Chapter 201

Grace

The nerve of this bastard to try and turn it around on me when he’s the one who was lying. The nerve of him to try and pretend like it was my fault that this was happening. He sounded just like Devin, blaming me when he was doing wrong.

Well, Grace, if you had just been a better wife…

I mean, you are just a werewolf…

“And what the hell does that mean?” I glared at him. “Open my heart? Didn't you just say to keep our personal life out of this? Now you’re bringing it up? Which is it, Charles? Do you want to keep this separate? Keep this just mentor-mentee. Or is this about us?”

“As I said before, it’s about you,” Charles said. “It’s about you wallowing and your perceived victimhood—”

“Perceived? What do you think—”

“—and looking for every opportunity to claim that I’m hurting you when all I have done was try to help you. Forcing you to grow up isn’t hurting your grace. Not coddling you isn’t hurting you. Not letting you out of the situation you’ve gotten yourself into isn’t hurting you.”

“Lying is hurting me.”

“And I still haven’t lied to you.”

I glared at him. “You may as well have.”

He shook his head. “How long are you going to keep believing that? How long are you going to look for every opportunity to escape the fact that you have a long way to go rather than focus on how far long you’ve come?”

“I—”

“Don’t want to do what needs to be done. You don’t want to have to put in the work to get to the Senate. You don’t want to have to make it up to your constituents because you don’t want to do the work. You keep falling back into the same patterns of behavior, expecting your words to be enough, just like a child.”

“How dare you call me childish?”

“Then stop acting like it. You’re a goddamn alpha, Grace, whose territory needs you to fix a hell of a lot of problems, a hell of a lot of big problems, very quickly. You’ve made a lot of promises to a lot of people, and you don’t want to follow through. Pretending that you’re really upset about anything else is childish.”

“You have a lot of nerve.”

“So glad we have that in common.”

I set my jaw, stunned and unsure of what to say to get him to tell me her name and where she was. Who she was. None of anything else he was talking about mattered. None of it was true. She was a threat to me.

A threat to our relationship, didn’t he see that?

Unless…

Unless I was the actual threat to their relationship. I stiffened my jaw, pressing my lips together.

He sighed, drawing his hand through his hair and shaking his head.

“Look, Grace… I’m not trying to attack you. That was…” He shook his head again. “That was too harsh and immature of me. I’m sorry. I should have found a better way to say it.”

I growled at him. “That’s not an apology. That’s not the truth.”

He scoffed. “Grace, if you can believe it, I understand that you’ve been hurt. I understand that Devin has made you doubt yourself. I understand that maybe he just preyed on the insecurity that was already there, but focusing on anything and everything else, looking for betrayal where there is none, is only going to hurt you in the end.”

He looked at me. “I… I don’t know how to help you out of that. I have tried, but I’m not equipped for it. When you calm down, especially since you’re still riding the roller coaster of the shift, I think you should consider therapy.”

My eyes bulged. “I’m not crazy!”

He gave me the most pitying look I’d ever seen. It made me want to claw his face off.

“Is not just for the mentally ill the way werewolves would lead you to believe. It’s for self-understanding. And healing…. Grief has ruled your world for quite some time. This isn’t to blame you. It’s to make you understand. I’ve been where you are.”

“You don’t know a thing about where I am,” I snarled.

“Are you forgetting What I told you about my situation?”

The memory was fuzzy. Something I had probably filed away as unimportant. Charles shook his head.

“My mate and I don’t have a relationship, Grace, because she was unfaithful,” his lips twitched. “I think if there is anyone who can understand what emotional turmoil you’re going through now, it’s me.”

His voice was gentle. Reaching.

“And I apologize for not thinking more clearly about this and letting my own emotions and desires get me carried away. I’ve turned us into a rebound situation, and that’s not what I wanted.”

“Are you calling me a rebound?”

He smiled wryly. “I think it would be more accurate to say that I am your rebound.”

I went stiff. I felt disarmed and guarded like I was standing on shaky ground.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that every moment you decide that the distractions you’re allowing yourself are worth it, and more preferable than actually getting to the root of the problem, is a waste of time. The longer you wallow in it, the more destructive you’ll become. Soon, you’ll be surrounded with ashes, and every tentative bridge that you want and need is going to vanish until you have nothing left.” He looked at me. “People are reaching their hands out to you, and you don’t want to get to the point where they stop. Again.”

His words shook me. My mouth opened to argue, to scream about the madness of trusting a monster like Astarte, to tell him that he was wrong, but I couldn’t get the words out. I stared into his eyes, and I didn’t see Charles, not like I was used to seeing anyway. The man in front of me wasn’t a king. He wasn’t a significant other. He was angry and wounded. And guarded. And… almost resigned. Part of me knew I should redirect this. Part of me knew I should ask what exactly he went through so that he could say such things to me. Part of me felt him reaching out and trying to help me, But I couldn’t take it. I wouldn’t take it. I didn’t have it in me to push back the anger and betrayal. It felt like I was drowning in it. And all I could say, all I could do was try and let it out because that was what made sense. There was an argument from my past in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t hear it clearly. I didn’t want to.

“I don’t have to look far to see where you’ve hurt me,” I said. “And since we’re on the topic of how easily you could own Mooncrest, it’s not like I had a choice in the matter. Given half the chance, Wolfe Medical wouldn’t be entangled the way it is.”

He flinched. I almost cheered in victory at the same time. Something in me howled in agony.

Take it back. Take it back, now. That’s not what I meant. That’s not what I meant. Please. No, that’s not what I meant.

But wasn’t it?

Charles worked his jaw. He said nothing for a long time. The silence felt oppressive. And with every second ticking by, that victory turned poisonous. His eyes grew hard. I felt the shutters, or maybe walls, go up between us. He stood tall, rolled his shoulders, and looked down at me, searching my face for something, but I didn’t know what.

“I’m not going to let you bait me," he said, his voice quiet but intense. “The fact of the matter is that every time I'm gone, the first thing you think of is if I've gone to see my mate. You don’t trust me, Grace. And for a while, I was okay with that. I was okay with thinking you were just guarding your heart. I enjoyed the thought of trying to earn your trust and earn my place in your heart, but that’s not what this is.”

“And what do you think it is? Since you seem to have all the answers?”

“That you’re scared,” he said. “And hurt. And you want the easy way out. Anger and blame are things you’re used to. You’re terrified of having to deal with the hard parts of a relationship of leadership—of anything that your life has become right now.”

The accusation hit me like a physical blow. Shame burned through me, hot and raw.

The thought haunted me. I could hear that conversation with Eason. And even though I couldn’t remember the words exactly. I could feel it. The guilt, the shame. The refusal to accept what I was being told…

Was he right?