Gwen’s POV
When I come to, the first thing I do is check the time. I sigh in relief when I realise I was only out for several hours. It’s now eight o’clock at night, and I’m starving.
I should take care of that before finding Stefan and giving him a piece of my mind about what I think of him pulling his little hypnotising trick on me.
I head downstairs, mentally steeling myself for whatever scenario awaits down there. Hint: scenarios involving Stefan and my sister. I’m not sure who between them I’m less ready to face right now. Maybe both of them, together.
The living room is clear and I’m almost believing I’m home free when I walk into the kitchen and there they are.
“Eat all of it,” Stefan is saying, placing a steaming bowl of soup in front of Mari. “You’ll feel as good as new in the morning.”
She flashes him a grateful smile as she grasps the spoon beside her. “Thank you, Stefan.”
You know what? Maybe I’m not starving after all…
Before I can tiptoe out of the entrance and back towards the stairs, Stefan looks up. Our eyes lock.
“You’re awake!” he calls cheerily.
Did he forget that he knocked me out?
“Gwen?” My eyes move from him to the new voice uttering my name. It’s Mari. She has turned away from the island and is now looking at me, a look of awe on her face. “Oh my God, it’s really you!”
Before I can process her reaction, she steps away from her seat and rushes over. I don’t have time to react as she wraps her arms around me and squeezes, hugging me tightly.
“I thought I’d never see you again!” she cries, before pulling back and staring at my face. I wasn’t expecting such a reception, so I’m kind of frozen at the moment.
“Me too,” I manage. “I had no idea where you were.”
“It’s a long story,” she says, wiping her eyes, which are suddenly teary. There’s definitely something wrong with me. My twin is so emotional seeing me after almost two decades apart, yet here I am, busy feeling insecure about her appearance. Scratch that. About her entire existence.
“I’m so happy that you’re okay,” I tell her, and at least that much is true. It suddenly has me thinking of Mum. Where is she? She would be beyond the moon to know that she is alive.
“Where’s Mum? Stefan mentioned that she came to get you after…” she trails off.
I shrug. “We lost contact.”
She frowns at me. “How?”
How?
“She abandoned me.” Again. Well, I’m the one who left, but she moved and didn’t bother leaving any sort of contact on how to reach her. Now that I think of it, she must have been happy to get a chance to ditch me again.
“Oh,” Mari says. “I’m sorry.”
“No big deal,” I tell her. “I survived.”
“Mari, your soup is getting cold,” Stefan interrupts our little sisterly reunion.
“Oh, yeah, better get back to that,” she says, flashing me a smile and getting back to her seat.
I remain in my position as Stefan comes towards me. “You okay?” he asks, his gaze roaming over my face.
It’s so hard to remember why I was mad at him when he looks genuinely concerned. Either way, it’s not like I’m going to give him a piece of my mind in front of my sister, so I settle for a non-threatening reply. “Starving.”
He gives me a wink. “Take a seat, I’ve got you covered.” But before I can take that seat, he closes the distance between us and kisses me on the lips, taking me by surprise. When he pulls away, he gives me a smile. “I missed you,” he says, then walks behind the counter.
It takes me a moment to get past the butterflies suddenly rioting in my stomach and actually take a seat. Since when was I so smitten with him? With all the werewolf craziness going around, maybe I never took a moment to see where my feelings were taking me. And now, what I said to him earlier about mating with a man I don’t know makes me feel so stupid. Somewhere along the way, I lost my heart to him. And that had nothing to do with crazy werewolf sex hormones.
If I was to lose him right now…
“Stefan tells me that you’re not a shifter,” Mari’s voice draws me from my inner thoughts.
I turn my attention to her, a little confused at the sudden topic. “What?” Then I recall Thomas saying that my sister was a shifter. My eyes widen. “Wait, are you?”
She nods. “Yeah.”
I frown. “But…”
“It was Dad. He was a shifter. Guess I took after him.”
“That’s crazy,” I mumble. “I never…”
No.
No.
My mother.
