“I’m not letting you go anywhere.”

She stares at me with her wide chestnut eyes, trying to understand me. I spot the matches nearby with a small aerosol can.

“You started the fire, didn’t you?” I ask as the flames move from one charcoaled tree to the next.

“No.” She mutters, but her answer comes out full of desperation and sadness. As if she was a child being scolded over spilt milk

“Your soul tells me differently. The evidence tells me differently”

She turns from me and starts crawling back towards the fire, dragging herself across the forest floor and ignoring every bit of pain she is feeling.

Pinning her to the ground, I straddle her hips as she lets out a sob.

“Why?” I demand. “Why would you do this to the person that took you in?”

“What do you mean?” Tears trickle over her soot smudged face.

“You’ve burned Mallory’s house down.”

“I didn’t….”

“I’ve seen it. You’ve taken away the home of a pregnant woman.”

“No.” She whimpers. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. It was supposed to be me.”

Her heart races and she squeezes her eyes tight. Her sorrow and her pain weighed heavily on her.

“It wasn’t supposed to get so big.” She pushes against me, but she’s weak and exhausted. The flesh on her arms is already healing. “You should

have killed me when you shot Enzo. Please, just do it.” She struggles against me. “Or let me go. It will be easier for you.”

“So you can walk into the fire, never to be seen again? I don’t think so Madison. Not while I feel the fire licking at my skin like it is me that is walking through the flames.”

She manages to grab my hand with the gun, and pulls it under her chin, locking her hands tightly over mine “I can’t live in fear anymore. Please just kill me?” She tries to squeeze my finger over the trigger, though her weakness barely makes my finger move.

Death is what she is hoping for. Death was a way to escape me, but I wasn’t letting her go anywhere. Not yet.

“I am not going to kill you, not yet. But you keep your mouth shut about what happened and how the fire started. Do you understand?”

Lifting her from the ground, I cradle her in my arms as she hooks a burnt arm over my shoulder. It had been years since I had held another

female like this. Her jasmine

invades every inch of me. I hated it

and I loved it.

I couldn’t admit what she was to me, but I couldn’t let her do something so reckless either.

Raven and Neah come rushing forward when they see us. Raven demands for me to put Madison down so she could check her over while Neah stares at me with a knowing look.

She pulls me to one side. “You saved her?”

“Clearly.” I mutter back, throwing a glance over my shoulder to check Madison.

“Didn’t think you liked Lycans?” Neah blocks my gaze as she folds her arms across her chest and narrows her eyes at me. She wasn’t going to let this go anytime soon.

“I don’t.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “Have you accepted her?”

“Why the fuck would I do that?” She gives me that same knowing look. I turn the conversation to her. “What about you. What happened to you?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Cut the crap, Neah.”

“You don’t want to talk about

Maddie. I don’t want to talk about

I

what you claim you can see. But what I can do is order Maddie to tell me what happened in the forest. Actually, I think that is a good idea. I do need to test myself a bit more.” She smiles at me and her brilliant blue eyes widen with excitement.

“Is Nyx in control?”