“At what cost?”
Damn it. I hate perceptive shifters. Why couldn’t I fall for a clueless idiot?
“Not significant.”
“I’ll be the one to decide what’s significant.”
I arched a brow. “Your right to make decisions on my behalf ended when you colluded to rob me of my memories and fracture my psyche.”
Hudson’s claws extended and dug into the arm of the chair as he shoved away from it and paced in front of me. I didn’t even blink. I was no longer impressed by the Terror of Tennessee.
“Did you seek my consent?”
“No, because you weren’t capable of giving it.”
“Then you should never have made that decision.”
“It wasn’t just me.”
The words hit harder than they should have. I couldn’t trust anyone I Ioved.
“Maybe. But you were the one who swore to be my other half. If you’d said no, they would have listened.”
He punched the air, fury and heartbreak twisting his face. “You think it was easy? Watching you dying in my arms? Hearing your screams until your voice broke?”
I didn’t doubt his words. “You cannot shield me from everything that would hurt me.”
“It was your own mind attacking you. I cannot win that war for you, but I could and did agree to give you time to come to terms with what had happened. The memory patch was always temporary.”
“How long?”
He froze. “What?”
“How long was temporary in your eyes?”
His chest rose and fell as he weighed his answer. “I don’t know.”
“Indefinitely then. So long as it suited you. A broken mate wasn’t the woman you could present to the pack.”
He pointed at me. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Why not? You put fake memories in my mind.”
He ran a hand through his hair, and his lip curled. “You know there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you, Cora. It goes against the mating bond.”
“Sadly, that very bond gave you permission to fuck with my free will. I cannot have that vulnerability right now.”
He blinked. “I would never make you vulnerable.”
I jerked to my feet. Bella huffed her displeasure and thudded to the floor, her tail flicking in the air. “Even now, you can’t see that what you did was wrong. You sent me into the lair of a god with secrets and lies. He shouldn’t have been able to shake our bond with a few truths.”
He took a step around the coffee table. My wings fluttered, lifting me in the air and over the sofa to place it between us. If he touched me now, my resolve would crumble, and he wouldn’t have learned anything other than the reinforcement that he was armed to make choices on my behalf.
I shook my head, stepped back, and held my hands out as he leaped over the sofa to stalk after me. Indigo lurched inside me, my chest rumbling with a terrifying growl. Green rolled over Hudson’s eyes in response.
“Don’t touch us.”
“If I need to fight her, so be it.”
