by Woods, Erica
I was crying. My face was wet. My chest ached.
And the dream grew blurry.
“Mo chridhe?” a gruff voice said, and for some reason I was ripped in two.
Horrible sounds flooded my mouth, poured out, colored the air an ugly red. And then I was engulfed in strong arms, held against a strong chest by a strong male.
My male.
“What’s wrong with her?”
That voice, the desperation in it . . . Jason was ripping with me.
“Nightmare,” Ruarc said, and hearing him speak was both a balm to the raw wound on my soul and a knife twisting in my chest.
“How often . . .?”
“Too often.”
Thunder vibrated from the chest I was pressed against. The good kind of thunder. And while he rumbled for me, Ruarc sang. Low and rough and with words I didn’t understand.
The dream dissolved, drifted away like a thin trail of smoke. The ache in my heart stayed, and though I couldn’t remember why I was crying, I didn’t stop until Ruarc’s voice grew hoarse and my eyes felt as though they’d been stabbed by needles.
Raw. I was raw.
“Mo chridhe—”
A broken whimper. If I hadn’t felt it in me, if it hadn’t burned on the way up, I would have thought a person incapable of making a sound like that.
Ruarc cursed. “Tell me,” he ordered. “Talk to me.”
Jason touched my shoulder from the other side. His hand shook and his voice was thick when he said, “What happened, sweetheart?”
“I . . . I don’t remember.”
“Bullshit!” Ruarc twisted me onto my back, loomed above me. Rugged features filled my line of vision; his lips were pale slashes, his eyes burning.
“No, I . . .” For once it was true. I frowned. “I don’t remember.”
It was his turn to frown. “How?”
“I . . . I don’t know. But that must mean it’s getting better, right?”
He looked over me at Jason, and when I followed his gaze, I almost gasped. Jason looked dull. Lifeless. A marionette with its strings cut. “Didn’t know it was this bad.”
My nightmares? They hadn’t been. Not in a while. I did wake up crying sometimes. Other times, I woke with a scream. But Ruarc was always there, always made me feel better. I’d never woken up knowing I was dying. Or have it felt so real.
“I . . .” I couldn’t go back to sleep.
As if he sensed my thoughts, Ruarc sat up and pulled me into the cradle of his lap. Warm breath on the back of my neck, then his lips brushing over my pulse. “Gonna be okay, mo chridhe”—my breath hitched, expanded in my throat with nowhere to go, nowhere to flee, nowhere to hide—“you’re gonna be okay.”
Jason pulled himself up to sit next to Ruarc. He looked terrible. “We’re here for you,” he said in a voice that lacked all life, lacked all of himself. Where had he gone?
Our eyes met, and whatever he saw had him visibly pull himself together. A small, strained smile peeled his lips away from his teeth. “We’re here, love.”
If words could bleed, his were dying, and suddenly I knew what I had to do. What I owed them.
Ice dripped down my belly.
“I know,” I whispered, and I did know. They were there for me, always protecting me, comforting me, even revealing dangerous secrets . . .
It was time I did the same.
The ice spread, engulfed my chest.
They deserved to know.
“A-about the other day, the . . . What I saw . . .” I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves as I prepared to reveal the secrets that could tear us apart. Still, my voice was pathetically weak, brutally small when I said, “I trust you. I . . . I w-want you to k-know the tru—” The word got stuck. I swallowed convulsively, tried to drown the lump suddenly blocking my airways.
The fury that had shaped Ruarc’s face, that had made the harsh planes and angles even harsher, extinguished. “Hope . . .”
“—truth,” I pushed out on a whisper, breathing hard.
My lips tingled. Air sawed in and out of my lungs as if I’d been running.
Jason squeezed my hand.
“I . . .” My heart suddenly gave a whopping thump. Just one. Then a pause. A pause that lasted too long.
Baaadump.
Another.
Sluggish.
Weak.
