by Woods, Erica
Then to find her here, alone. Unprotected. Caught in a trap she was too trusting to recognize . . .
I’d lost control over my emotions. The fire churning in my gut was worse than rage. Worse than mindless fury. It was deadly. Potent. And produced exactly the kind of out-of-control actions that I’d avoided my whole life.
In less than a month, the deceitful little female had torn through all my protections, all my walls, all my boundaries, and forced an uncontrollable, fervid wrath to the surface.
It was tearing me apart at this very moment.
Pain at her betrayal fueled it. Jealousy stoked its traitorous flames. And when Hope looked to the other male, the stranger that had meant her harm, pain brimming in eyes that were too innocent to correctly portray her disloyalty, that wrath swept away the last remnants of my crumbling armor and I reacted without thought.
As the soft spoken “Why,” filtered through the night air, I leapt. The coward scrambled back, terror written all across a face that deserved to be cut to ribbons, but he was too slow.
Claws slashed and blood sprouted. Matthew’s scream mixed with Hope’s fervent cries, and I blocked it all out. Here was the male who’d thought to betray my female. The male who was the reason she’d betrayed me. He deserved to die. Deserved to suffer.
He would pay.
A frantic tug to my arm had me spin around, ready to strike down the new threat. My teeth were already bared in a cruel smile when a glint of recognition halted my attack.
“Have you lost your mind?” I snapped, the male forgotten.
Hope’s wide eyes were locked on my raised arm, and my fury grew. Yet again she’d risked her fool neck, and for what? For who?
The devil take it, I could have hurt her! I could have hurt the one female I desired to protect above all others. Did the chit have a death wish?
“Please,” she pleaded. “Don’t kill him!”
Rage moved under my skin like silver blades, making narrow, reckless cuts that bled ice and fueled fire.
“You dare plead for another male’s life?” I hissed. Emotions I had forgotten how to deal with, forgotten how to control, assaulted a mind already hazy with turmoil. The newness of it all, the destruction of my painstakingly-built wall was my only excuse for what I said next. “My first impression of you was right,” I spat, savoring the way she flinched, the wide eyes that had fooled us all. “Deceitful, dishonest wench! How many lovers have you betrayed while plotting their downfall? How many males have you destroyed? Tell me!”
Hope wrenched away from my hold on her wrist, her whole body shuddering as her eyes grew glassy. Tears fell from her duplicitous eyes, and despite her betrayal, anguish speared me at her suffering.
My hands curled, the hot, ugly throb in my gut spitting flames that burned my chest and left my mouth tasting like ashes.
Bitter ones.
The female had fooled me, betrayed me, made me crave what I knew could only lead to destruction. And still, her pain made me bleed.
Rubbing over my sternum, I buried all blazing, lethal emotions beneath a layer of ice and snow. The cold halted the spew of cruel words twitching on my tongue, but it did not give me back my control. Nor did it repair my armor.
I felt distinctly unhinged.
“No one,” Hope said on a broken whisper, drawing my gaze back to my conniving female. “I’ve not been with anyone besides our—your pack.”
The quiet change from our to your stabbed me in the gut. But it did not ease my suspicions. “You lie as easy as you breathe, female. How many lies have you told us? Again and again . . . How can we believe a word you say?” She blanched at my accusations. “I will ask you once more.” My narrowed gaze remained glued to her drawn face. This time I would not be fooled. This time I would spot her lies the moment they left those deceiving lips. “Why in damnation did you leave to meet this vermin if he is not your lover?”
Her lip quivered but she did not speak. Her silence was damning.
Jaw grinding, I gave her a sharp nod, and turned to deal with Matthew.
“Wait!” Hope cried.
I halted, unable to ignore that broken plea, and cursed myself for all kinds of fool. “Yes?”
“Won’t you . . . Won’t you look at me?”
