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My head shakes back and forth. I’d never heard any of this before. He blamed me. That’s why he was always so mean. But I never even knew about him, about his father. I was just a child.

“I searched for you, hunted you for years. I wanted you to pay for what you took from me.” His gaze falls over the room. “Turns out, I was looking in the wrong place. I never thought to search for you here. I didn’t know you weren’t like me. I was too young to understand your mom wasn’t from my world.”

None of this makes any sense. I wasn’t just an abandoned orphan. Someone wanted me, and it got him killed. My mom didn’t leave me, she was taken. Rhenn is the long-lost family I was never meant to have.

“You found me,” I whisper, staring blankly in front of me. This doesn’t feel real. It’s like a bad dream I want so desperately to wake from.

Rhenn looks down before letting his focus settle back on mine. “Growlers can find anyone…for the right price. All they need is the scent.” He pulls something from his pocket, setting it on the table.

I stare down at my bracelet, the one of beads I’d made for my mother. I gave it to her before she went missing. She promised me she’d never take it off.

Stepping forward, I pick it up, a tear sliding down my cheek.

Everything inside me breaks.

“I found you, Vix. After all this time. I just didn’t expect to like what I found.”

My fingers tighten around the beads, eyes clamping shut. I’m moments away from a full anxiety attack. My heart is pounding and I’m breathing quickly. It’s like the walls are closing in, suffocating me in their small confines, and all I can do is stand here waiting for them to crush me.

“I need you to tell me exactly how you feel, Sumner,” Rhenn says, pulling me from the spiraling darkness. The sound of my name falling from his tongue strikes a shiver down my spine. It’s like soothing honey to a scorching wound. A song that only he knows the correct melody to.

It means everything, and it means fucking nothing.

Why did he have to come here? Doesn’t he know how hard this is? How terribly it’s twisting my insides with confusion and somehow relief? I want him so much it makes my head spin. But Rhenn is a liar and a manipulator. He brought me to new heights just so he could drop me again.

“Screw you,” I whisper, fighting back the breakdown threatening to knock me over.

Rhenn releases a breath, then slowly shakes his head. “Try again.”

“I hate you.”

He holds my focus. “Why?”

There are a million reasons I should, and a million reasons I don’t.

He only wanted to hurt me.

And this hurts so freaking much.

Rhenn moves closer, standing directly in front of me now. “You showed up in my life when I didn’t even want you. You got under my skin, made me angrier than anyone ever has. You made me do stupid shit like talk to the seer and celebrate my birthday. You made me think I was wrong about everything, and then you left me without so much as a second look.” He stares down at me, the sting of rejection evident in his shadowy irises. “So I hate you more. I hate you because you made me love you.” His eyes flash to the two glasses of wine on the table, regret and hurt flooding his features. “And you weren’t worth it.”

Rhenn turns to the doorway, ready to leave me like I left him.

The beads slip through my fingers, air lost in my lungs. I watch him twist the doorknob, moments from walking through the threshold and out of my life forever.

Something snaps in my brain, forcing my legs to move. I rush forward, not ready to lose him again. Not completely. Not after what he just said.

I reach him as the door swings open, grabbing onto him desperately as my heart falls through my ribcage.

Rhenn tenses at my touch. He drops his head, fingers squeezing fiercely against the brass knob.

“Rhenn…”

He turns around so quickly, tangling his hands through the loose strands of my hair. “Damnit, Vix. Why can’t I just forget you?” he utters, a waver in his voice that breaks my heart in two.

His gaze wanders over me, dropping to my mouth, then making its way back up. We’re close enough our chests are touching. So close I can smell the forest on him. The unmistakable scent of pine, smoke from his fireplace, ferns, the earth. It’s as if he belongs more to the wilderness than he does to anything civilized. And beneath it all, something raw and untamed—his own natural musk. All mixed together in a deadly concoction of everything I’ve ever needed.

His body finally relaxes, loosening his hold on my locks. “What I said before,” Rhenn starts, pausing as he breathes deeply. His cool breath tickles my lips with his slow exhale, and I bite the inside of my cheek.