Leering faces flashed through my mind. Metal glinted beneath the dull light of a half-rusted overhead bulb. Spectral bonds locked around my wrists, my ankles, my arms and legs and thighs. Trapped.
A sudden rush of bile threatened to choke me.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I was only vaguely aware of the heat from the two bodies pushing against me. How did I start this story? How did I relive it? How could I, when I’d locked each second away, buried them in the farthest recesses of my mind, shoved them into coffins and buried them so deep that when my thoughts dared to stray too close, the taste of dirt and death and despair clawed at my throat and reminded me to steer clear.
“I—” My voice stopped working. My hands trembled.
Jason’s grip grew stronger. “Sweetheart, please don’t—”
My mouth gaped open, and now it wasn’t just words that were stuck. The air was too.
I made a sound. Somehow. With my ears ringing and the edges of my vision charring like burnt paper drawing in on itself, the sound was nothing. Less than nothing. But the guys reacted as though I’d screamed.
Ruarc cursed, then bent me forward so he could run firm circles on my back. Jason’s hand clenched around mine, his free one landing on my knee. Anchoring me.
They tore me open, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t speak.
My mother gave me to them, I tried to say, but I couldn’t breathe.
They broke me, I should’ve said, but it was too ugly. Too true.
They had broken me. Not in the way they’d wanted, but in other ways. Deeper ways. Ways that I wasn’t sure how to explain.
There’s a monster inside me. Or maybe I’m the monster? We killed . . . We killed . . . We killed my br—
“Breathe, mo chridhe”—why did tears suddenly spring to my eyes?—“slow and easy. Breathe. In and out.” The gravel that was Ruarc’s rough voice had gentled. He spoke low. Reassuringly.
But the panic clutching my mind in its skeleton grasp refused to leave. Instead, the fist tightened, threatened to crush my sanity.
Memories assaulted me. Of the limp little hand clutched in mine. Of the desolation, the loneliness I thought would kill me—and then how I’d give anything to go back to that, anything to stop their torture.
Matthew’s face flashed before me, eyes swollen shut, bloodied face grotesquely misshapen. The fingers . . . Not the first snap, but the second—god, why had I let there be a second?
Dave’s twisted smile as he cut into me.
Metal cuffs chafing my skin until it began peeling.
Terror and pain and crushing desolation. Being less than a person, less than an animal, less than.
I tried to put it into words. All of it. Any of it. But the story was acid in my throat, eating away until—
“Enough!” A snarled command. A command I felt in my bones. “Enough.”
I blinked my eyes open, not remembering closing them, and felt salt on my lips.
Tears?
A ragged sound from Jason. “Ruarc is right.” Warm breath—uneven—on my neck. “That’s enough, sweetheart.”
The circles on my back stopped. Ruarc folded over me, around me, until I was held in a cage of heat and muscle and strength. He placed his chin on my shoulder and spoke directly into my ear. “Was wrong of me to push you before. When you share . . . Should be because you’re ready. Not because I am.”
Air escaped my lips in a sharp hiss. “Ruarc, I . . . I owe y—”
“Don’t owe me shit.” He rolled his shoulders, and I imagined he was trying to shake off the fury that had lashed at the air around him ever since I woke up. “Want you to feel better, not
go through another trauma just so you can tell me about the first.”
He . . . he couldn’t be serious? This kind of understanding, this patience wasn’t possible. Was it? I twisted in his arms until I could see his face.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. A large hand came up to rub against the back of his neck, lips drawing back into a half grimace. “Not just being selfless. Shouldn’t—” He interrupted himself with a growl and glared at Jason. “Explain.”
I expected Jason to roll his eyes at the command, maybe crack a joke, but there was no smile lurking in that gaze of purest amber. “The Assembly can be . . .” Jason briefly closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were bright. So very bright. “It can be dangerous. It will require our undivided attention, all our focus. And if we knew who’d hurt you . . .” His voice lowered, each word a steel trap hungering for its prey. “It would be near impossible not to tear after them, to destroy them.”