Reluctance in every muscle, I did. It pained me to face her, pained me to see her crumpled face and anguished eyes, but there was no choice; walking away from this female had proven beyond my capabilities.
“He was a captive,” she said, falling to her knees as though the confession had cut the legs from under her. “We were captives together, and he . . .” A short, terrible laugh that ended in a choked sob. “He was my only f-friend.”
Her voice blurred and distorted, hammered out of proportion by the roar of my pulse.
A captive?
No. No, that word’s significance was too dark, too ugly to fully comprehend. She had been sorely mistreated, of that I had no doubt, but a captive?
She misspoke, that is all.
But then I looked at her, at her translucent skin, at her trembling lips, at the legs that no longer had the power to keep her upright and the chest that shook with the force of her too-quiet grief. She knelt before me, bleeding from a thousand invisible wounds, exposing a thousand twisted scars. And when she averted her eyes, silent tears leaving silver tracks under the moon’s light, the dead thing in my chest violently shattered.
In two strides I was at her side. Between one heartbeat and the next, she was gathered in my arms, her wet cheek pressed into my neck while she cried in great, ugly sobs that wracked her tiny frame and made me curse everything below the sun, starting with myself and ending with the blackguards who had been her jailors.
“They cannot hurt you any longer, my Hope,” I crooned, wrapping the lethal edges of my fury in silks and satins so she would not suspect the lengths I would go to avenge her suffering. Or to the degree I anticipated said vengeance.
She did not respond, only clung tighter with a desperation I immediately resented. And speaking of resentment . . .
With my female securely wrapped up in my arms, I spun around, hissing out a curse when Matthew’s crumpled body no longer lay where I’d left it.
Hope lifted her head. “He’s . . . he’s gone?”
Not trusting myself to speak, I gave a stiff nod and carried her back to our cabin at a brisk trot.
* * *
Rather than depositing my female safely in bed and setting out to hunt the male who’d been about to betray her, I took a seat on the couch and placed her slight, trembling form in my lap.
I could not afford to linger on her revelation, to ask the questions that blazed so bright they torched common sense and sent me hurtling toward the edge of madness. Not if I were to retain my wits. I had important matters that needed tending.
I forced my fingers to unclench, unwilling to bruise my Hope’s delicate skin, and tried to wrangle my rogue emotions back under control so I could do what needed to be done.
First, to determine to which degree Matthew posed a threat. Second, to extract some of the poison eating away at my disobedient female and ensure the loss of my temper had not damaged her tender emotions. Then, finally, to hunt down a cowardly male and interrogate him so thoroughly there would be no pieces left for Ruarc to wade through.
It was lunacy to wait, to put female sensibilities ahead of the answers I sought. Pure, unadulterated lunacy. And yet, I did not hesitate to do exactly that.
“You were not alone when I arrived,” I began, unable to control the chill in my voice at the thought of how this night might have ended. “Someone was approaching from the other side of the forest.”
She flinched. “Is that . . . is that how you knew Matthew was g-going to . . . going to—”
“Yes,” I said, choosing to spare her the intricacies of her friend’s mental state. The stench of his emotion would follow me for days. Fear. Shame. Guilt. Relief. A perfectly bitter cocktail that spoke of a male who not only knew his actions
were despicable, but who wanted them completed posthaste. “Best not to dwell on that.” Though he would. Matthew would spend hours dwelling on his choice. Days, perhaps, depending on my mood.
“N-now what?”
“Now, my willful female, you will tell me”—I steeled myself against the anger coiling tight in my abdomen, ready to inquire into every aspect of Matthew’s life, his past, his secrets, anything that could point me in the direction of his accomplices, but, as was usually the case in the presence of this vexing female, intent fled when confronted by instinct—“why you opted to risk your life rather than confiding in your males!”
Hope flinched and bit down on her lower lip.
Was my reason for this line of questioning truly instinct? Or was it simply impulse? Regardless, it throbbed like an infected wound, a combustible need I was unable to deny.
