Souls Entwined

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two
Kaden's POV

Twenty seconds. Twenty seconds was all it took for my heart to feel like it would explode. Twenty seconds for the old, intricately carved oak door to open with a creak. Twenty seconds for Elle to transform completely.

The woman who stood beside me was a far cry from the one who had stepped out of the car only a minute ago. That woman had looked like she was seconds away from collapsing, as though a light breeze would shatter the composure she had welded together with crappy glue from a preschool's craft section. This one had her shoulders pushed back with an easy smile and pure conviction in her eyes.

Her heart still beat erratically, so out of tune with what I was used to that I wasn't sure we were out of the woods yet, and her smile twitched. It was so subtle that anyone who hadn't spent the last year trying to memorise every aspect of her beautiful face would not have seen it.

Twenty seconds ago, I had been fighting an internal battle. Half of me wanted to protect her against her own insecurities, but waiting and sharing words of platitude would do little to convince her of what I was sure of.

Elliot wasn't an accessory. She wasn't something I brought along to look pretty at my side. I'd known for a long time that she was capable of just about anything, and she was full of ideas that had even evaded my mind after decades of preparation. And even though I knew better, she surprised me every day.

Yesterday, when I'd overheard the discussions of two of our pack members, I felt my blood boil. Their tones had been anything but respectful, and they hardly invited the compassion of Elliot's response, but still, she'd spoken up. Listening to her had settled something within me that had been churning for months. I was sure she was the best thing that could happen for me, the best thing that could happen for our pack.

When the door stopped against the wall, Elliot had dropped my hand, and my skin burned with the loss. I didn't know why she made that choice because everything in me needed the reassurance of her touch, but I trusted her to make decisions based on her needs, and I would be right by her if she changed her mind.

I had never been so nervous about a meeting as I was for this one. Müller wasn't an intimidating foe, nor could he really be called a foe. He was easily in his eighties, and if what Rylan said was true, then Müller had been born into a family of scholars. He had chosen books over other pursuits and had never been trained as a warrior. Years of pouring over books had altered his spine, and he held loosely to the door frame. He stared at us, a pensiveness to his expression as he swayed on his feet.

No. My mouth felt dry for an entirely different reason.

In a year and a half, I had seen Elliot lose all the confidence she'd ever possessed, the carefree way she had lived without watching over her shoulder. It had broken my heart to see her as a shell of the person she'd once been. But the worst pain had taken its fatal blow as she had struggled day in, day out, rebuilding the parts of herself that had been crushed and her discovery that not every part could be fixed.

I had lost sleep trying to think of ways to support her and help, but even knowing I couldn't do a goddamn thing didn't ease the pressure that snuck in under cover of night.

I couldn't just send Elliot to the car because if she were forced to back out or backed out herself, there was no way of knowing if she'd recover from the blow. I was nervous because Elliot had decided she needed to stare down the face of the pack that had stripped away her trust and the last vestiges of her childhood. If she couldn't meet the standards her mind set, the steps we had taken so far would be wiped from existence. We were on a fragile tightrope, and one misstep could make the difference between a life where Elle lived every moment with me and made every decision as one or a life where we only relayed stories at the end of our days when everything was all said and done.