I hadn’t wanted to be there for the blow-by-blow of what I’d already lived through, and there had been more pressing matters. I’d needed to call home.
Telling Jada and Thierry and Matthew had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done. There’d been tears from Jada and Matthew, and stony silence from Thierry—silence I knew came from a place of great shock and guilt, because, like me, he couldn’t believe it and he couldn’t understand how he hadn’t seen it. The call had ended with Matthew leaving to come here, and I’d promised to come home to see Jada as soon as possible.
I had no idea how I’d dozed off, but after using the grace twice, I shouldn’t be surprised even though my injuries had been healed when my father had restored Zayne.
“You doing okay?” Zayne asked as he made a show of lifting his hand. His fingertips grazed my cheek as he tucked my hair back, out of my face. “You’ve been sleeping for several hours. I checked on you a couple times.”
That explained the quilt that had been draped over me. I placed my hands on the cushions beside me. I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure what I felt.
“Have you heard from Roth or Layla?” I asked.
He nodded. “Both are fine. Roth said you made sure that he got out before your...your father showed.”
“Yeah.”
A beat of silence and then, “Layla’s okay. Resting. Because of you. You probably saved her life.”
“I don’t know about all that.”
His head tilted to the side. “Trin, she’s says if you hadn’t—”
“I’m just glad she’s okay,” I said, cutting him off, and then I felt it. A burst of frustration that tasted like pepper in the back of my throat. It wasn’t me. It was Zayne. “You’re frustrated.”
“Well, yeah. I’m a lot of things right now. Frustrated is one of them—”
“I can feel it. I can feel that you’re frustrated,” I told him. “Do you feel me? Feel anything I’m feeling?”
Zayne sat beside me, and when I looked at him, his blond hair was a mess of tumbled waves. His gaze dropped, and then wordlessly he picked up my hand that was closest to him. He brought it to his chest, to his heart. Air hitched in my throat. He knew what I was asking.
“I feel it,” he said, keeping my hand to his chest. “I feel you, but I’ve felt something since the first time I met you. Like I’ve always known you. We talked about that, but I thought... I’d thought it was just something weird. Maybe both our imaginations working overtime, but there was also this...jolt that I’d feel whenever we touched.”
“I felt it, too.” I leaned toward him. “With Misha, it wasn’t like that. I mean, I could feel him. Like, I knew we were connected, but it was more of a mental thing. Not physical. Not like this.”
Zayne lowered our joined hands to the space between us. “Maybe it’s because...this was meant to be.”
I closed my eyes. Meant to be. Him. Me. Protector. Trueborn.
“God.” He coughed out a short laugh. “If what your father said is true, and since he’s the freaking Michael I’m assuming it is, then it was supposed to be you. My father was supposed to bring you here and not...”
And not Layla.
Swallowing, I gave a little shake of my head as I opened my eyes. “I just don’t understand. I don’t understand how any of this could’ve happened or why.”
“Well, maybe we’ll have some answers soon,” he said. “I came to wake you. Matthew’s here. He’s with Nicolai. You ready to see him?”
Not really, but I nodded, and when Zayne rose, he brought me with him.
The moment I saw Matthew, it was like I was ten all over again, and the only thing that was going to make me feel better was one of his hugs.
I let go of Zayne’s hand, and I didn’t care who was in the room. I raced toward him as if he was holding a plate of cupcakes. I threw myself at him, and he caught me, wrapping his arms around me, and when I took a deep breath, he smelled like... He smelled like home.
“Girl,” he said, lifting me off my feet for a brief second. “I am so very sorry.”
I dug my fingers into the back of his shirt, holding on for dear life, because Matthew...he represented before to me. Before I came here with Zayne. Before Misha...did what he did. I didn’t want to let go, so I didn’t, for what felt like an eternity.
Matthew had to untangle my arms from him like I was an octopus. When he led me to a chair, I saw that Nicolai was in his office, behind his desk, and Zayne...he was right beside me, standing there like a sentry.
Like he’d always been there.
Matthew sat in the chair across from me, and I looked at him, really looked at him. There were shadows under his puffy eyes and taut lines at the corners of his mouth. He started to speak.
“It was a mistake,” I said, placing my hands on my knees. “That’s what my father said. That I was supposed to be bonded to Zayne all along?”
“We didn’t know, Trin. We thought we were doing the right thing.” He glanced at Nicolai and then Zayne. A long moment passed. “Your mother was supposed to bring you to Abbot. That is what she told us, and to this day, Thierry and I have no idea why she didn’t do that. Maybe she just felt safe with Thierry—with me—and you took so well to...” He sat back, drawing in a ragged breath. “You took so well to Misha. We thought it was him. We started training you two together, and you were bonded. We didn’t think anything of it until...he arrived.”
I glanced up at Zayne, and while his face was impressively stoic, I could feel his confusion mingling with mine.
“You two seemed to find each other immediately,” Matthew went on. “Like you were there to see him arrive, and he...he knew you were in the Great Hall when none of us knew you were there. He found you that night you were hurt. He knew, and Misha didn’t.”
“It’s true,” Nicolai said, drawing our gazes. He was focused on Zayne. “We were all sitting around, and suddenly you got antsy. Said you needed fresh air. We were outside for no more than a couple of minutes before we ran into her.”
Zayne nodded slowly and then he looked at me. “I didn’t know she was hurt. I just had to get out and keep walking.”
“Protectors are chosen at birth. That is what we’re told, and it seems to be true. That even though you two were never bonded, you could sense her.” A faint smile came and went as Matthew dragged his hand over his face. “That’s when we realized it was you. We just didn’t know what to do, and your father...”
“He didn’t clear anything up. He just let all of this happen.” I sucked in a sharp breath. “Misha wasn’t a bad person. I know he wasn’t. You have to know that, Matthew. He was good and normal and—”
“And he was never supposed to be your Protector. We made a mistake, Trinity, and mistakes...” He shook his head. “I still don’t know how he got to this point. I think...maybe the bond twisted him, made him susceptible to Bael’s influence, made him feel and think the way he did.” Matthew bowed his head. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Maybe it did.
Maybe Matthew was right that this bond, forced upon the wrong Warden, had slowly poisoned him, but I wasn’t so sure. The things he’d said—he’d said the Harbinger was here, the same thing my father had said.
Matthew knew that. As did Nicolai. I’d told Matthew and Thierry on the phone. Zayne had repeated everything to his clan. It was easier to think that it was the bond that had done it. I wanted to think that was the case, because if it had been Misha—if it had been him all along—I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to process that.
How I was supposed to move on from that?
I walked through the unfamiliar woods at dusk, following the well-worn path along the ground. I had no idea where it was going, but I figured Zayne would find me when his session was done inside the compound.
Matthew was still there, and they were talking about what was found at the senator’s home—a home we’d just learned had been razed to the ground this morning. It was all over the news, and people were saying how lucky it was that the senator was in his home state of Tennessee during what they believed to be a freak electrical fire.
Obviously, the senator was a bad dude and we needed to find out exactly how he was connected to Bael and what he planned to do with that school.
I should be in there with them, but I just couldn’t sit still any longer. I needed space, because I...
I hadn’t cried yet.
Not a tear.
I didn’t know why. I felt like there was something wrong with me, because it wasn’t like I was trying not to process what had happened. I was. I was dwelling on it. I was stressing over it, replaying nearly every day of the lives Misha and I had shared, realizing there had been signs of his unhappiness—but this? His discontent had opened him to influence, because he had to have been manipulated.
Misha had meant the world to me, and I hadn’t even known him. Not really, and that was as tough to swallow as his betrayal. But I still hadn’t cried and I didn’t understand that—