“Well?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her lip until she opened her mouth and it popped free of her blunt, little teeth.
“I . . . I couldn’t tell you,” Hope whispered. “Revealing his secrets, his trauma was not my place. Not . . . not until I’d spoken to him first and made sure it was okay. If I’d betrayed him like that, how would you ever trust me? If I’d shown that kind of disloyalty—”
“Disloyalty?” I turned her so she straddled my knees, thighs spread perhaps a touch too wide, but I was too vexed to pay it any heed. “It is not disloyal to confide in your males. It is not disloyal to reveal a secret that otherwise puts your life at risk!”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Why the devil would you think that?”
“Because Matthew, he . . . he once sacrificed everything to save me.” She stared up at me, face haggard, eyes brimming with unshed tears. “I owed him. Can’t you see? I owed him everything.”
She broke down. My female broke down, spitting sobs as though they were poison to be purged; searing my soul with her sorrow.
My jaw clenched. Regardless of what had happened in the past between my Hope and the coward, her wellbeing, her life was the only thing that mattered. My female had to learn to put herself first.
“It’s alright,” I bit out.
At my harsh tone, she gave a keening cry and curled in on herself. It struck me straight in the sternum. All of a sudden, consoling my female was all I cared about. Seething anger was pushed far down as I cleared my throat and concentrated on terminating the source of her pain.
“Matthew cannot hurt you now,” I said.
She cried harder.
“He was a fool to betray you.”
Her shoulders curled and she hid her face in her hands.
“He will pay.”
This did not seem to make her feel any better, and her continuous tears made an unpleasant, whirling sensation beat in time with my heart. I stroked a hand down her back and attempted to think. Had I ever comforted a female before?
Not since I was a child and still believed I could earn my mother’s love.
I pushed that ridiculous recollection out of my crumbling fortress and concentrated on my female.
How did one console the inconsolable? And why had she ceased making noise? Her cries were wordless. Silent. I would not have known she cried if not for the way her slight frame shook. Shook with utterly quiet sobs.
Something in my chest twisted in agony.
Damnation.
“From this day forth, you do not step foot outside this cabin without one of your males by your side,” I hissed, inexplicably furious; both at my failure to protect her from the dangers of her own stubbornness and my inability to stem her tears. “You go nowhere, talk to no one, do nothing without our knowledge.” I grabbed her chin, lowered my face until we were nose to nose. “So help me, woman, if you disobey, I will make good on Ruarc’s threat, and believe me, having your backside beneath my palm will be no hardship”
She went utterly still, eyes wide and no longer leaking. “I-it won’t?”
Threats? That was the key to soothe my Hope? Not promises of safety, no vows of vengeance, but threats?
“Quite the opposite, I assure you.”
“But . . . Y-you still w-want me?”
“Why would I not?”
“Because . . . Because I lied! And I snuck out and—”
“Yes,” I said silkily. “And now you know the consequences of doing so again.”
She looked down at her hands, twisting the string of her sweatpants around and around and around one finger until it turned white. “I thought . . . I thought you hated me.”
Claws erupted, and I used one to slash the string cutting off her blood flow. “I should not have given you any reason for such beliefs,” I said, regret dripping down my throat like tiny drops of death. “What you did was wrong, but I should have given you the benefit of the doubt. You, my Hope, do not possess the qualities needed to enact such a betrayal. I should never have suggested otherwise.”
“It’s okay, Lucien,” she whispered, a phantom of a smile trembling her lips. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have gone to meet him. Not alone, and not so late. When I saw him in the forest after you left with Vern—”
“You what?”
“I—well, a while after you left, Matthew passed beneath my tree and I tried to talk to him. He . . . he was afraid. He said he couldn’t stay, that it was dangerous, and that if I wanted to meet, we had to do it tonight or we could never talk again.” She shook her head, looked at me with wounded, flinching eyes. “Never. After all we’d been through, and he didn’t even want to—” She sucked in a harsh breath. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. But he seemed so scared, acted so jittery and nervous that I . . . I believed him.”