That stupid ritual she was doing, trying to get rid of the demons I apparently inherited from my father. Was she…
“I think Mum thought you were the one who took after him,” Mari tells me. Her face suddenly becomes downcast. “She wasn’t happy when she found out I was one.”
It all makes sense now. After all these years, it makes sense. “That’s why she left me behind, isn’t it?”
She nods. “I think so.”
Well, isn’t this a funny twist to things? Why did she insist on treating me like devil’s spawn when she came back, then? Was she in denial? Was Mari so irreplaceable?
God, just when I thought I was done feeling like shit.
Fortunately, Stefan presents me with food, and I shift my attention to that. Who knows, maybe once I’m less hungry, I’ll feel better.
By the time I’m done with dinner, I know everything that happened to Mari since she went missing thirteen years ago. It’s true that Thomas found out she was a shifter and sold her, going against Martha’s orders to kill her.
Apparently, some werewolf packs use shifters to carry out their dirty businesses, so he fetched a good price. I don’t know whether to be surprised when she says he sold her to Blackrise pack.
Or that it was Theodore who was responsible for her injuries. By the end of her narrations, I find that my heart has thawed toward her. While I had a shitty childhood, I was better off. She was not only sold off like an animal, but she also had to live under constant abuse since then. My abandonment issues pale in comparison.
***
“I’m so sorry about earlier today,” is the first thing Stefan says when we are finally alone, in our room. “You were drunk and mad and—”
“You had things to take care of,” I cut him off. I give him a smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not mad anymore.”
He walks over to me and reaching up, cradles my face in his hands. His eyes narrow a bit as they look into mine. “I don’t think you understand what you are to me.”
I chew on my bottom lip. “Can we forget about earlier today? I was being silly.”
“Were you?” he questions, not looking convinced. “They do say something about drunk people and the truth.”
I groan and drop my head, hiding my face from his scrutiny. “Can you blame me for being a little insecure?”
“You shouldn’t be.” He lifts my face back up. “And if I’m making you feel like that, then I’m doing something wrong.”
I shake my head. “It’s not you.”
It’s all me and the weird ideas Hanna mentioned.
“You’re my mate, Gwen. I’m bonded to you. And that means there’s nobody else for me. I need you to remember that.”
I stare into his grey eyes, and what I see in them tells me that he means every word he says. He really does think that I’m his endgame, even if I wasn’t what he set out looking for.
“What about Mari?” I ask. Because as much as I want to look at the bright side and walk into the sunset in his arms, her being here brings up a lot of questions. There’s a certain way things work in this world, and one of them is that you can’t just bond to someone else when your fated mate is out there, breathing, and neither of you has rejected the other.
Stefan lets go of my face and rakes a hand through his blonde hair. “I did feel the mate-pull with her back then, and that’s why I spent years looking for her. So, honestly? I don’t know why it’s like this. But this is not the first time things have worked differently for me, so I’ve decided to not think hard about it. You shouldn’t either.”
“So, uh, you didn’t feel anything when you saw her this morning?” I ask, not even sure I want the answer.
“Other than anger and an insane need to tear whoever did that to her into pieces? No. She was my friend and I’ve spent my adult years until now wondering where she went and what happened to her. I can’t let this slide. I hope you understand that.”
“Of course.” I nod. “I get it.”
He takes my hand in his and pulls me to him, bringing our bodies together. His other hand lifts to my face, where he brushes back strands of hair. “When you left last night, I didn’t like how it felt. At all. Throughout the night, I was wishing you would change your mind and come back. The thought of you never coming back to me was hell itself. And I never want to go through that again. Not even for another second. I can’t lose you, Gwen. It’d kill me.”
I lift my hand to his face, feeling his one-day-old stubble beneath my fingers. “You won’t,” I tell him. “You won’t lose me.”
He leans in and kisses me. It turns out to be the gentlest, most soul-consuming kiss I’ve ever had. And when he guides me to the bed behind us, I know that this night is going to be different.
Tonight we are going to make love, and it’s going to be a night I won’t forget for a long time.