by KH LeMoyne
He wasn’t supposed to be the sort of man who destroyed other people’s livelihoods without good reason. Like taking over Karndottir’s territory? As quickly as it popped into her head, she discounted the excuse, even if it did make sense. She was angry and shunning rational thought.
Unfortunately, as she rounded the next corner, the reason why she shouldn’t be running through this section of tunnel struck her.
Her foot slipped. She dragged it back from the edge of nothingness just in time, skidding to a stop in panic. Too late, the nagging bit of information she couldn’t recall flooded her memory. Despite her enhanced vision, the darkness played tricks. The rock rising and falling hid surprises now and in the past.
“Breslin—” She whipped back in time to see him running toward her, and then he slipped sideways. Shock and terror contorted his features as he disappeared over the edge.
She’d lunged as soon as she saw him, managing a flimsy grasp on the collar of his shirt. “Please. Don’t move.”
“I’m too heavy for you.” He dangled, unable to find a handhold or foothold on the slick rock face. “Damn, it’s smooth.”
He tried to swing closer, and she lurched with his movement. He froze and blinked, no doubt calculating his odds.
At best, they were awful.
With another swipe, he tried for a narrow crevice in the sheer wall. His fingers scraped with a rasping sound that swirled around them. She strained to hold him, her muscles on fire as the seconds drew out, his weight more like a several-ton elephant than a lean-muscled cougar.
Her heart stopped as she realized he wasn’t moving, only looking up at her. “Rayven. This isn’t going to work.”
“Yes. It will.” She couldn’t believe she was the only thing holding him, but strength was another good shifter asset. One she believed her bear had finally kicked in with, since it seemed to like Breslin’s presence and almost acknowledged her with him around, whether he’d destroyed the clan or not.
“When I tell you, let go.” His deep voice echoed softly. “It’ll be okay.”
Do not make me cry. Again. “Try harder and don’t be a jerk.”
He reached again, then scanned the rock face toward the ledge.
Furious, she yelled at him, “You can’t leave me now.”
“Rayven. Three.”
“You don’t get to piss me off and leave.”
A soft growl bubbled out of his throat. “Two.”
“That’s it,” she spat as she reached, prepared to grasp his fur with her injured arm. “Stick around to fight me like a man. You don’t get to matter and leave!”
“Now, Rayven.” Fur tingled against her fingertips, and she clenched tight. Cloth disappeared from her other hand, and she grabbled to get a two-handed hold. “One. Let go.”
No way. “Please. Please! Don’t leave me like this.”
Tears streamed down her face as the man turning into cat in her hold struggled to dig his claws into the rock He only scraped without purchase. She bent her weight back, screaming for her beast to help and haul his scruff with her. It wasn’t enough. A tickle of power rippled through her, yet it felt like fighting against an outgoing tide. She couldn’t latch on. “We can work this out.”
He twisted again, the angle tearing at the already torn flesh of her shoulder. She screamed but didn’t let go.
One long, high-pitched sound reverberated off the rocks around her. Then another. And another. Muscles and fur bunched beneath her grip. Before she could anticipate it, a punch snapped her backward. Her head collided with rock, and a fireball of pain burst over her as her vision wavered. She rolled to her side. In desperation, she clenched her empty fists, not wanting to see. No fur. No shirt. “Noooo.”
The loss hurt. Her entire body hurt. But as consciousness seeped back, so did the realization that he wasn’t going to answer back.
With a sob, Rayven dug her fingers into the dirt beside her. Wound into a tight ball of misery, it took her a few minutes to notice the way her body swayed back and forth.
Crying didn’t make her move. Not like that.
Heck, what was at her back. Stretching for a look pulled a painful gasp from her throat. A golden furred head rubbed against her cheek as she flopped onto her back on the ground.
“You?” She sighed and tried to roll upright. However, her brief surge of energy was gone. Muscles not only refused to work, but she felt drained enough they were almost numb. She barely had enough energy to keep her eyes open. “Are you real?”
