Taken by storm(49)

Too quiet.

An unreadable expression on his too-pale face, Griffin pushed past me and made his way farther back into the darkness. When my eyes adjusted, I saw a small form huddled against the wall of the cave. She was lying on one side, her arms curved protectively around her middle. Her clothes were worn, her face dirty, and the slant of light from the entrance caught her eyes just so, giving her the look of a person caught in the throes of fever.

But she was Maddy, unmistakably Maddy, and a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding whooshed out of my chest when I felt that spark of recognition deep inside me. Even after listening to the story Griffin had spun, I hadn’t been certain what we would find here.

Who we would find here.

But she still looked like our Maddy. She still felt like Maddy. She wasn’t the killer, and she was alive. That was more than I’d hoped for, more than I had a right to ask for, when I’d believed she was capable of the things we’d seen.

The other ghost. Griffin’s words lingered in my mind. He’d brought us here, to her, but what was the likelihood that there were two ghosts following Maddy around?

Then again, what had the likelihood been that there was even one?

“Bryn?” Maddy didn’t sound sure of herself, like she thought I might have been a dream—which was probably a fair assumption, all things considered.

“Maddy.” Everything in me wanted to go to her, to kneel beside her, but I couldn’t bring my feet to move—not until I knew that she wanted me there, wanted me close. “Mads.”

“You came,” Maddy whispered. For a moment, all I could think was that the first time I’d seen Chase, locked in a cage in Callum’s basement and half out of his mind with the Change, he’d said the same thing.

“Of course I came.”

Maddy closed her eyes, and as Chase inhaled beside me, he caught a scent, too faint for my human nose to pick up.

Tears.

She hadn’t shed them yet, and I didn’t know whether I should go to her or just go. But we’d come here for a reason, and Callum’s warning was still fresh in my mind.

“The other alphas will be looking for you,” I told Maddy, matching her whisper with one of my own. “Soon.”

I wanted to be saying something else—that we loved her, that we missed her, that if I could have taken her pain and made it mine, I would have, in a heartbeat.

“The Senate doesn’t know about the baby, Maddy, but if they find out, you won’t be safe here.” I paused, and my eyes traveled to her stomach, round against her rail-thin frame. “Neither one of you will be.”

This wasn’t how I’d imagined our reunion   with Maddy going, but I didn’t know how to say anything else. Hesitantly, I crouched where I was, my knees pulled tight to my chest. I forced my own guard down, so she would know that I wasn’t trying to scare her or threaten her or imply that she’d made a mistake. Instead, I let my face show my feelings, let my own tears come.

“I was scared, Maddy, so scared that something had happened to you, and that we wouldn’t get here in time.”

She looked at Griffin and nodded, and he shot me a warning look and then backed up to stand next to Lake, leaving nothing but a few feet of space separating Maddy and me.

“I left to get better,” the girl who’d been one of us said simply. “And everything got worse.”

I ached for the bond missing between us, for the ability to take on her thoughts as my own, to feel them with and for her and protect her from those who would see her harmed.

But every instinct I had was screaming at me that I wasn’t Maddy’s alpha anymore.

I wasn’t even sure we were friends.

“I knew,” she said, her hand rubbing small circles over her bulging stomach and leaving no question what she was referring to. “When I left, I knew, Bryn, and I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone. I thought I could do it—just go away and get better and stop missing Lucas, who I thought he was, what I thought we had.”

She eased toward me. Or maybe I eased toward her. I couldn’t be sure.

“I didn’t know how much it would hurt.”

I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the pregnancy, or leaving the rest of us behind.

“I didn’t know that having someone inside of you could make you a hundred times more lonely on the surface. But I was doing it. I was.” She nodded, as if to convince herself of that fact, even as the tears she’d been holding back spilled over and carved tracks into the grime on her face. “We were doing fine, but then there was a full moon. It wasn’t the first one, but the baby …”