Not because they aren’t true but because I now have to watch as the little bit of color Macy had in her cheeks slowly drains away. She looks so different from the girl I met in November that it’s hard to believe she’s the same person. Her wildly colored hair still hasn’t made a reappearance, and while the deep raven black she dyed it for Xavier’s funeral suits her coloring, it doesn’t suit anything else about her. Except her sadness…it suits that just fine.

I start to apologize, but Macy rolls over to face me and plows ahead. “I know exactly what a miserable vampire looks like, and you’ve got two of them on your hands. And just an FYI, deadly and pathetic make for a really dangerous combination, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed.” It’s a combination I’ve been dealing with for weeks, a combination that makes my every breath feel like a bomb about to go off, my every move like I’m playing Russian roulette with everyone’s happiness.

And since the universe just isn’t done screwing with me…apparently, Macy was wrong when she first told me that Hudson had graduated before Jaxon killed him. Turns out: nope, so close and yet not quite there. Something about him lacking enough credits because he’d had private tutors instead of attending Katmere for all four years. Macy was several years his junior, so she’d shrugged—what did she know? No one spoke his name after his death. Either way, it means that everywhere I turn, there he is. Just like Jaxon. Both of them in our friendship circle but not. Both of them watching me with eyes that appear blank on the surface but hold a multitude of emotions underneath. Waiting on me to do or say…something.

“I still don’t know how I ended up mated to Hudson,” I say dully. “I thought you had to be interested in being mated, or at least ‘open’ to it, for it to happen in the first place?”

Macy grins at me. “Clearly you feel something for him.”

I roll my eyes. “Gratitude. I feel gratitude for him. And I’m pretty sure that’s a terrible reason to hook up.”

“So…” Macy’s eyes are positively sparkling with humor now. “You’ve thought about ‘hooking up’ with Hudson, eh?”

I throw a small decorative pillow at my cousin, who easily dodges its path and laughs. “Well, all I know is, most everyone at school would kill to find even one mate. You having had two since arriving is so not allowed.”

Macy’s teasing me, trying to lighten the moment, but it doesn’t help.

Hudson often sits with us at meals or in classes we share. Although most of the Order and Flint watch him warily, he’s somehow managed to woo my cousin with no more than a teasing half smile and a French vanilla latte.

In fact, she’s actually one of the few people who blames Jaxon for our mating bond being severed, and she’s let it be known she is firmly Team Hudson. I can’t help but wonder if she’s on Hudson’s side because she really thinks he’s best for me—or just that he isn’t Jaxon, the boy who insisted we challenge the Unkillable Beast, a move that ended up getting Xavier killed.

Either way, she’s right about one thing: eventually I’m going to have to deal with this mess.

I’ve been doing my best to ignore the situation a while longer, though…at least until I have a plan. I’ve spent nearly all my time since Xavier’s funeral trying to figure out what to do, how to fix things—between Jaxon and me, and Jaxon and Hudson, and Hudson and me—but I can’t. The ground has turned to quicksand beneath me, and my wings aren’t nearly as much help as you’d expect them to be… I mean, I have to land sometime, and every time I do, I start to sink.

Macy must sense my inner anguish, since she sits up on the end of her bed, her amusement fading as quickly as mine. “I know things are rough right now,” she continues. “I was just teasing about the boys. You’re doing your best.”

“What if I don’t know what to do?” The words explode out of me like I’m a bottle under pressure and Macy’s just caused the first leak. “I had barely begun to deal with being a gargoyle, and now I have to deal with winning a seat on the Circle of Doom and Desperation and being coronated right after graduation.”

“Circle of Doom and Desperation?” Macy repeats with a startled laugh.

“After which I’m sure I’ll be locked in a tower or beheaded or something else equally fatalistic.” I say it like it’s a joke, but I’m not kidding. There isn’t one ounce of optimism in me about being a member of the paranormal council Jaxon and Hudson’s parents head up…or anything else that comes with it. Including politics, survival, and being mated to Hudson instead of my actual boyfriend in this brave new world I’ve found myself in.

“I’m still in love with Jaxon. I can’t change how I feel.” I groan. “But I can’t stand hurting Hudson, either—or the look in his eyes when we’re sitting at the lunch table and he’s watching me with his brother.”

The whole thing is a nightmare beyond comprehension, and the fact that I haven’t been able to sleep pretty much at all since I nearly died only makes everything worse. But how can I relax when every time I close my eyes, I feel Cyrus’s teeth sinking into my neck and the agony of his eternal bite spreading through me? Or I remember Hudson placing me in a shallow grave and burying me alive (still not ready to ask how he knew to do that)? Or worse—and yes, this is actually worse—I see the look on Jaxon’s face when Hudson told him I am his mate?

Memories so devastating, all I want to do is run away and hide.

“Hey, everything is going to be okay,” Macy says, voice tentative but eyes concerned.

“‘Okay’ might be a stretch.” I roll over so that I’m staring at the ceiling, but I barely see it. Instead, all I see are their eyes.

One dark pair, one light.

Both tormented.

Both waiting for something I don’t know how to give them and an answer I don’t even know how to begin to find.

I know what I feel. I love Jaxon.

And Hudson, well, that’s more complicated. Not love, which I’m worried is not what he wants to hear. Yes, my pulse races when he’s near, but objectively, the guy is next-level gorgeous. Any person in their right mind would be attracted to him. Plus, there’s now this mating bond between us that is causing me to feel things that aren’t really there as well. At least not that I want them to be.

After everything he did for me, after the bond I realize we built over those weeks trapped together, I don’t want to disappoint him and tell him I don’t feel more than friendship for him.

I groan again. There I go, assuming Hudson even wants to be mated to me. He might be as mad at the universe as I am for putting us in this awkward situation.

Macy lets out a long sigh, then climbs off her bed and settles onto the end of mine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push.”

“Your pushing isn’t what upset me. It’s just…” I trail off, not sure how to vocalize the confusion roiling around inside me.

“Everything?” She fills in the blank I left, and I nod, because yeah, everything is a hell of a lot.

Silence stretches between us, long and uncomfortable. I wait for Macy to give up, to go back to her own bed and forget about this dumpster fire of a conversation, but she doesn’t move. Instead, she leans back against the wall and watches me with a calm patience that isn’t exactly her normal modus operandi.

I’m not sure if it’s the silence or the way she’s watching me or the need to spill my guts that’s been building all day, but the tension ratchets higher and higher until finally I blurt out the truth I’ve been trying to hide from everyone, even myself. “I really, really don’t think I’m strong enough to do this.”

I don’t know exactly what reaction I expect Macy to have to my confession—in a split second I imagine everything from her lavishing sympathy on me to her telling me to suck it up, buttercup with a hard edge that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with how things are going pretty awful for her, too.

In the end, though, she does the one thing I don’t expect. The one thing I’ve never even considered. She bursts out laughing. “Well, no shit, Sherlock. I’d be worried if you actually thought you could deal with all of this on your own.”

“Really?” I’m flummoxed. And maybe a little insulted—does she really think I’m so incompetent? Just because I know I’m a mess doesn’t mean I want everyone else to know, too. “Why?”

“Because you’re not alone, and you don’t have to go it alone. That’s what I’m here for. That’s what all of us are here for—especially your boyfriends.”

I narrow my eyes at her plural use of the word—and the emphasis she put on it. “Boyfriend,” I correct, stressing the hard d on the end. “One, not two.” I hold up my index finger just to make sure she gets it. “One boyfriend.”

“Oh, right. One. Of course.” Macy shoots me a sly look. “Sooooo, just to be clear. Which vampire is that exactly?”

2

My Achy Breaky Bond