A wet tongue gently licked her neck. Nothing convinced like a sloppy, wet kiss. Still, she might be in denial. Trying to push upright kicked that question aside. Pain lanced through her, and a high-pitched sound hurt her eardrums.
She opened one eye and found the cougar’s head, ears flat against its skull, rubbing against her stomach. Must not have liked her screaming.
“Breslin?” she rasped, her throat thick and raw.
The cougar raised his head, moved muzzle-to-nose with her.
“Why aren’t you shifting?” she asked.
He dipped his head back to the ground and then slid a glance toward the tunnel.
“I didn’t mean for you to fall. I forgot that was where the path dropped off into the chasm.”
He shook his head, and she rolled slowly onto her stomach, cringing as her injured arm ended up beneath her. “This isn’t going to go well.”
Big kitty padded slowly around her body and nudged her better arm. When she didn’t move, he clasped her shoulder gently in his teeth and tugged.
She shot him a look. “Really. Bossy even in this form?”
He eyed her without as much as a twitch of his whiskers.
“Give me a few minutes. A catnap maybe.” Her eyelids fluttered closed, but she opened them again at an insistent nudge in the middle of her back. “Fine. We’ll try it your way.”
Unfortunately, that way proved to be crawling, since her head spun and everything went out of focus when she tried to stand. The cat paced, rubbing against her hips and sniffing at her back. Frustrated, she flopped back on her side. “Will you stop that? Just because I don’t want you dead doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you. So, no sniffing privileges.”
With a snort, he lay down beside her and licked her hand. When she didn’t respond, he swatted her ass with his thick tail.
“Now what?”
He gave another tug on her good wrist.
“I’m tired. But if you keep going straight and take—hmm, two lefts, a right—” Or was it another left. Darn it. She knew the trail by instinct, but not well enough to risk reciting it for him. Not after what they’d both just survived. Yet her body ached and her heart hurt from the rawness he exposed of his life and his fury.
He shuffled his body sideways until she was wedged between him and the wall.
“If you think having me crawl over you is funny, then I’m going to find a way to shower you with fleas. You’re bigger than a small car, and I’m not up for more broken bones.”
But he shuffled more and wedged her tighter.
“Stop it.” She grabbed the fur on his neck and hoisted a leg over him, planning on sliding over him to the other side, when he suddenly rose before she finished her move. She grabbed tighter at the fur and gripped with her knees to keep from falling, waiting to see what he’d do. He rolled his head around to look at her, and it finally hit home. “You’re my ride?”
His grumble tickled along her skin, then he faced forward again and started pacing ever so slowly down the tunnel.
13
With Rayven plastered along his back, guilt hit him full force, a humbling feeling that nearly paralyzed him. But in this body, he at least got the opportunity to comfort his mate even if he couldn’t speak to her. Speaking hadn’t gone very well and they both needed a little time to get over what had happened.
Yes, they’d survived. At the cost of her possible concussion and aggravated injuries. While she was like a feather on top of him, her labored breathing cam
e out in soft rasps.
His jump had been lucky. Precision planned and well executed, yet lucky nonetheless. However, if he didn’t get Rayven out of here, she’d succumb to her father’s plan and die in this hellhole.
After all the times she’d bested her old man, Breslin refused to let her give up now. Especially since he was to blame for her fight with him in the cave to begin with.
She had every right to be angry with him. A hard thing to admit. Years of hatred had honed his every instinct and hardened his heart, but Rayven didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of his anger against her father and neither did her people. Yet she had, and still, she tried to save him.
Gauthier wouldn’t have cared how many Karndottir clan families were misplaced or homeless. But the tragedy of each and every innocent in her clan tortured Rayven.
He’d been serious about her taking on the role of alpha. She was born to the role. Living in the shadow of a good alpha taught him to recognize Deacon’s qualities mirrored in Rayven’s actions. Not that she was ready to hear anyone’s argument to that effect.
