“Where are you taking me?” I whispered into his chest, not really caring but feeling like I needed to say something.
“To bed,” he replied in a soft rumble. “It’s getting late, and that hard floor was making my ass fall asleep.”
Sighing, I turned my face into his chest and squeezed my eyes tight shut. I just wanted to go to sleep. Maybe when I woke up, this would all have been a horrible nightmare.
Vali placed me gently down on my huge, pastel purple bed and then tugged the blankets over me. My hands clutched at his shirt desperately, and I tugged him back down when he made to get up.
“Please don’t leave me,” I begged, my voice cracking into a sob.
Vali shushed me softly, peeling my fingers off of his clothing. “I’m not leaving, regina mea. Just taking my shoes off. I hate when people put shoes on the bed, don’t you?”
It didn’t seem like the sort of question that needed a response, so I just sucked in a shaking breath and watched through slitted eyelids as he removed his boots, then slid back under the blankets with me.
Once inside with me, he wrapped his huge arms around me and pulled me in close. There was something stupidly primal about how it felt to be encased in his arms at that moment. When my whole world was falling to shit around me, when I was more vulnerable than I’d ever been. Simply being wrapped in Vali’s huge hug brought me a certain sense of peace and safety.
We lay like that for ages. I had no tears left, but couldn’t force myself to sleep, no matter how badly I wished for it. Eventually, I knew I would need to talk about what had just happened.
“Regina?” Vali said in a soft voice while his fingers stroked through my hair, “I know how you must be feeling right now. To lose a parent, it’s unlike any other pain.” I sniffled into his chest but said nothing. He did know what it felt like, more so than anyone. “And I don’t know what you discussed with Austin today that had you coming back out of that shell you’d retreated into, but I need to say this now before things become worse. Before you let this break you.”
He paused again, his fingers trailing through my hair and down my back, then repeating. “So, I may not be the fluffy blanket you want right now, but maybe I’m what you need. You’ve had a rough run lately, Regina; I’m not disputing that at all. It fucking sucks. It sucks about Wesley. I might have only known the kid a few months, but fuck if I wasn’t already attached to that little nerd. More than that, it sucks about Jonathan. No one is ever going to try and tell you otherwise.” Fresh tears that I didn’t realize I was capable of pooled in my eyes and spilled down my face onto Vali’s shirt. “But here’s the hardest, shittiest part of all of it. You aren’t allowed the time to grieve like a normal person might. You don’t have the luxury to hide under your blankets and cry yourself to sleep for weeks on end, praying for the pain to go away. Not when you have people depending on you. Not when you have a world to save.”
No, it was what I needed to hear. Pain sucked balls—and not even in a nice way. I’d spent years being grateful to Jonathon. Then months bewildered and almost hating him. No, fuck that. I had hated him. Not telling me the truth was the worst damn decision he’d made.
“He made mistakes. He is a man,” Vali continued even when I said nothing in response. “I don’t forgive him for causing you any pain, regina mea; that is not for me. He was a man. He made his own decisions.”
And then some. He owned his shit. Tasha. The name tickled the back of my mind, the way he’d said it. I was like her. Well, that was better than being like Bridget, right?
Vali rubbed his chin against my hair. “Are you asleep?”
“No,” I answered, and it took real effort to push the word out. “Talk to me some more.” Then, even if I didn’t need to, I said, “Please.”
“Then I shall not lie to you and tell you this pain will ever be easy to bear; it will be a scar.”
I had scars.
“Scars are the tale of the road we have traveled.”
And the loves we’d lost. Yeah, not where I wanted to go, but I made myself listen. Safe in his arms, I let myself feel.
Even if it sucked.
I splashed ice cold water onto my face again, and the sounds of the guys returning filtered up from downstairs. Quickly I grabbed a hand towel to dry off my face. I’d splashed cold water over my face about ten times already in an attempt to wake my brain up and reduce the blotchy puffiness of crying.
Not that I cared if the guys saw me looking less than my best; I think I’d earned the right. But simply because it helped me to feel more human if I didn’t look like such a mess.
Eager to hear what had happened on Omega base, I yanked on a clean T-shirt and hurried through my bedroom. It was vacant already, so Vali must have heard them and headed downstairs too.
“Kitten.” River met me halfway up the stairs, and I froze, noticing the smear of blood on his white shirt. “Come with me; we have something to show you.”
His voice was grim, and my breathing sped up with anticipation. What could he possibly have to show me, unless they’d arrived in time to deliver Simon’s head on a platter? A girl could hope, huh?
Following River out onto our back porch, I saw my ex-friend zip-tied and looking revolting. Way more so than last time I’d seen him, it looked like the flesh was almost peeling off his face in patches. Not to mention the smell. “Simon!” I exclaimed.
“We wanted to finish him off when we found him,” Cole told me, scowling at the reanimated corpse of Simon like he was a giant pile of steaming shit. “But River suggested you should get final say on his fate.”
I glanced sharply between my guys and noted the resolute agreement on all of their faces. It was actually weirdly touching that they’d thought to allow me this act of closure.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked quietly, at a loss for what to say. “Just... declare he should die and then, what? Shoot him in the head? He’s already survived an avalanche; how do we know he won’t survive that?”
“Whatever you decide,” River told me in a calm voice, “we will ensure is done properly.”
Done properly sounded so ominous coming from him, but I knew what he meant. There would be no space for doubt if I chose to end Simon’s existence right then and there.
“Can’t we just... lock him up somewhere? Surely there must be some sort of prison designed for supernaturals?” And holy crap, shouldn’t that be the sort of thing I should know? Every day my lack of knowledge about the world I lived in was becoming more and more apparent.
“There is,” Austin nodded. “But there is one more problem.”
I raised my brows at him, but it was Caleb who replied.
“We needed to dispose of the mages who had been working with Simon,” he informed me, looking a bit pale. “You remember the necromancer who spoke out at the town hall?” I nodded. “He was fronting a group that was assisting Simon, providing golems for extra backup and magical assistance as required. We disabled some fifteen-odd spells from Omega HQ tonight.”
“Shit,” I breathed, eyeing up my former foster brother, who had yet to speak. “So how does that complicate this?” I waved my hand at Simon. “And where is his usual poisonous snark?”
“Well, that’s all part of the same thing. When we, er, dealt with the mages involved, we killed the necro who had reanimated Simon in the first place. Without that tether to a life magic, Simon physically can’t continue. He will slowly, as you can see, decompose. His ability to speak is already gone.” Caleb shrugged and didn’t look all that upset about it. “So, yeah. Locking him up is totally an option, but he will be dead by the end of the week anyway.”
“Huh.” I chewed my lip and pondered on this. “Do you think it would be particularly painful? Being trapped inside a rotting corpse?”