by Katee Robert
Monroe and I end up on either side of Broderick, the best position to reach the food we have placed in front of him, and it’s so…easy. So fucking easy. She and Broderick exchange good-natured barbs, and I can’t shake the feeling that they’re putting in a little extra effort to comfort me.
The movie is hot garbage, but it’s incredibly enjoyable, especially with Monroe’s ongoing commentary and Broderick’s commentary about her commentary.
I want this forever.
It’s really a shame that I’m about to drop a bomb on our happy time in the morning.
Chapter 29
Broderick
The next morning, Monroe pulls me aside while Shiloh is in the shower. She’s got a pinched look on her face that I’ve never seen before. She seems almost…worried.
Fucking fitting, because I’m worried, too.
She squeezes my arm. “I think we’re on the same page about Shiloh, but I want to make sure.”
It’s the most natural thing in the world to cover her hand with mine and give her a squeeze. “There isn’t a damn thing she can show us that will change how we feel about her.”
“Yes.” Monroe exhales. “Yes, that’s exactly it. I don’t know why she’s acting like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but I think it’s going to take both of us to anchor her through this. Has she gone home since she joined with you guys?”
“No.” She shared the broad strokes of her story with me, but never the details and never the location. I can admit that Monroe brought out a strange sort of safety net for Shiloh that I never could have managed on my own. When I get overprotective, it pisses her off. When Monroe does it, Shiloh finds her amusing and reacts indulgently. Maybe I should resent that, but I’m not one to ignore tools just because they aren’t in my toolbox.
Monroe still looks uncertain, so I pull her into a hug. “It will be okay, Bride. We make a good team, especially when it comes to giving Shiloh what she needs.” We make a good team when it comes to other things, too. For the last two weeks, things have been damn near seamless between us, even when we’re bickering.
“We do, don’t we?” Monroe lays her head against my chest. I can’t see her face from this position, but her voice goes almost wistful. “It’s almost a shame that this was destined to be temporary. I don’t like wasting time on what-ifs, but it’s kind of hard not to wonder what we’d accomplish if we had longer than a year.”
It feels downright traitorous to agree with her, but fuck, I can’t argue. We still bump up against each other’s razor-sharp edges sometimes, but now that we’re not actively at odds, it’s impossible to ignore how much I enjoy her company. How much I just flat out enjoy her. “I know.”
She gives me a squeeze and slips out of my arms. “Oh well. Let’s be there for our girl today and enjoy the rest of this time together.” She hesitates. “I don’t like the thought of asking Shiloh to choose after next Lammas, though.”
It’s like she’s pulled the thoughts right out of my head. I clear my throat. “I was thinking we could share.”
“Joint custody?” Monroe’s smile is on the bitter side of bittersweet. “It won’t last before that blows up in our faces.”
“Nothing lasts forever, Bride.”
Monroe gives herself a shake and grins at me, though her bravado doesn’t reach her eyes. “Miss me a little when I’m gone, yeah?” She strides to the closet before I can come up with a response.
I will.
It’s the fucking truth. Gods, how did this get so messed up? Life wasn’t easy when I hated Monroe, but it was certainly less complicated. I head into the bathroom to finish getting ready. One look at Shiloh’s face heavily discourages trying to make conversation. She’s spooked, too pale, the circles beneath her eyes confirming what I experienced last night with her tossing and turning—she’s exhausted and stressed out.
“You don’t have to do this.”
She dries her hair with perfunctory motions. “Yes, I really do.”
Which is how we end up in one of the compound trucks an hour later. I should probably have talked to Abel or scheduled some backup, but Shiloh’s already so edgy, I don’t want to pave the way for more witnesses to this moment of vulnerability. There’s a reason she hasn’t told most of the people in our group about her history, and I respect that enough not to bring them into it unnecessarily. I didn’t tell my older brother for that very reason; he would have insisted on backup, Shiloh’s feelings be damned.
