He stood so suddenly I fell backwards and had to release his hand.

“I’ll make sure you have a new queen’s guard before the night is through.”

“I… What?”

“You really don’t understand what’s changed, do you?”

“Lucas and I completed the mate ceremony.”

“He’s marked you. Not like the mate-bond. He’s written himself all over you. Inside you, even. It’s like a tattoo on every part of your being telling other wolves to fuck off. It tells them you’re his. It tells me you’re his.”

“But I—”

“No. This isn’t something you can rationalize around, Secret. This is something neither of us has a say in anymore. You belong to Lucas. You’re not mine anymore.”

He walked into the bedroom, and I was right on his heels. “You can’t go.”

“I have to. I can’t look at you without seeing him.” Stooping in the closet, he started throwing things on the bed.

“But I love you.”

He stood up, a duffel bag in his hand. The bag dropped, and he crossed the room, pulling me in for a hug that hurt as much as it comforted. “I know.”

“I love you more.” More than Lucas. More than the pack.

Desmond tilted his head back. Our gazes locked, and for a fraction of a second I thought it was enough. I thought the power of love alone would break through whatever was ripping us apart and we’d be okay again.

“And I love you. I do. I love you so much you’re the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thought that crosses my mind before I fall asleep. Loving you is the one thing in life that comes easy to me.” He pressed his hand over my heart, and one tear broke free, landing near his thumb. I choked back a sob. “I love you enough to leave.”

I grabbed him when he tried to break away, yanking him back and kissing him. It wasn’t passionate, it was needy and desperate, my urgency laid raw as I foraged past his lips and tried to make him remember the part of us worth fighting for.

I tried to appeal to the part of him that knew I hadn’t given up on us. That knew I’d never give up.

He broke away and wiped a pink tear off my cheek.

“I have to go,” he whispered.

“No.”

“It’s not up for debate.”

“You just said there’s always a choice. You can’t have it both ways.” I grabbed the duffel bag from him and threw it back in the closet. “I almost died out there.” I lifted my shirt and showed him the new bullet scar between my ribs.

He sat on the bed, and for a moment I was reminded of our first fight in this bedroom.

I pleaded with him, using his own words from that fight. “You told me once nothing could match how you feel when you’re with me. So stay with me.”

“It’s different now.”

“Why?”

“Because now you’re really his.”

“I don’t belong to Lucas. I don’t belong to anyone.”

He looked at me, and that one look said it all. One look broke my heart. “No. You don’t belong to anyone. You don’t belong to me. Not anymore.”

The bag re-emerged from the closet, and he put his things in it. I sat in the chair by the door and watched him. The tears didn’t come now. I didn’t cry or scream. I didn’t say a thing as he packed up his half of the life we’d built together like all we were were items in a drawer.

When he went to the door and pulled on his jacket, I stood in the middle of the living room and let out one shuddering wheeze.

“I’m sorry,” he said, like apologizing would somehow heal the hole he was punching in my lungs.

“Then don’t go.”

He shook his head. “I can’t stay. Seeing him all over you… I can’t touch you with him on you. I can’t be here with the constant reminder. I love you, but I can’t be the loser who held on long after the battle was lost.”

“It’s not…”

“It’s over.”

“But—”

“I want to love you. But if I do it like this…it will kill me.”

He stepped through the open door and closed it behind him.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The following places are within a two-block radius of my house—a liquor store, a fae-run weapon shop and a grocery store. I visited all three in the hour after Desmond left me.

Leary Fallon—the merman or whatever the male version of a siren is—who ran the weaponry didn’t want to sell me a new gun. He looked at my streaked mascara and the paper bag with two bottles of Jameson whiskey in it and shook his head.

“I don’t facilitate suicides, McQueen.”

“Fuck you, Fallon. I’m getting married in three days.”

“Yeah, do you know what the leading cause of suicide is?”

“Being denied guns?”

“Divorce.”

“Bullshit. Just give me the SIG.” I made gimme fingers. I might have already opened one of the Jameson bottles on the way here. Maybe.