“Would hunt them down and rip them apart.”
“And that’s something we can’t do. Not now. Not until after. So unless you want to tell us, we’re better off waiting until this mess is sorted.”
“Until you’re ready,” Ruarc growled.
“Or that. Point is, love, that tomorrow, you’ll be stepping into the lycan world. A world where everyone can smell fear and weakness. You’ll need your strength, and we need to not lose our shit.”
The rigid line of my spine melted. I felt like a candle that had burnt all the way down to the last of its wick, slowly sputtering out in a peaceful, quiet death.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
I was grateful for the short reprieve; more than grateful for their understanding, for their willingness to put my needs before their own—which was exactly what they were doing. I had no doubt their reason was no more than an excuse. One rooted in truth, but still an excuse. They didn’t want to push me, didn’t want to make me feel like I’d failed, so they’d given me an out.
And though I took it, I knew it wasn’t for long.
The words were there, bubbling in my chest, pushing at my throat. And though they were not yet fully formed—raw and ugly and so painful I feared I wouldn’t survive when they erupted—they still needed out. Wanted out.
Once we were at the Assembly, once it was too late for them to take off and chase after the Hunters, I’d tell them.
Three days, I told myself. That’s all the time you get.
No matter what, I was done being a coward. And despite what Ruarc had said, I did owe them. I owed them the truth. Owed them a chance to walk away before I pulled them down with me. And I owed myself a chance to discover if they could still care for me once they knew what I’d done, or if they, like my mother, would see the monster that I was and finish the job the Hunters had started.
Finally leaving me broken.
15
Hope
I wasn’t sure what woke me, but when I became aware of light battering against my closed lids, I knew it was morning. I also knew I didn’t want to get up. Not when I was surrounded by heat and the delicious scents of my guys.
The nightmare that had woken me before had long since drifted into nothingness, and the pain that was to come had been pushed deep, deep down where I wouldn’t have to look at it before I was ready. The only thing I felt now was a vast, glowing contentment.
“Have to go.” A gruff voice, low and hoarse and so sexy it scraped against raw nerve endings and pooled tantalizing heat low in my belly. “Jason’ll stay. Sleep.”
A touch to my cheek, lips pressing against the corner of my mouth.
I snuggled into the touch, the haze of sleep crippling my mental capacities. And then the whole mattress dipped and the arms around my waist dragged me tighter against the heat at my back.
“Mmm,” murmured against my neck. “Too early.”
I made a sound that began as a word but ended in a drawn out sigh. I was warm. So very warm. And my body felt so heavy. The ache between my thighs throbbed in a way that was only partly sore.
I twisted, aware my nose was cold only when it burrowed against a wide chest and Jason yipped. “Jesus.” His arms tightened, voice rough with sleep. “Why didn’t you tell me you were cold?”
Another piece of my brain jolted awake, joining the few that had somehow already risen. “Didn’t know,” I mumbled, rubbing my nose back and forth, enjoying the raw, masculine scent. “Tired.”
Jason chuckled and brushed a kiss over the top of my head. “Not a morning person?”
I shook my head.
Another thing I hadn’t known about myself. It wasn’t like I could’ve told the Hunters to wait with the torture until the sun reached its zenith.
“Hungry?”
“Too early.”
“Hmm.” Jason cupped my face, thumb rubbing over my cheek. “How are you feeling today, love?”
“Tired.”
A low chuckle that made me squirm. “Have you turned into Ruarc? Can I expect only one-word answers from now on, maybe a few grunts and growls?”
I tried to growl and sounded like a disgruntled kitten.
Jason sputtered out a laugh that ended in a cough. “God, love, please do that again. Do it in front of Ruarc and tell him you’ve learned to imitate his growl.” Another deep laugh, a bounce, then I was on my back, eyes slowly peeling open and staring up into Jason’s grinning face. “You’re so cute.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Just woke up.”
“I know.” He kissed said nose. “You’re adorable. All flushed skin and sleepy eyes and kiss-swollen lips. You look like a female who’s been well pleased.”