Monroe sits in the middle of the bench seat, and I’m grateful for that as Shiloh guides the vehicle out of the compound. For all her spikes, Monroe is far better at navigating Shiloh’s emotions without pissing her off. I’m not sure how she manages it, especially when she gets under my skin so intensely, but that comfort is what we need today.
I’m so busy running scenarios on how to provide that comfort, to support Shiloh, that I don’t realize what direction we’re headed in until Monroe tenses next to me. She speaks softly, but there’s an edge to her tone. “This isn’t the way out of Sabine Valley, love.”
I look around. She’s right. Instead of heading south and then east toward the highway, she’s gone north toward the river. Toward Amazon territory.
Shiloh’s got the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip. “No. It’s not the way out of Sabine Valley.”
Monroe sucks in a breath as we cross the bridge. For once, she doesn’t seem able to ask the hard question, so I drop my hand to her thigh, squeeze, and do it for her. “Shiloh, where did you grow up?”
She still won’t look at me—at us. Several city blocks pass before she finally answers, so softly, I strain to hear her over the faint hum of the engine. “Sabine Valley.”
“No.” Monroe starts to lean forward, but I use my arm to keep her pressed back to the seat. It’s a token of how distracted she is that she allows it. “No,” she repeats. “I would have known if you were one of us.”
“How?” Shiloh still sounds too distant, too empty. “How would you have known, up in that expensive penthouse, living in the shadow of the throne? How could you possibly have known, Monroe? You were fifteen when I left the city. Still a child.”
For the first time, I feel actual sympathy toward Monroe. I shift my arm to tuck it around her shoulders. I almost pull Shiloh in, but she’s holding herself so tightly, I’m worried she might strike out or just drive us into the nearest building. Still, I can’t help brushing her shoulder with my fingers and saying the thing Monroe obviously can’t quite bring herself to. “Amazons value their children. They don’t do shit like what was done to you.” Her parents made my father look like a saint.
Shiloh laughs, a broken sound. “Everyone says that. Do you think if they repeat it enough, they’ll change the truth?”
We drive north and north and north, until we near the edge of the city limits. This far from the center of Amazon territory, the buildings are all one and two stories, and a good portion of them are residential. People who can’t afford the higher cost of living nearer to the river. It should set them up for raids from the perimeter, but Aisling has several blocks along the edge of the city converted to what is essentially a kill box. Anyone attempting to invade will be met with force and eliminated.
Both the Mystic faction and ours have something similar, though Ezekiel has been overseeing the revamping of ours. Those blocks in all three territories are part of the reason we chose to return the way we did—using Lammas to force a ceasefire.
Not that any of that shit matters right now, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Shiloh is a fucking Amazon and has been this entire time. Monroe is shaking against me, but I can’t see her face to tell if she’s upset or furious, so I just hug her tighter against me. “Shiloh—”
“We’re almost there.” She turns, too sharply, and slams to a stop in front of an empty lot between two buildings. Judging from the charred remains and a few concrete half walls, it wasn’t always empty. She throws the truck into park and climbs out b
efore I can dredge up some kind of verbal response.
What the fuck am I supposed to say?
“An Amazon,” Monroe murmurs. “Her parents were fucking Amazons.” She twists to look up at me, her green eyes shining. “I know this place, Broderick. The people here hurt a child when I was twenty-one, and I killed them and burnt their home to the ground.” Her lower lip quivers before she seems to make an effort to still it. “I killed Shiloh’s parents. I didn’t even know they had a child.”
“How could you have known?” As Shiloh said, Monroe was only fifteen when Shiloh left the city.
“I should have known.” She reaches past me for the door. “They were fucking priests for my mother. She should have known.”
Ah.
That’s the crux of it.
I open the door, and we slowly climb out and join Shiloh where she stands at the curb, staring at the charred remains of her childhood home. Monroe is still moving strangely, but she waves me off when I lean in her direction. She’s right. Shiloh is our priority. I move to stand behind her and carefully wrap my arms around her, moving slow so she can shrug me off if she wants.
