“How am I supposed to leave you when you need me?”

“You don’t,” she said simply, which had my eyes widening in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you leave, then you come back again. You think their journey isn’t entangled with us? You and I both know their place isn’t simply in Oregon. They got things to do as much as we do.”

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that a whisper of hope fluttered into being inside me.

Claudette made sense.

Knight was nearly nineteen, Cade was seventeen, and Grace, my beautiful Grace, was eighteen.

They were adults. Not just in pack lore but human law too.

I was older, but that wasn’t something I could change, was it? And I didn’t have to initiate the mate bond to bring them with me.

Knight and Grace would be graduating this year, thanks to Knight being held back when he was twelve, and though Cade wouldn’t…

There had to be a way to make this work.

I needed them.

Fuck, I did.

And if Claudette was right, which she usually was, then they needed me and the Blanc-Blanc needed us.

Reaching up, I tugged on my bottom lip, squirming it between my fingers as I pondered what I should do.

Even though Claudette was telling me to bring them here, how could I do that when I didn’t know where they were?

“Shug?”

I arched a brow at her, then remembered she didn’t know what I’d done, winced with guilt and, shoulders hunching, muttered, “Yes, Claudette?”

Her smile was sweet. “You a virgin, son?”

My cheeks burned hotly. “No.” This time, the shame was real.

She hummed. “Seth?” she queried.

Everything that was me, testicles included, wanted to ram up tight into a tiny ball and be swallowed up whole by a passing hurricane that’d toss me anywhere but here.

“You turning pink on me, shug?”

I grunted. “We shouldn’t talk about this stuff.”

“Why not? You a prude?”

That had me wincing. “No.”

“Then you think I’m too old to remember what goes where?”

Considering the noises that came out of her and Papa Noir’s bedchamber? Nope.

“I just don’t like talking about it.”

“Sex? Or sex with him?”

Both? Neither? Hell if I knew.

I heaved a sigh. “Why are you asking?”

“Lots of pretty girls in the Blanc-Blanc.” She shrugged. “You ain’t interested. Wondered if you were tied to your Gracie.”

“I wish I was. I wish I was going to her clean.”

She clucked her tongue. “He didn’t sully you, child. Didn’t dirty you up.”

“I-I regret it,” I whispered, aware that my voice was hoarse as I turned to stare at the fire ahead of me.

In the yard of the Blanc-Blanc compound, there was always a bonfire burning in the middle of it with logs around it, comfortable seats and floor cushions for people to lounge on the ground.

The pretty girls Claudette mentioned were priestesses-in-training, and I wasn’t ashamed to admit that when they danced sky clad, I looked.

I was a guy. I had eyes.

The compound was just outside of New Orleans’ city limits. The parish where it was housed had an administration the Blanc-Blanc had infiltrated a hundred years earlier, so this place was pretty wild as things went. The police turned a blind eye to strange noises that squawked in the middle of the night from the chapel, never passed on complaints from neighbors about the folk coming in and out of the compound at all hours.

This had become home, even though we were often on the move.

We had to be.

Where the Secte Rouge tainted, we had to cleanse.

“Why? Did you have feelings for him?”

My mouth twisted at that. “I hate thinking about that time,” I complained.

“The past is going to be raked up again and again, shug.” She hitched an elegant shoulder, somehow, as always, making it seem like part of a dance.

She was the most incredible woman I’d ever met, and I would never have known her were it not for Seth.

Everything happens for a reason…

The old and irritating adage was true.

“If we hadn’t fucked, he’d probably still be alive.”

Her brows rose. “Why? How did one lead to the other?”

“He thought he loved me. I didn’t. I was just—” I reached up to pinch the bridge of my nose. “Truthfully, I don’t know what I was doing. He wasn’t nice. In fact, he was goddamn horrible. Living with him, day in and day out, it was hard work. He used to get into fights all the damn time, and I was the one who had to figure out a way to sow the seeds of peace. He made it impossible with his arrogance and his inability to keep his goddamn mouth shut.”

“So you used him for pleasure?” she queried, and I sensed her surprise.

“It was more for comfort,” I admitted softly, shoulders hunching again. “By his nature, he kept us both isolated. I was lonely, and I missed my family. It was stupid to equate that with affection, but I did. At first. Then I realized what was happening, didn’t like it, and knew he was falling in love with me.” I grunted in distress. “I did nothing to make him love me.”

“Maybe the love was there all along. We often paint him as a truly evil creature, because in many ways he embodies exactly what is twisted and sinful in mankind. He was born to be that, just as your Gracie is born to express all that is joyous and sweet. But he was still a man, still had feelings and wants and desires.

“Why shouldn’t that have been you?”

My mouth tightened. “I wish I hadn’t been. I never asked for that. We were just fooling around. We were kids. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“If his feelings were already there, for his protector, his only friend and confidante, why wouldn’t he fall for you once things turned physical?” She released a weary sigh, and shook her head in a pitying way that spoke quite clearly of my inherent male stupidity. “Why did it result in his death?”

“He wanted more. I didn’t. Seth being Seth wouldn’t give up, was as relentless as a bull on coke, and pushed.”

“And you pushed back,” she said simply, and I bowed my head even though I knew she couldn’t see it, well aware that she’d sense she was correct without any interference from me.

We sat there for a few endless moments, me looking at the fire, at the bright orange flames that licked the sky, the way they danced around the clusters of wood, how they made the brown flesh of the priestesses gleam under its golden glow. The way the motes in the air quivered with the heat, and how it scorched the grass beneath it.

It was a quiet night for the Blanc-Blanc compound, mostly because we’d lost two priestesses yesterday, but also because the equinox was approaching.

That was always when the Secte Rouge’s power grew.

When Claudette bustled to her feet, I half-expected her to leave without another word to me, maybe out of disgust or maybe because she had nothing to say.

But she did.

She clasped her hand to my shoulder and murmured, “You’re a good boy, Daniel. Always have been, but the older you get, the more mature and experienced, the more I see and know how right the Mother was to fit you into this role.” I made a scoffing sound but she, unerringly, placed her finger to my lips to hush me. “She knows more than you do. She sees more than you do. Her will can be overrun by your will, but even so, do you think she doesn’t know how the end destination can change thanks to a simple break at a service station along the way?” She tutted. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mother knew this would happen all along. Seth’s power didn’t come from his life, Daniel, did it?”