I drove aimlessly for an hour, tears blurring my vision, unable to face going back to my parents' house. The confrontation at Chrome & Fang had ripped open wounds I'd thought were scarred over, leaving me raw and bleeding.
*His father abused his mother with the mate bond.*
The revelation kept circling through my mind. It explained so much—Skyler's horror when the bond snapped, his desperate need to push me away, the fear in his eyes when he'd called me his sister.
But explanation wasn't the same as absolution.
He'd still broken me. Still shattered my heart into pieces I'd had to painstakingly reassemble. His trauma didn't erase mine.
By the time I pulled into a gas station on the edge of town, my tears had dried, leaving behind a hollow exhaustion. I texted my mom that I'd be late for
