My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
I forced it loose.
“She told me to keep quiet,” I said, and the words felt worse now that they were outside my mouth. “She told me not to tell Jasper. Absolutely not. Because if he knew what you were, if he understood what he had brought into the pack, he would have marked you before anyone could stop him.”
Aria’s fingers tightened in Alaric’s shirt.
I saw it.
Of course I saw it.
I had been watching people hurt because of my silence for years. I knew the shape of it by now. The small movements. The breath catching. The way a body tried to hold itself together when the mind had just been handed another blade.
“And if Jasper marked you,” I continued, forcing myself to keep looking at her, “then according to my mother, we would have been stuck w
