Link paced in front of Vera and Tobias’s cabin. If he did this, it would be getting his hopes up again. It would mean setting himself up for the massive disappointment he’d endured when the cure fixed the Silver brothers’ hibernation issue, but couldn’t fix him.
He’d gone to a dark place and had only lifted above it when he’d met Nicole. Asking Vera for help could push him all the way into madness if she denied him.
The door opened and Vera leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest, a mix of sadness and relief swirling in her fox-gold eyes. “Tobias is out on delivery.”
“I’m not here to see your mate.”
Vera cuddled closer into the blanket she had draped around her shoulders. “Where have you been?”
Link twitched his head and hated himself for his weakness. “Spiraling.”
Her mouse brown hair lifted off her shoulders and whipped in the frigid breeze. “I’ve missed you. You’re my best friend, and you just bolted on me. On Elyse and Lena, too.”
Link made a ticking sound behind his teeth and closed his eyes. “Tobias and his brothers stay awake through winter now. You don’t need me anymore.”
“Bullshit. You think you were only protection for me? For Elyse and Lena?” Vera shook her head. “It was never about what you could do for us, Link. It was about being a part of this place, a part of us. You’ve wasted some of the time we have left together.”
“I have someone,” he blurted out.
Vera stood frozen like a statue, staring at him as though she’d never seen him before. “Who?”
“The one. Someone I shouldn’t have met so close to the end. She deserves better than what’s coming for her. She told me to get my shit together and own what’s happening.”
“I like her already.”
“Chhh,” Link said, hooking his hands on his hips and glaring off into the woods. “She doesn’t understand.”#p#分页标题#e#
Vera arched one delicate eyebrow. “Or she understands better than you.”
“Fuckin’ riddles,” he muttered. When his chest rattled with a snarl, he didn’t even stifle Wolf. He felt the same damned frustration with the women in his life right now.
“Eustice McCall died when I tried to fix him—”
“Yeah, I know, Vera. I get it. You already said you couldn’t fix me. I don’t want to hear about his death.”
“Eustice died—”
“Vera!”
“You shut the fuck up, Lincoln McCall. You’ll listen to what I have to say because while you’ve been running and spiraling, I’ve been here working. Alone.”
“Working. You mean planning your wedding?”
Vera shook her head, her eyes never leaving him.
Link swallowed down the damned hope in his chest. “On deliveries with Tobias?”
Vera shook her head again.
“On me?”
Vera dipped her head. “I couldn’t cure Eustice. Couldn’t. He had nothing tying him to this world but me, and I wasn’t enough. He had no reason to get through the pain and land on the other side. He gave up. Hanged himself. I found him—fuck.” Vera whipped her hair out of her way and angled her face away, eyes still on him. “He was my best friend on Perl Island, Link, and I lost him in an awful way. And when I met you, I thought trying to cure you would mean that someday, I would find you the same way—dead on purpose. And I was scared. But you aren’t Eustice. You’re stronger. You’re good. And now you have someone to anchor you. Someone to fight for.”
“Can you fix me?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, “but I can try.”
Link huffed a harsh breath as he shook his head over and over in disbelief that he was going to do this. In disbelief that he was really going to get his hopes up again after everything he’d been through. He’d accepted his fate, and it hurt less. Hope was a destroyer for a doomed man like him.
But we have Nicole now.
Wolf was right.
Nicole had changed everything.
She’d burned his white flag of surrender and spat on the ashes.
“What do you need from me?” he asked low.
Vera lifted her chin, and a proud smile slowly stretched her face. “I need your blood.”
Chapter Nine
Three days.
It had been three days since Nicole had left Link, and in that time, her cabin had stayed quiet. There were no fresh wolf tracks or boot prints in the snow. There was no howl in the woods, and no new dead game on her porch. She crossed her arms as she stood in the middle of her front yard, staring at the tall trunks of the evergreens and wishing he would appear from behind one.