Especially his.
For now, he and his beast focused on getting her safely across that territory line as he tried to block the last painful minutes from his mind. He’d heard her cries, felt her tears. Knew how desperately she wanted him to live. How much she needed him. He suspected she’d never voiced her needs before because he hadn’t either. She didn’t deserve to have people she cared for ripped from her life.
He’d forgotten family—until Deacon’s team. But he’d caught glimpses of love and harmony over the years. Hell, even Callum had stuck by him when it would have been easier to abandon him to his self-induced isolation. Others on the team gave him odd looks but always noticed when he was gone too long or refused to talk for days. A few persisted in engaging him.
But Rayven deserved family. She had friends, if Aubrey and Quinn were any indication. Friends she feared keeping too close in case they became targets.
It should have unsettled him the depths to which he was prepared to travel to provide for her well-being. Not just to keep her safe but to make her happy. A given, despite his orders to bring her to the tribunal.
He was tied to her happiness, and that scared the shit out of him. It also made him wonder how much Deacon knew about Rayven. Alphas had bizarre powers—Deacon proving as much for decades. But even an alpha couldn’t know Breslin had a mate, much less one who lived a shadowed existence as the daughter of his sworn enemy. Could he?
She stirred above him and he lifted his head and rubbed his crown again her hair. She dug her fingers below his ear and scratched.
“You asked why I don’t shift. Since you told me your story, I owe you mine.”
He grumbled, a bit half-heartedly. She didn’t owe him anything, but he wanted to hear this. More important, the soft uncertainty in her voice said she needed to tell her story. No doubt telling his cat was easier than speaking face-to-face with a person, and a man at that. He took a small measure of pride in her ease with his cougar, a beast twice the size of a normal one of its species. Most people were intimidated or downright terrified. Not his Rayven.
“You were right. The rules should apply to me as well.” She hesitated. “Do you plan any more attacks on my clan?”
He stopped, hung his head, and shook it back and forth.
“Promise?”
He released a garbled rumble and, after a few moments, started walking again.
“We should make another new deal,” she said. He tensed, yet kept his pace steady, careful to make sure she didn’t become distracted and slide off his back. “We start from here. In this place. Whatever we’ve said is past, and neither of us has to account for anything we’ve acknowledged once we leave this horrible place.”
He chuffed in agreement, yet deep down, his cat grumbled with menace. Nothing around them posed a threat, but like a storm in the distance, he felt something bitter and painful still coming. Rayven’s past held more horrors than he’d imagined. He only hoped the dark, endless miles of the cave truly purged the truths she seemed prepared to tell.
“One of Karndottir’s enforcers killed my mother when I was taken from her for the gauntlet run. As much as he despised being tied to my mother and made no secret of his rejection of me, Karndottir never intended her death. He made a messy example of the enforcer, and it bought me time.” Breslin growled. However, she continued. “But I no longer had a home and lived for two years at the outskirts of the clan sanctuary.”
Unable to stop the sense of impending threat, Breslin looked behind him. She wasn’t looking his way, but rested her cheek on his back and stared at the wall.
“But when I turned nineteen, my father hunted me down and dragged me back to his sanctuary. He tossed me into a pit with one of his up-and-coming enforcers. If they could get me to submit, then they could keep me. Not keep me as their mate—they could only claim me if I shifted. But if they could force the words of defeat from my mouth, then they got to take me as a reward. A lesson intended for me not to rise above my menial female status.”
His claws extended from his paws, making walking nearly impossible. He stopped, swaying slightly as bile rose in his throat and anger clenched his gut into a painful knot. The urge to shift back into his human form and hold her was overwhelming enough, he nearly gave in to the temptation. Yet, he controlled himself and his beast, though he and it raged. Both wanted to run and tear flesh from bones.
“It’s over, Breslin.” Her fingers curled into his fur, the tips massaging deep down into his soul, assuaging the snarls he hadn’t realized he’d issued. “I never gave in. Unconsciousness was better than letting them win. But my father used his own blood to make the lessons last.”
