“Has he always been this whiny?” Hudson demands. “Honestly, I don’t know how you stand it.”
“Stop,” I tell him and intentionally give him my back, determined not to engage with him any more right now.
But he’s not having it. He walks around Jaxon so I’m facing both brothers now. “I’m only trying to be helpful, Grace. I know better than most just how spoiled Jaxon can be.”
He’s not spoiled. I jump in to defend Jaxon instantly and then realize, almost as quickly, that I’ve just been totally played. Hudson was trying to get a rise out of me. You’re kind of a jackass. You know that, right?
“Know it?” He looks down his nose at me in a kind of snooty, kind of playful manner. “I pride myself on it.”
Yeah, but—
“So.” Jaxon looks really nervous. “What do you think?”
“About what?” I ask before I can think better of it.
“You weren’t listening?” He looks vaguely homicidal. “You didn’t hear anything I said?”
“I did. I just—”
He sighs disgustedly. “What I said was that there’s another way to get Hudson out of your head. Besides the spell with the five artifacts.”
“Seriously? And you’re just bringing this up now?” I grab on to his hand. “What is it?”
“It’s fairly drastic—”
“Yeah, because going up against something called the Unkillable Beast isn’t drastic at all,” I answer, totally deadpan. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I mean, we already have all four of the necessary—”
“Five,” Jaxon growls. “We need five items. There’s no way we’re bringing him back if he’s not human. No way.”
I think back to what the Bloodletter said, to what everyone has said about Hudson—except Hudson. Every time I start to think that maybe he’s not so bad, I force myself to remember what it felt like to be standing in that assembly with him and be unable to move. “Okay, okay. I know you’re right about the whole power thing. So what is this other way?”
Jaxon looks a little sick, and this time he’s the one taking the deep breath. Which makes my stomach plummet.
“What is it?” I ask, suddenly a lot more frightened than I was just a minute ago.
“We could break the mating bond.”
The words fall like a nuclear bomb between us, the shock and pain of them radiating through me in a way nothing ever has in my whole life—even my parents’ deaths.
“I don’t— I can’t—”
“Holy shit. Exactly how much does my brother hate me?” Hudson whispers.
I take a moment to answer Hudson and…also try to figure out how to breathe. Seriously? That’s what you’re asking now? I would assume a lot, since he, you know, killed you.
“Killing is pretty normal in our world. Trying to break a mating bond? That’s unheard of. Mainly because it’s literally impossible. Trust me, if it were possible, my mom would have definitely divorced her jackass mate.” Hudson starts to pace. “This must be some scary-as-shit magic if it can sever a mating bond.”
Wow. Okay, then.
I press a hand to my stomach, still trying to absorb the blow of Jaxon’s words. And worse, the fact that he brought this up at all.
“So…” I have a million things I want to ask but no idea how to ask them. So I start with the most basic. “You don’t want to be mated to me anymore?”
“Of course I want to be mated to you!” he exclaims, and this time he’s the one who grabs my hands. “I want it more than anything.”
“Then why would you even suggest…” There’s a strange ringing in my ears, and I shake my head to clear it. “I thought mating bonds were unbreakable.”
“I thought so, too. But I asked the Bloodletter—”
“You asked her? When we were there?” The pain deep inside me gets worse and worse. “When? When she put me to sleep? When she locked me in that cage?”
“No, not then. Of course not.” He gives me a pleading look. “It was way before.”
Somehow, that sounds even worse. “How ‘way before,’ considering I was here for a week, then gone for nearly four months, then here for a few days? When exactly did you ask her? And why?”
“I asked her after you first got here and I realized we were mated. I’d nearly killed you with the window… It just seemed like a really bad idea to be mated to a human who might die because of me. So I went to her and asked for a spell to break the bond.”
There’s so much to unpack there that I don’t even know where to start. And for once, Hudson is completely silent, absolutely no help at all. The traitor.
I still can’t believe Jaxon didn’t tell me up front that we were mated. I mean, I get why he didn’t say anything that first day, but why not after the snowball fight or when we started dating?
But I also can’t believe he was going to break the bond—without even asking me. He was going to do something so irrevocable, so painful, so terrible, and he wasn’t even going to get my opinion on the matter. It would have affected me, too, I’m sure of it, and he wasn’t even going to ask?
And now, after we’ve come so far, he brings up breaking the bond again because having Hudson in my head is an inconvenience to him? Even though we’re so close to getting him out another way? A way that leaves the bond completely intact?
“Did she give you the spell?” I finally whisper, because there’s so much to say, I don’t know where to start.
“She did,” he tells me.
My breath catches. “Seriously?” It feels like he just hit me again. “And you took it?”
“I was scared. I’d nearly killed you. I didn’t want to hurt you, Grace.”
“Yeah, because this is a picnic.” I look wildly around his room. “Where is it? Where are you keeping it?”
I don’t know why it matters, but it does. If he knows where it is, if it’s right at his damn fingertips…
“I threw it away.”
“What?” That’s not the answer I was expecting.
“I threw it away the same day she gave it to me. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, Grace. To either of us. Not before we’d even had a chance to try. Not without your permission.”
I blow out a breath slowly as the pain finally ebbs. It doesn’t go away completely, but it slowly dissipates. Because he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t break what was between us before it even got started, and especially without telling me. That makes a difference. If he could, if he’d kept it…I don’t know if I’d ever be able to get past it.