Page 122 of Poet & Protector

“He did.” I nodded. “Anyway, sticking with the no emo promise, what am I not reacting to?”

Sabine drew a long breath and rolled her shoulders back. “What you said about Mason. It got to me.”

She stopped and I waited.

A minute passed. Then another.

“All I could think,” she finally said, a few renegade tears escaping to slip down her cheeks, “is that I wish someone had loved me that much.”

My throat closed. My eyes began to burn. Heavy stones piled, one after another, on my chest. The weight of grief, of knowing I’d failed someone I loved, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

Sabine looked at me and growled.

I swallowed a couple of times and blinked hard. “Sorry. I know I promised. But⁠—”

She clapped her hand over my mouth.

“Ugh.” Sabine sniffed and wiped her eyes with her other hand. “No. We’re not doing that. We never do that. This is why I don’t cry. No one is to blame but Efron. No one is responsible for how I feel but Efron. You will not feel guilty. You’re the one who makes life in the pack bearable for me. I don’t want your pity. All I want is for you to keep being my bestie.”

I lifted my hands in surrender. “No pity, Sabine, I swear. You’re way too fierce for pity. But that doesn’t mean I don’t wish I could stop it. I wish I could help you.”

“The way you fought for Mason helps me,” she said quietly. “It makes me believe in something better than what we’ve been given. I didn’t think I could believe, or hope, for anything besides what we have. Keep fighting for him. It’s a way of fighting for me. It’s fighting for all of us.”

When I put my arm around her, she didn’t shrink away, instead resting her head on my shoulder. I was going to keep fighting for Mason, but I was afraid we were rushing toward the moment when no matter how hard I fought, it wouldn’t be enough.

Twenty-One

The Mountain School

Wednesday, the following week

MASON

Two elder Banes were waiting beside my car when I reached the parking lot after school.

I slowed my steps. Whatever the hell this was, I didn’t want it.

“Mason Elliott?”

“Yeah.”

“Give him your keys,” one of them ordered, jerking his thumb at the Guardian beside him. “Then come with me.”

“Uh…why? Who are you guys?”

They exchanged a look.

“Just do what I said,” the first Bane ordered. “Your car will be at the Nightshade compound whenever you return there.”

I gaped at him. Whenever I return there? To my house? That I live in?

“Where the hell am I going?”

The second Bane laughed but choked off the sound when his partner glared at him.

“Logan wants you.”

Oh shit.