And to keep her from healing and scar her. Fucking bastard.
Scratching at the earth, Breslin forced himself to relive her choices, to accept her dilemma. As was her way, Rayven had survived with her sanity and self-esteem intact. No thanks to anyone in her clan.
The men supposedly in charge of defense and retribution for wrongs had perpetrated these crimes, with the full sanction of her father. Breslin had never considered a mate, much less children, but one thing was certain: he’d never let anyone, man or woman, harm his child.
He plodded on, resolved in his commitment. Since men had done their best to destroy the beautiful creature inside Rayven, he’d do whatever it took for her to purge her demons. He’d remain in his beast form as long as it took. Remain as the creature who offered her safety without jeopardizing her choices.
“You asked, and I’ve told,” she whispered as she shivered and her teeth chattered. “But we leave this here. I know that you’re not able to object right now. Still I’m holding you to that, fair or not.”
Fair. Too fair. That was what made her alpha material: determination, guts, and compassion—and picking the right topics on which to take a stand. If she didn’t want to speak about this ever again, he’d never pressure her. Fairness wasn’t really the point. Oddly enough, the sharing was. He paused and tilted his head back, rubbing it where it touched hers. She hugged her arms tighter around his neck and buried her face in the fur there. He scented her sadness, though thankfully no salty tears flowed this time. She’d dealt with her past. Which was okay, but he wasn’t quite there yet when it came to what her father had done to her.
He released a long snarl that dissipated into a hiss as he licked over his canines and imagined a Karndottir enforcer forcing a bond with her. Her refusal to submit to someone the likes of Sam would only drive an unhinged shifter to do more damage. With her bear in deep withdrawal to protect against an unwanted and likely fatal mating, she’d had no protection.
“They expected me to cower; instead, I learned how to handle myself. I got faster. I couldn’t connect with my beast, but she lent me strength. I took out one wolf’s eye. Took another one’s ball—he’s lucky I didn’t get all his junk.”
Not bothering to hold back, Breslin shook his head with a k
eening sound. She suddenly laughed in response. “Thought you’d like that. You have a way of looking at things that I appreciate.”
To encourage her, he came to a halt and scratched the rocks a few times.
“Really, you need more after that.” She sighed. “The alpha was always thinking of something new. He put three of them in there with me. It took them a while to pin me down, though I never submitted and not a word came out of my mouth, not even when there were more claws and teeth than I could count. That was his only rule. I had to say yes. Screaming didn’t count.”
Son of a bitch. Her refusal, again, to label her biological sperm donor with anything other than his formal name or title registered loud and clear. Another thing they agreed on. Father, like mother, was a term reserved for a higher being. The recipients of the gifted label didn’t have to be of-the-blood, but they had to love, nurture, and cherish. It amazed him she’d developed a giving heart given her history.
“That annoyed Karndottir more than anything. Once, he left me in the pit for two days for everyone to see my body after a struggle.” She motioned with her hand for him to take the right tunnel. “After watching you in that altercation back there with Sam’s team, I think you have a few moves you could teach me. I mean, if we ever get the chance.”
He gently licked again over what he could reach of her fingers, tasting her sweet scent and feeling her commitment not to give up until her last breath.
Yes. He’d teach her. At the same time, he’d find some way to make her beast whole.
They continued in silence for almost an hour, Breslin brooding in a state of fury and Rayven oddly quiet.
“You understand why I’m the perfect suspect for his murder. I get he committed worse atrocities against others, and he deserved to suffer. Deserved death.” She laughed again, though the sound held no happiness. “I don’t even know how he died. Never asked, and no one ever told me. Is it bad I don’t really care?”
He didn’t deserve this bit of sympathy from you. That no one told her made sense. Whoever framed her was too busy making certain she wouldn’t live to face the tribunal. However, he agreed with her. Gauthier deserved to die. Over and over and over again.
