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Then it smashed against the wall to his left.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re cleaning that up.”

Colton rubbed the back of his neck, taking a visible breath. “Of course I will.” His voice was just above a whisper, yet his deep despondency was blaring. “I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “It’s not my mug.”

He turned to face me. His eyes—full of pain, agony, shame—caught mine. “That’s not what I’m sorry about, Hadley.”

My heart thundered. For killing my parents. He was sorry. He was beyond sorry.

I was about to say words that I never thought I’d say to their killer, mostly because I planned on the bastard screaming so loud they wouldn’t be able to hear me.

“I forgive you, Colton.” It wasn’t a lie. I myself was shocked by the truth of the simple sentence that encompassed so many complicated emotions.

His brows nearly rose to his forehead. “You cannot forgive me,” he whispered. “I ruined your whole life.”

“You’ll ruin my morning too if you don’t get me another coffee,” I deadpanned.

He looked at me, opened his mouth, shut it again, nodded, then turned back to the coffee maker.

He didn’t say anything else until he set the steaming mug in front of me, which I sipped from gratefully. He made himself a cup then settled across from me, looking uncertain, afraid, disoriented.

Despite his impressive, large physique, he looked like a lost little boy.

And I was not the one to comfort him or help him find his way. Yet here he was. Because not unlike me, when everything was falling apart around him, he had nowhere to go. Just this house. Ground zero.

“You remember everything, then?” I set my coffee down.

He nodded once. The gesture was curt. Violent. Painful.

“I remember every death.” He stared down into his mug, his words uttered in a hushed undertone. “Every murder. The screams. The taste of their flesh in my mouth.” He held the mug hard enough so I could see the whites of his knuckles. “In my teeth.”

Though I had a strong stomach, I was appropriately hungover, and knowing that Colton could taste the flesh of the humans he’d killed did make my insides roil just a little.

“It wasn’t you,” I replied quietly, keeping my poker face.

“It was me.” He shook his head. “This thing inside of me,” he hurled the word, disgusted. “This monster—which my parents knew was doing all of this—they let it happen. They didn’t stop it.” Colton’s disdain for his parents was palpable, coating the air.

“They couldn’t.” I wasn’t sure why I was taking up for Gerald and Sharon; I was still pretty pissed at both of them. “The curse.”

“They could!” Colton slammed his fist down on the counter. The granite cracked. “They could’ve slit my throat in my sleep, could’ve drugged me. Imprisoned me. They had options, Hadley. Yet they let me kill innocent people for over a decade.”

“All good points,” I agreed. “For a logical person. Not for parents faced with having to kill their only son. They had hope. That they’d find the witch. Break the curse.”

“Hope is a fucking fairy tale,” he snarled.

I recoiled, my neck snapping back in surprise at the outburst from the man who had only ever wanted the fairy-tale ending.

Being cursed by a witch, murdering people, and turning into a werewolf while your parents knew it all and did nothing to stop it would make a cynic out of even the most all-American of men.

“I don’t disagree,” I replied. “And you can be angry at your parents, I certainly am, but you can’t demonize them for hoping you’d be saved.”

“Can’t I?” he chuffed. “Because there are thirteen families out there that don’t have brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, friends who never get to hope for salvation.”

He was tormenting himself over the deaths. Understandably. I didn’t consider myself any kind of hero, and I didn’t even really like regular people—or irregular ones at that—yet if I found out I’d murdered a bunch of them while under a curse, I’d be beating myself up too.

Colton—who had made it his life mission to protect and serve—was being faced with the reality of just how much damage he’d done.