“What are you going to use it for?”

“Feral werewolves took my last one. I need a replacement.”

Leary was a weird-looking guy. Not conventionally handsome at all, but because of the whole dude-siren thing he had an unusual appeal to him. His face was too thin, his hair was too long and his eyes were the color of seaweed. He was wearing a shirt that said, It’s Okay, Pluto, I’m Not a Planet Either.

Hilarious.

“I’ll pay double.”

“P226 or P229?” He unlocked the glass cabinet and put two guns in front of me. Nice to know money trumped concern for my life. For enough money he would probably turn one of those guns on me himself.

I almost dropped my bottles.

“You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Not quite. But I had had a booze-fueled epiphany. “226.” I tapped the gun on the right. “How much silver do you have?”

“Only three clips that would work for this. You’d have had to special order if you wanted more.”

“I’ll take them. Do you have a holster I could strap to my thigh?”

“Have you seen this gun? And your thigh?” He held up the big weapon then pointed to my leg. “You wouldn’t be able to run for shit.”

“I don’t need to run.”

“Then what the hell do you need a thigh holster for?”

“Because I can’t wear a shoulder holster over my wedding dress.”

A half hour later I emptied my bounty onto the loveseat.

First, two pints of Häagen-Dazs peanut-butter chocolate ice cream, which the sixteen-year-old at the grocery store assured me was the number-one choice of dumped women in the entire Hell’s Kitchen area. Next, the two bottles of Jameson, one with enough missing that my vision had gone wonky and the bottles appeared blurry, making it look to me like I had four of them. Lastly, a new SIG, three silver bullet clips and a thigh holster that came with the warning, “I hope it isn’t a mermaid gown.”

Leary had thought the joke was hilarious.

He thought a lot of things were hilarious…namely himself.

I cracked the top of one pint of ice cream, peeled off the protective covering, scooped out a massive spoonful and dumped a shot of whiskey into the crater left behind. Picking up my cell phone, I pressed the number six and went in search of a spoon.

“Hello?”

“I’m having whiskey and ice cream floats,” I announced. Even my voice sounded fuzzy. “Desmond left me.”

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Brigit brought reinforcements with her. In Brigit terms that meant Dirty Dancing and a bottle of white moscato wine. For when I decided to take a break from the hard stuff. I didn’t want to take a break from the hard stuff. Every time I stopped drinking for five minutes the booze started to work its way out of my system. If I stopped for too long, I might notice how Desmond’s Xbox was still here or how there was a pair of his runners next to the door.

If I saw things too clearly, I might have to acknowledge he was really gone and these things were just remnants. Reminders of the man who had walked out the door.

So I sat on the armchair…nope…I sat on the floor because the armchair must have moved at the last moment. Floor was comfier anyway. I reached for the Jameson and realized I’d emptied the first bottle already.

What time was it, anyway?

“What time is it, anyway?”

“Time for the soothing powers of Patrick Swayze.” Brigit took the empty Jameson bottle and replaced it with the wine.

“I don’t want wine,” I snarled.

“Sure you do.”

“Okay.”

She hit play on the DVD, and Baby started telling us all about her magical summer in the Catskills. I’d never been good at being a girl, but I had to admit there was a soothing power to the movie. By the time Baby and Johnny were having the time of their lives and showing the whole resort how dirty dancing was for everyone, the wine bottle was empty.

“Bri?”

“Yeah?”

“Is he really gone?”

“I don’t know.”

“I fucked this up, didn’t I?”

Brigit sat behind me, and I noticed the traitorous armchair didn’t dump her on the ground. Brutus.

“You didn’t do it on purpose.”

“But I hurt him.”

She started to braid my hair, her fingers tracing soothing paths along my scalp. Brigit was great at being a girl.

“You love him. Sometimes we hurt the people we love. If he didn’t really, really love you back, he wouldn’t have been hurt.”

“Huh.” I thought about the logic of her statement, and it made a funny sort of sense. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

“You need to give him time.”

“How much time?”

“It isn’t a set sort of number. Just give him time.”