal. I haven’t eaten that well since my mother passed.”

I blinked, taken aback by the sudden confession. When I turned my head, though, he was still staring at the ceiling with his hands behind his head.

“It was nothing,” I said quietly.

“It wasn’t nothing.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but somehow, his words warmed my heart just a little.

We went to sleep after that, no more words between us. I figured that was the end of his tenderness, that he was just thanking me for a good meal, that maybe the wine we’d had had gotten to his head a little.

And yet, just as I began to drift off, I felt him begin to move.

It started off small—his hand moving slightly closer to mine, his pinky brushing against my wrist. And then, just as sleep claimed me, I could have sworn I felt Nicholas’s body shift ever so slightly closer.