Souls Entwined

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five
Elle's POV

Kendra's gaze hadn't drifted from the sliver of sunlight coming in through the drawn curtains since the door had swung shut behind me. Only a few words had been spoken since I'd sat down, but we'd gotten familiar with the heavy silence in the months following the incident.

As always, Conner was waiting by the window when I visited Kendra. He was outside, and as the air started to cool, a pang of sinking guilt settled permanently in my stomach. He didn't complain. He never did, but he always turned the heater up as soon as we settled into the car, and he often didn't speak for a while, as if he needed a moment to defrost.

I should have brought Fallyn. At least she was familiar after years of sitting in a classroom together, and Kendra didn't seem to mind her presence as much.

As it was, Kendra watched that sliver like a hawk, almost as if waiting for something to prove her paranoia.

There was no good time to tell her that my life was moving forward while hers appeared frozen in the terror of that underground graveyard. I'd contemplated not telling her, but I knew better than anyone that pity was worse than the truth. I also knew Jacobi would have told her eventually. He still visited weekly, but the news needed to come from me.

I held my breath until my lungs burned, the pressure of the words suddenly overwhelming, and then I let them tumble from my lips, allowing their weight to lift with the confession. 'I'm moving in with Kaden.'

Surprise flickered across her face, the room's shadows nearly concealing it. She didn't look away from the window, but her face took on a contemplative stare. She seemed comfortable in the silence, so I let her have it, waiting to see if she had anything to add.

I'd told Kaden nearly a week ago, after we'd finished eating, and as if proving that he knew me to the point of absolution, he had said, 'I'd like that.' Then he brushed his lips against my cheek in a featherlight touch as he stood up, his fingers trailing across my arm as he moved towards the sink, his touch lingering. He had washed the dishes, asking me about my day. He hadn't questioned me to make sure I was certain. He had taken my words as truth and hadn't mentioned it again until I crawled into Conner's back seat, physically and emotionally exhausted. 'You just tell me when and I'll help you move your stuff.'

My response had been 'Monday', and a bright grin split across his face, and an unfamiliar emotion pressed against my chest so tightly that I knew I was making the right decision. I'd almost kissed that grin, but I'd thought too long, and he'd backed up, his only goodbye a soft flutter of his fingers.

'Are you sure?'

I looked towards her, pulled from my thoughts, and for the first time since I'd sat down, she looked towards me, her amber eyes blazing. Despite the tension that twisted through me, I wasn't looking for an argument, so I said, 'I'm sure.'

A rough sound split her lips, and a snarl took form, 'You're kidding, right?' A sharp pain echoed through my chest, but I tried to remind myself that she was speaking from a place of trauma. 'You are fucking kidding me!' She stood, and a shadow moved through the sunlight. Kendra didn't notice. Her fist curled tightly at her side. 'He is the reason everything happened! How can you trust him?' Her voice splintered, a sob trembling on her lips as she collapsed into her chair. A whisper parted her lips, filled with anguish, 'He is the reason I'm scared of my own shadow.'

Unexplainable anger threatened to rip through my resolve, but I tucked my hands together, stopping them from clenching, and took a deep, steadying breath. 'I will ask that you don't speak about him that way.' I tried to inflict steel into my voice without being overpowering, but everything felt frail like one wrong word could shatter it all. 'He made some pretty poor choices in the lead-up, but he is not the reason it happened, Kendra. I understand how you feel. But you cannot blame him. Blame me, Lachlan, and my parents, but do not blame Kaden. He does not deserve it.'

Her gaze was unseeing as she stared at me, and a shiver raced through me as the room temperature plummeted. 'If he had just told you-'

'We cannot know what would have happened.' I explained softly, aware she was stuck in the same place I had been months ago. 'Kaden has done everything he can to make sure I can move forward at my own pace. He was ten, Kendra, when he had to make a choice that, yes, might have set us on this path.' The words dried up in my throat, and I let her think on it as I collected myself, forcing myself to ignore the burning in my eyes. 'But a ten-year-old is blameless. He made a hard choice that had consequences, and he will regret that his entire life. I was angry, just like you. So mad that he had put me in that position. I couldn't believe he'd kept something like that from me and watched as someone broke me apart in a way that shouldn't have been possible. But after a while, after sitting with that anger, I realised a couple of things.

'First, there was no real way of knowing what might have happened if he had told everyone when I was only five.' I wrung my hands, admitting for the first time the thoughts going through my head over this past year. 'But I was five and vulnerable, and Kaden's dad was never going to sanction my protection based on the word of a ten-year-old, no matter if he was the pack's future alpha. And it wouldn't have mattered to the hunters or the packs with vendettas against the Vermiculo pack. I likely would have been dead before I turned six. I certainly wouldn't have reached adulthood the same person I am today.

'Second,' I continued, making sure she heard me, even as she opened her mouth to talk over me. 'I recognised that while my ignorance had created a wound when the truth came out, Kaden had been forced to live with the wounds of his knowledge for fourteen years. The knowledge tore him up, and sometimes it's obvious he changed because of it. In such a way that will be almost impossible to erase. It's so painful to see sometimes that I cry just thinking about it.'

When I stopped, chest heaving with the effort to keep the tears locked at bay, I almost stood up to walk away. But I didn't. I sat with the silence, determined to see it through, to convince her that Kaden wasn't the person she thought he was.

Kendra's voice was so soft that I almost didn't hear her as she asked, 'So, you're really going to do it?'

I nodded, determined not to let our past trauma suck me back into the void. 'I would only be cheating myself if I didn't.'

'Good luck.'

***

Later, I stood in the doorway of Kaden's office, watching as he finished conversing with a pack member. He had raked his hands through his hair at least twice since I'd stopped at the threshold and numerous times before. His hair was sticking up awkwardly, and a tight expression plastered his lips into a thin line.

He kept glancing up, his eyes trailing over me. He'd been waiting for me as I'd neared his office, his eyes the first thing I'd seen. He must have seen something in my expression, even though I'd tried to wipe away all evidence of my conversation with Kendra. I'd barely leant against the frame when he'd tried to wrap his call up, but I'd turned my head slightly to tell him I'd wait.

Within five minutes, he said goodbye and promised to call back at another time despite my insistence that I would wait. He rose from his chair with a pinched expression, his eyes soft as he approached. 'Do you want to talk about it?'

I worried my bottom lip between my teeth, taking a shuddering breath as I stepped into the room. I closed the door behind me, and by the time I'd turned back to him, Kaden had moved, so he was right beside me. He held his arms wide, and I didn't hesitate to burrow myself into their warmth, letting the sensations roll through me as I let the dam break.

As tears rolled down my cheeks, soundless but unstoppable, Kaden held me, feeling every tremor and tremble as they moved through me. He didn't let me go, not when my breath hitched on silent sobs or when the front of his shirt was wet from my tears, not even as those sobs and tears eased up. Instead, we held each other as the fog cleared, and I let all my emotions out, one tear after another, until there were no more tears to shed.

He held me through it all, a solid rock in my tumultuous sea.

He didn't ask questions or try to fill the silence with unnecessary words. He just held me, his hand sweeping up my back and holding me tightly to his chest as if he knew exactly what I needed.

And I felt some of my walls slip. They'd been crumbling for a while, so subtle I'd hardly noticed, but as Kaden wordlessly held me, grounding me to reality, I felt something shift and knew I was falling just a little in love with him.