Everything from my feet to my hairline heated. I averted my eyes, squirming under the knowing look Jason aimed my way.
He leaned down again, nipped at my lips. “Were you, love? Were you well pleased?”
“You know I was,” I whispered.
“I was too,” he whispered back.
Feeling shy—which was ridiculous seeing as he’d had his mouth on my most intimate place last night—I threw a hand over my eyes and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “But I didn’t do anything.”
It was true. They’d done all the work, and Jason had somehow found his release without me doing more than returning his kiss and stealing all the pleasure his skilled fingers, mouth, tongue inflicted.
“Oh, love . . .” He rolled until he was on his back and I was lying on his chest. “Being with you, hearing the sounds you made, having your taste on my lips, the gift of your trust . . .” A small hitch in his breathing. “It was the best experience of my life.”
It was my turn to not breathe, but unlike Jason, I struggled to get any air back into my lungs. “Mine too.”
“No tears love,” he said with a soft smile, wiping a speck of moisture off my cheek. “Any regrets?”
I shook my head.
“Ah, you’re feeling womanly, is that it? A little raw, maybe?”
I nodded.
“Do you want to know a secret, love?”
Those words, they were the same as the ones he’d said the first day we met. I nodded again.
“It’s not only females who feel that way.”
My head shot up and I stared into his too-serious face.
“You make me raw too,” he said. “In all the best ways.”
Unable to speak, I surged up, threw my arms around him, and kissed him while my heart beat outside my body, exposed and vulnerable and oh so achingly hopeful.
I felt his lips split into a smile beneath mine, then he kissed me back and rolled us once more so I lay beneath him. He groaned into my mouth and gave me one more lingering kiss.
“Now, that’s a good way to start the day.” He stared down at me, brows slowly drawing together. “How are you feeling? Any soreness? Pain?”
“I’m good,” I said. The lingering tenderness between my legs didn’t matter. Not when I felt this good. What had happened after we’d . . . had sex—it made me squirm to say i
t, even inside my own head—didn’t matter. Not now. The nightmare—a shudder went through me, though I still didn’t remember it—the conversation we would soon have, the Council; none of it mattered. Not today, not when my heart felt close to bursting and I felt lighter than I’d thought possible.
“You’re sore,” Jason said, pulling me out of my thoughts and back to the present.
“No, I’m—”
“A little trickster, that’s what you are.” Jason grinned and swooped down for a quick kiss. “Trying to convince me you’re up for round two.”
My cheeks burned. “You didn’t . . . Last night, we didn’t . . .”
“Love, last night was perfect. Don’t push it.” He wiggled his brows. “Besides, when I take you, I want you fully rested. You’ll need it.”
My whole body heated at the surety in his voice, the confidence and hunger in those amber eyes. And when he toppled to the side, dragging me against his chest and kissing my temple, all I could do was let out a contented sigh and hope my exposed heart would climb back into my chest before it got hurt.
* * *
After a lazy morning and a long shower, I finally got out of bed. My cheeks hurt from smiling—I couldn’t stop. Not even Jason’s stressful pacing or Ruarc’s muttered curses as they packed what we needed for the Assembly was enough to dampen my spirits.
I’d done it.
I’d been intimate with two amazing men. I’d let myself trust them with my body and experienced a connection I’d never thought possible.
When I rushed down the stairs, ready for lunch, there may have been a small skip in my step. A skip that was lost the moment I swept into the living room and collided with what felt like a column made out of marble.
“Omph!” The sound was knocked out of me, and when I saw what—or rather, who—I’d run into, heat flamed up my neck.
Lucien steadied me with a hand to my elbow, but as soon as I regained my balance, he stepped back. He did that a lot, I’d noticed. Moved out of touching range. Not always, but often enough that my brain chose that moment to take note of it.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I didn’t see . . .” The rest of the words curled up and died on my tongue. I stumbled back, heart suddenly racing.
