“But it’s a lie and you hate lying and oh my God—” my stomach flips over as I remember, and I feel violently ill. “—the re-election campaign. What if this ruins everything? What if I ruined everything for you? I couldn’t live with myself!”

“Shh.” Ash’s fingers are deep in my hair now, rubbing my scalp and massaging me. “I’ll do anything to protect you, angel, including lie. Yes, it may impact the campaign—I’m afraid no matter how convincingly we lie, the stain of suspicion will never be scrubbed out, not all the way at least. People will be watching you and Embry very closely from here on out, waiting for any sign that it’s all true. They’re wolves that way.”

I close my eyes, forcing myself to take deep breaths to quash back the panic. Of course that’s what Ash meant when he said that it wasn’t just about us any longer. It was about the campaign.

“I won’t allow you to blame yourself for this. You were kidnapped, toyed with by Melwas, and he’s continuing to toy with you. You, Embry and I have already sorted out how we feel about what happened in that bed.”

I look up at him, thinking about the welts on my ass, his bitter words. “Have we?”

His hand tightens in my hair. “As much as possible, little princess. It hurt to watch. Not only was I jealous watching the two of you fuck without me, but it hurt to remember how much I failed you. How I couldn’t be the one to save you or comfort you. But that wasn’t what made me angry, in the end.”

“What was it, then? The re-election?”

“Not even that. It was that once again, I couldn’t protect you. We should have guessed Melwas had something like this, we should have been ready. But now you’re going to be exposed to slander and vilification because of my failure. You don’t deserve that, and I don’t deserve you.”

“It’s not your fault, Ash. You can’t think that. Embry and I are the ones who—well, and Melwas. It’s everybody’s fault but yours.”

He leans down and kisses the top of my head but doesn’t answer. And after several moments, he easily scoops me off the floor and carries me to bed, where he fucks me well into the night.

22

Embry

before

I didn’t wake up that morning thinking my life would change. In fact, I woke up hung over and alone, feeling horse-kicked right in the ribs because my heart hurt so much.

Ash had proposed to Jenny the night before. Had proposed to her in a beautiful Chicago restaurant with Merlin and me and her parents there. Got down to one knee and said all the usual words about love and promise and fidelity. Jenny cried. Her mother cried. Her father shook Ash’s hand. There were pictures.

I left right after, walking to my hotel alone.

I felt acutely aware that I’d never seen the ring he proposed to me with two years before. He’d never opened the box. That was strange, wasn’t it? Didn’t you normally open the box to show the ring to your lover? He did with Jenny, the pretty diamonds flashing in the light from the chandelier overhead. She was charmingly captivated by it, and then charmingly even more captivated with Ash when he started talking.

Maybe he never opened my box because he knew deep down that I’d say no.

But it wasn’t the ring that made me order up an entire bottle of Hendricks to my room, it really wasn’t even the proposal itself.

No, it was the look on his face.

Open and happy. Adoring. He loved Jenny—like, genuinely loved her. He wanted to marry her. Not to spite me or to please Merlin, but because she made him happy in her own uncomplicated, straightforward way.

I used to tell myself that Colchester was an extraordinary man with extraordinary needs. That the karmic balance of him saving lives and winning wars was his dark hours with me. That I gave him something no one else could, that the things I let him do to me under the cover of night enabled him to wake up the next morning and be a hero for everyone else.

But now I knew that was a lie. He was still a hero. He was still a hero having straight vanilla sex with a lawyer. He was still a hero in a relationship where a blowjob was a birthday present, not something he could take by force whenever he damn well pleased.

So where did that leave me?

What did that make me?

Extraneous? Damaged? Sick?

And couldn’t he have at least acted like it hurt a little? To propose to Jenny?

Because it hurt me a lot. And maybe that was the point. Maybe Ash couldn’t deny himself just a little taste of that old sadism to make me watch this, make me see how happy he was with someone else.

But I told him I’d stay with him, I thought bitterly as I got in the shower. My mouth still tasted like limes. I told him I still wanted to fuck even though I couldn’t marry him.

I remembered his face when I’d said that, as he’d slowly gotten to his feet at the top of my favorite valley, the ring box still in his hand.

“But I don’t want to just fuck you,” he’d said in a hollow voice. “I want to love you.”

“I’ll give you everything of myself,” I’d said, pleading. “Just don’t ask me to give that. Please.”

And I’d seen it in his face. The rupture. The hurt. The fury.

“Would you rather have it be all or nothing? Really?” I’d demanded. “Isn’t it better to have something?”

He hadn’t answered, and so I’d answered for myself, out of my own ruptured fury and hurt. “Fine,” I’d said. “I thought you meant you’d take me any way you could have me, but apparently that’s changed. So maybe it’s better if we don’t have each other at all.” And I’d left him there clutching the unopened ring box.