She doesn’t.
Shiloh tucks my arms around her like a security blanket and leans back against me, hard. This close, I can feel the fine tremors shuddering through her body. “I’m sorry,” I murmur.
“Why are you sorry, Broderick?” She’s speaking too fast, her words tumbling over each other to escape her lips. “Is it a problem that you’ve been fucking not one but two Amazons this whole time?”
I turn her in my arms until I can see her face. Her eyes are red, but there are no tear tracks on her face. Somehow, that makes it worse. I carefully take her shoulders. “I love you.”
Shiloh flinches. “But—”
“I. Love. You,” I repeat. “You are more than the faction you were born into, more than the abuse you survived, more than everything that came after. Why the fuck would something that happened before we met have any relevance on how I feel about you, Shiloh?”
Her tremors get stronger. “You hate Amazons.”
Next to us, Monroe gives a wild laugh. “Not all Amazons, love. Not…” She drags in a rough breath. “I killed your parents. Did you know that?”
Against all reason, that seems to steady Shiloh. Her lips curve in a sad smile. “Guess you got your wish, after all.”
“Don’t do that,” Monroe whispers. “Don’t make light of this catastrophic failure on my part.”
“Monroe.” Shiloh shakes her head, her hair brushing across my arm. “I said it before and I’ll say it again—you’re three years younger than I am. What could you have possibly done?”
“I could have killed them sooner.” Monroe reaches out but hesitates before she touches either of us. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, love. I didn’t…” She makes a pained sound. “I can’t believe the shit I said to you. Why didn’t you punch me in the face when I was talking about how that would never happen in my faction?”
“The thought did cross my mind.” Shiloh’s still shaking, but she feels a little steadier, less likely to shatter. “What happened to them?”
I open my mouth to ask if she’s sure she wants to know, but Monroe beats me to speaking. She always did have more faith in Shiloh’s strength, more willingness to let our woman stand on her own two feet without a protective cocoon around her. “They hurt someone about six years after you left.”
“A child.”
“A child,” she confirms. “I was the one sent to handle the situation and to make examples of them.”
Shiloh draws in a full breath and releases it in a shuddering exhale. “I’m glad. I… I should have done it myself, but I couldn’t.”
“No. No, Shiloh, you shouldn’t have done it yourself. No part of this is on you.” Again, Monroe reaches out. Again, she drops her hand before it makes contact. “We failed you.”
Shiloh catches her wrist and pulls her into our hug. It’s the easiest thing in the world to lift my arm to encompass Monroe. It feels so fucking right, something gets lodged in my throat. We’ll figure this out and find a way through. I don’t have any doubts about that, not right now. I hug my women tightly to me, offering them comfort the best way I know how. “This changes nothing for me, Shiloh.”
“It changes nothing for me, either.”
Shiloh looks between us as best she can with our positions. “Seriously? I’m an Amazon, and you’re just going to accept that?”
“Yes.”
Monroe nods. “Yes.” She narrows her eyes. “Though my mother and I are going to have a discussion very soon about this.”
“Monroe—” Shiloh makes a choked sound. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on when her eyes roll back in her head and she goes limp. It’s only my arm around her waist that keeps her off the ground.
“What the fuck?”
“Mystic.” Monroe curses, and then she’s gone, sprinting toward the building to the right of us.
“Monroe!” She ignores me yelling her name, and I can’t chase her down without abandoning Shiloh, and I still don’t know what the fuck is wrong with Shiloh.
I see it as I ease her limp body to the ground. A tiny dart sticking out of her neck. There’s already a black ring around it, which is confirmation of Monroe’s claim. The Mystics love their fucking poison. “Goddamn it.” Monroe is out there going after a fucking Mystic, and if the fact they made it this far behind Amazon territory is any indication, it’s one of the leader’s elite squad.