Sympathies be damned, she had been unforgivably foolish!
“So you thought it prudent to plan a midnight rendezvous with a stranger? A male who clearly had something to hide?”
“He isn’t a stranger,” she muttered.
“That is your takeaway from this? That he isn’t a stranger?”
She bit her lip. “I . . . I thought I knew him.”
She had put herself in danger, again. She had risked her life, again. She had failed to trust us, again. And all for a male she felt she owed? “Did you now?”
“We were captives together, Lucien! Who would understand if not Mat—”
“I would have!” I snapped. If anyone could understand the loneliness, the hopelessness of being a captive, it was me. I’d been one my entire childhood.
Rather than conceding, the pretty, little head of hers cocked up a whole slew of nonsense. “But I couldn’t come to you before I’d spoken to Matthew. He begged me not to! I owed him everything, Lucien, and after what he said about his alpha killing him if he ever found out he’d been a captive—”
“Enough!” Her words were so infuriating that even my wolf growled. The utter ridiculousness of her claims aside, her status as a captive was not a factor I could afford to dwell on at this moment. Simply hearing the word made me churn with heated emotions that could very well send me tearing out into the night for a hunt that encompassed far more than Matthew. “For the very last time, you do not, nor will you ever, owe anyone anything that could compete with your safety. And no,” I snapped when she opened her mouth, recognizing her asinine argument before she made it, “whoever Matthew’s alpha is, it is not normal lycan behavior to kill someone for having been a”—I hissed out a breath, struggling for control—“captive.”
Unless one counted captives of the Hunters. Which I did not.
The way she hunched over, the wince on her face told me she had indeed thought that was a possibility.
“I didn’t think you would, but he . . . he was so scared, Lucien. And after everything, I couldn’t just ignore his feelings. And not knowing all the lycan rules, I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t be judged for being a captive.”
“Judged for something out of his control?”
“Maybe . . . maybe it wasn’t out of his control.” The flickering hush of her voice was intolerabl
e. It quivered like a flame that had withstood wind and rain and a lifetime of adversity, so weary it was only a gentle breeze away from perishing. “Maybe he wasn’t strong enough to evade capture. Maybe he wasn’t brave enough to escape. Maybe he did something to . . . to deserve ending up there.”
Her words were a trap, complete with steel teeth and pretty lures and silver barbs ready to poison my blood. They prodded at the embers of my barely contained temper, flattened my lips and clenched my jaw until my own words, when I could finally push them out, were a trap of their own. “Speak plainly, woman. What, exactly, are you trying to say?”
“Just that . . .” She halted, rubbed a hand over her throat and spat out a short, desperate laugh that left a hollow echo in its wake. “It was my fault that I was a captive so—”
A distinct flavor exploded on my tongue. Red. Hot. Throbbing.
Furious.
Hope’s mouth clapped shut, and she drew back. Whatever she saw on my face, it was enough to keep her quiet.
“What did you just say?”
Her lip quivered, then was valiantly captured by her teeth and punished for its telling transgression. “It was m-my f-fault that they—”
“Stop!” I had to silence her fool mouth before she pushed me beyond my limits. “Do not say another word.”
Her fault? What hogwash did her abusers put in her head?
That was the wrong thing to contemplate.
Rage burned bright behind my eyes, clashing with the ice that had always—and would always—encase me, mixing with a steely determination to make this headstrong, rebellious, utterly beautiful creature mine.
“No, I owe you the truth. I did something terrible, and I . . . I deserved—”
My hands shot out and found her shoulders, fingers digging into her soft flesh. “Female,” I hissed, only peripherally aware of her rounding eyes, of the startled ‘O’ of her mouth, “I am warning you . . .”
“But I did! It was my fault and I deserved—”
