I nod, keeping my voice low in the unlikely case that someone’s at the door listening in when I say, “We’re going to stay with the witch coven.”
Surprisingly, that perks her up a little. With a sniffle, she asks, “With Reyna?” Quietly, she adds, “I like her.”
I nod, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Yes, my love, with Reyna and Odelia. They’ve offered us sanctuary away from here; offered to train us and protect us.”
Leisel nods slowly. “They’re telling the truth.”
She says the statement with such conviction, it gives me pause. “How do you know?”
She shrugs. “I just do. When people lie, theyfeela little wrong. Reyna wasn’t lying when she told me she’d love to have us with her coven and that she’d protect us.”
Looks like healing might not be Leisel’s only magical ability. She might not be able to articulate it properly, but what she’s describing—someone feeling wrong—is a burst of intuitive clarity. One that just might make my little sister a living lie detector.
I nod. “So we’ll go, but we need to go now.”
Leisel’s eyes drop to my neck, and her eyes fill with tears again, even though there’s no longer any injury—just the remembrance of one.
She asks tremulously, “Did Camden do this to you?”
“He wasn’t himself,” I respond.
My response surprises both of us, but me most of all because even after he nearly fuckingkilledme, I’m still defending him. That causes an unprecedented level of self-disgust to well up within me and also tells me that our bond is now a dangerous thing, even in it’s oddly damaged state. If it can get me to make verbal excuses for Camden after what he did…
Granted, I know he wasn’t himself, I pushed him when he was already grieving, but he absolutely deserved it. There are no excuses to be made for his behavior.
“Get your things, sweet girl,” I tell Leisel. “We need to go now before anyone comes looking for us.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Camden
When Wyatt bursts into my room, going as far as to kick down the door to my chambers, I don’t bother to acknowledge his presence. Seated in front of the fireplace where I’ve spent several intimate moments with Sierra—where I can almost still feel her beside me—I continue staring into the guttering embers of the fireplace. Rage clouds my mind, fogging and twisting and warping my thoughts. The half-bottle of liquor I’ve consumed since she stumbled out of my room isn’t helping calm the noise in my head.
I’m groggy and disoriented enough from the potent mix of anger and liquor that I don’t even see it coming when Wyatt stops in front of me, pulls me to my feet by my shirt, and punches me in the face so hard I feel my nose splinter before I fall right back down on the couch.
“What thefuck—” I snap.
Another blow cuts me off, this time to my cheekbone, the hit hard enough that it causes my head to spin. Wyatt mightbe the younger one, but he’s no less of a warrior than I am—his hits are phenomenally strong, and the effects cause blood to well up in my mouth.
I catch his hand before he can punch me a third time, using it to wrench him on the couch beside me. “What’s your godsdamned problem?” I growl.
Wyatt stands and, again, pulls me to my feet by my shirt, apparently not interested in talking. I dodge his next punch but then comes a kick to my chest that sends me hurtling to the ground, gasping in pain as two of my ribs snap under the force.
He circles me, his eyes glaring holes into my skull. Before I can get to my feet or formulate any sort of defense, his boot comes down on my throat with such force I can no longer draw in a proper breath. I roll to my side, coughing and wheezing, thinking of a thousand ways to rip him apart in response to this.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Wyatt says conversationally, though his tone is infused with the sort of vitriol I’ve never heard from him “You’re a fucking shifter, Camden, and a few good hits have you gasping on the floor like a little bitch. Ask yourself, what would a half-crushed windpipe do to a witch, who doesn’t have our strength or healing?”
Thatgets my attention more than any of his hits. My accelerated healing means it only takes a moment for my ribs, nose, and throat to right themselves, and when they do, I push myself to my feet, demanding, “What are you talking about?”
“The fact that I just had tocarryahalf-deadSierra to get healed by her sister,” Wyatt bellows as he grabs me by the hair, directing my line of vision to his chest. I feel myself pale when I see it’s covered with splatters of blood and what looks like little bits of cartilage. One sniff tells me that the blood isn’t his or mine. It’s Sierra’s.
Oh,fuck. That’s when it hits me: I lost it earlier. I let my anger get the best of me until all I could see was a red haze. I already knew Iscared Sierra, wrapped my hand around her throat and squeezed, but I didn’t even use a quarter of my strength while doing it. I wanted toscareher, not do something that resulted inthis.
When I looked at her, all I could see was the loss of our child, and all I could think was that she might’ve intentionally put a stop to the pregnancy. If not by doing it herself, then by making reckless moves that caused it to happen.
Now, though, fear takes me by the throat, chasing away any lingering bits of anger at what Sierra did. In this moment, I couldn’t care less about my anger; in fact, I can’t even remember what I was angry about. Right now, all I can remember is the sheer terror on Sierra’s face when I had my hand around her throat. I was too furious to pay it any notice before, but now I understand her pallid pale features weren’t just sheet-white from fear, they were sheet-white because I was actuallytrulyhurting her.
“You goddamnidiot,” Wyatt seethes, shoving me so hard I fall onto the couch again. “I told you this would happen. When you brought me in here, smug as shit after having sex with her during a blood moon, I told you what your actions would result in, butyou didn’t believe me. And then, when things took courseexactlyas I predicted, you responded bytrying to kill your own mate.”
