Chapter Twenty-Eight
Macgrath
Ihad toget away from Ava before I said something I would regret. I was too angry, unable to control my reactions or my thoughts. Seeing her on the other side of that ward left me feeling helpless and I loathed the sensation. I shielded my thoughts from her, keeping her at a distance. I couldn’t let these emotions leak through our connection. I needed to remain in control.
She was speaking but I couldn’t hear her words. All I could hear was the roaring in my ears and see the red haze around the edges of my vision.
“I cannot listen to you say these things right now. You betrayed me.”
As soon as the words left my lips, her face paled and I felt the sharp stab in my heart. But it wasn’t my pain. It was hers.
Disgusted with myself, I did the only thing I could think of—I escaped.
I traced away from the porch and into the trees at the edge of the property. I needed some distance. Some time to breathe and regain my control. I was enraged and in pain. The emotions were so tangled within me that I couldn’t separate them enough to judge where they originated.
Breathing hard, I ran through the trees, feeling the scrape of branches against my body and my face. I pushed myself faster and faster until the forest was nothing but a blur around me.
It wasn’t helping. Instead I stopped and roared, throwing my fist through the trunk of the nearest tree. It shattered, spewing forth a fountain of bark and splinters. The top half of the tree swayed drunkenly until it fell to the side, crashing to the ground.
I collapsed to my knees, unable to handle the emotions any longer, and I roared again. The sound was ripped from the depths of my soul.
The sudden rustling of leaves captured my attention and I smelled wolf.
Without lifting my head, I spoke. “Go away, Harrison.”
As usual, the wolf ignored me and trotted out of the trees, his eyes narrowed. He stopped in front of me and sat back on his haunches, his eyes still burning into mine.
“Do not look at me like that,” I commanded. “She betrayed me. I need time.”
His eyes remained narrowed and hard but he remained still, watching me.
“Rhiannon deserves to die for what she did. As long as she’s alive, she will never stop trying to escape or to hurt people.”
Finally, the wolf sighed and the air shimmered around him. A few moments later, he was human once more and naked as the day he was born.
He approached me and sat on the ground next to me, completely unaffected by the late January air.
“Running away into the woods and having a temper tantrum isn’t going to fix anything,” he pointed out.
I glared at him and swallowed a growl. “I know that,” I finally admitted. “I was out of control. I didn’t want to say something that I couldn’t take back. I didn’t want to hurt her with my anger.”
His brows rose. “So you abandoned her when she needed you? I’m sure that’s much less painful.”
This time I did growl. “I didn’t abandon her,” I argued. “I left before—”
He waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah, you said that already. Yet when I left moments ago, your mate was in the arms of one of your offspring, unconscious and drained from fighting the daughter of a Goddess. Now, I told you that I would keep my distance as long as you didn’t fuck up. Well, you just fucked up.”
I snarled and twisted toward him. “What the fuck does that mean?”
He stared at me, his eyes amber with his wolf. “What do you think?”
I turned to face him fully. “You stay the fuck away from my mate,” I growled. “She belongs to me.”
He leaned forward infinitesimally. “Maybe she shouldn’t.”
I lunged at him, my lips peeled back as my fangs elongated. We rolled on the ground, snarling and fighting. I was too blinded by my anger to make my attack strategic. I only knew that I wanted to rip his throat out. I could have called for my power, but using my fists and fangs was so much more satisfying.
A sharp jab to my ribs stole the air from my lungs, followed by a right hook to my jaw that had stars dancing in my vision. The wolf was stronger than any I’d ever fought before. He was no mere alpha.
