Chapter 169

Violet’s POV

“Let’s warm up with a stream of wildflowers,” Bennett suggested at training the next morning. He hadn’t asked for wildflowers since the first day. It was too easy.

He was coming in soft after my hallucination yesterday evening. After Theo cancelled guy’s night so he could spend the night holding me instead. After Theo skipped training this morning to spend the entire day in the archives, pouring over the texts for how to undo the fake mate bond in hopes of stabilizing my magic a bit more.

I almost offered to join him in the archives this morning, but we both knew that practicing my magic as much as possible would help stabilize it. So here I was, in Marcy’s backyard, not even complaining that Bennett was going so easy on me.

For the first time, I felt like I needed it.

I let a stream of wildflowers flood from my hands while the guilt of attacking my own mate gnawed at me from the inside. How was I supposed to take down a whole system of injustice if I couldn’t be trusted to know my enemies from my family?

“Good,” my baby cousin encouraged. “You can stop there.”

It took two tries to stop the flow of flowers. It took four tries to get the pile of them to disappear.

“I need a break,” I told him, even though we’d just started, and I sat down on the cobblestone steps. Bennett said nothing as he sat next to me. “I need you to do guy’s night with Theo tonight.”

Bennett turned toward me, looking like that was the last thing he thought should happen.

“If I’m getting worse,” I told him, “then a support system outside of me will only be more important.” Bennett dropped his shoulders, like he hated what I was implying.

Honestly, so did I.

“Please,” I requested.

Bennett broke our eye contact, grinding his teeth together. “You want me to host a guy’s night tonight for all our male cousins and Theo?”

I nodded.

“Fine.” He pushed off the ground to stand. “Manifest ten weapons.”

My stomach dropped at his impossible condition.

He shook his head at the face I was making. “They don’t have to be traditional weapons. I don’t care what they are as long as you can demonstrate how you would use each one as a weapon.”

He offered me his hand. “Deal?”

I took his hand, using the leverage to pull into a standing position. “I do this, and guy’s night is on?”

Bennett inclined his head.

“Deal.”

Theodore’s POV

I hadn’t really been in the mood for guy’s night. Not the day after we realized how bad these hallucinations were going to get. Not after a full day of still not finding out how to undo the fake mate bond.

But Violet was right. Like always.

She pushed me to go spend time with her male cousins, so I did. We drank beer, ate food, and played card games. Then one by one, each of her cousins sat with me.

I didn’t realize what was happening at first. The first one was Marcus, who found me in the kitchen when I was grabbing another beer. It was just the two of us in there as he leaned against the kitchen counter and told me the story of all three of his wife’s miscarriages.

Costello was next, the second oldest after Marcy. He found me in a corner by myself between card games and told me about the day his father came back from the Bloody War, the only uncle to make it back across the border. Costello shared what it felt like to watch his father die from the injuries even the High Priest couldn’t heal.

One by one, they each opened up, and I got a little annoyed at first. Was this some sort of therapy session? Didn’t they know I had problems of my own?

But then we’d go back to the group, back to playing cards, back to laughing. And suddenly the clap on the back after a good hand wasn’t just a congratulations from a man I barely knew, but a moment shared with someone who trusted me enough to share his heaviest burdens.

Suddenly the card game I didn’t care about at all meant more when I realized my teammate might not have been here had our opponent not saved him from drowning at the age of seven. When I realized that every man in this room had a damn good reason – if not several – to fall into despair for the rest of their lives.

Instead, they all chose to be here, together, with me. Connecting, laughing, and choosing to create good moments that made the unbearable ones worthwhile.

One by one, they all trusted me with their vulnerabilities, and I realized what a true honor that was.

At 1am, we decided to call it a night, and I was surprised by my disappointment that the night was ending. Bennett offered to walk me back to Marcy’s, and I took him up on it, fully aware that I could have just splintered.

“Did you tell them to do that?” I asked Bennett as we walked through the deserted streets lit by moonlight.

“Do what?” he asked. I watched him, his face clear in the light of the full moon, but I found no indication that he was playing dumb.

“To open up to me like that,” I shared. “To share their hardships with me. To make me feel less alone.”

Bennett raised his eyebrows. He was either surprised to hear this or an excellent actor.

“Even though some of it was hard to hear,” I went on. “Listening to Kelsey’s story of how he lost his first wife to illness hit a little close to home for me. But it also made me feel like…” I swallowed roughly, “like if that happens to me, at least I’ll have someone to turn to who will understand.”

I inhaled sharply and shook my head, not allowing my thoughts to linger on that possibility.

Bennett’s silence drew my gaze. His eyes were wide as he ran his hand through his hair.

“I’m shocked,” he explained when he caught me staring, “that Kelsey said anything about his first wife. He never talks about her to anyone. Ever.”

The enormity of that information caused my eyes to glass.

“But if he’s going to break that pattern, I’m glad he did it with you. Because the truth is…”

Bennett took a deep breath as we crossed onto Marcy’s property.

“The truth is, Theodore Nightshade, that you’re family now. We will fight by your side just like we would fight by Violet’s. And if we lose her…”

Bennett stopped midway to the front porch, turning to face me. “Know that there is not a place on earth you can go that we will not find you to keep you breathing and fed, to hold you when it hurts more than you can bear, and help you remember how to get back up when you’re ready.”

“I have to tell you that,” he added, “because you’ll never find out from experience. Because there’s no way in hell any of us are letting Violet Donovan die.”