Monroe might die.
Shiloh might die.
Panic grips me, and I fumble for my phone. It takes three tries to dial Abel and as the phone rings, I watch the black spread from the dart in creeping lines. This poison is a Mystic specialty. No one has ever figured out what exactly it is, and even with all our research, we’ve never found anything similar out in the world. It has to be something they cooked up in their greenhouses and labs at some point, which means only a Mystic will know the antidote.
“What?”
I have to set my phone on the pavement because I’m shaking so badly, I’m afraid I’ll drop it. “I need help.”
“Where are you?”
“Amazon faction, northern border. Shiloh’s been attacked, and we need an antidote to Mystic poison, and we need it now.”
Abel’s silent for a beat, two. When he speaks, his voice has gone soft with menace. “What the fuck are you doing there, Broderick? We have a treaty with them, but that doesn’t mean you can come and go as you please. You’re going to send us to war, and we’re not ready.”
I can’t think clearly enough to lie. “Shiloh brought us to her childhood home.”
Another pause. “Are you saying that Shiloh is an Amazon? Has been an Amazon this entire fucking time?”
“Yes. No. I don’t fucking know, Abel. She left the city years before we met her. What the hell does it matter?”
“It matters,” he bites out. My brother curses. “We can’t do a damn thing for her.”
“The fuck you can’t. Talk to Fallon. She’ll have—”
“I cannot do a damn thing for her,” he repeats, harder this time. “If we come in there to pick you up, guns blazing, Aisling will use it as ammunition to prove we broke treaty first. She and Ciar will join forces to crush the Raider faction.”
“If we don’t get the antidote, Shiloh will die!”
“I’m sorry.” He actually sounds like he means it. “But I have to weigh the lives of everyone in the faction against hers and, fuck. Broderick, I’m sorry but I can’t help her. If you can get her across the river to us…”
“Monroe went after the Mystic. I can’t leave her.” A decision I wouldn’t have hesitated to make a few weeks ago in this same situation. But Monroe went after the assassin on her own. She has no backup. I can’t leave Shiloh unattended, but I also can’t leave Monroe hanging here.
It’s not because she’s the Amazon heir and if she’s harmed, it will go just as badly for u
s as if Abel brought a squad to rescue us. I can’t leave her because… Fuck, I care about my Bride. More than care.
Gods, this is so fucked up.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Do you trust Monroe?”
“Yes.” It’s the truth.
“The Mystics carry the antidote on them. If she can get it, it will help Shiloh faster than anything I can do.” He pauses. “We’ll be waiting at the western bridge. Get back to us safely, brother. That’s an order.”
I hang up. A quick look around shows the street is still deserted, but I don’t know how long it will stay that way. As much as I don’t want to move Shiloh, we can’t stay here. I hold my breath as I ease her into my arms and stagger my feet, heading for the truck. “Hang on. Just hang the fuck on. Monroe will get the fucker and bring us the antidote.”
I hope like hell I’m not lying.
Chapter 30
Monroe
Rage gives me wings. I fly over the ground in pursuit of the Mystic. I can just see their robes, a deep purple and blue that would blend perfectly into a twilight skyline. They’re moving fast, having obviously already scouted out a quick exit, but I know this faction better than anyone.
I follow for another half a block before I feel like I have a good read on their direction. Then I veer right, cutting down two blocks and scrambling up a porch column to the roof of the building. I pick up speed, easily jumping the gaps between the buildings as I head for the street they should be coming down any moment.
Sure enough, the fucker is pelting in my direction. Their face and hair is hidden beneath a hood, but they don’t bother to look behind them. Fool.
I throw myself off the building as they approach. They look up as my shadow passes over them, but by then it’s too late. I hit them hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs, but who needs to breathe when fury is propelling them? I straddle them, easily dodging a punch, and grab their throat, slamming their head back into the pavement. Once. Twice. On the third time, their arms fall back to the street and lie still.
