My throat burned like a motherfucker, my eyes squeezed as tightly as his arms felt.
I wondered if hugs would always feel like this. I also wondered if I’d ever stop craving them with a burn that scorched whatever was left of my tattered soul.
Kellan held on for a long time, and I didn’t fight him, falling all the way into the two of us wrapped around each other, while the rain pounded the windows. It was dark, cool and cozy, as if we existed in our own world that no one could touch. Kellan’s heart beat strongly under my ear, soothing in its rhythm.
It’ll destroy him when you leave.
The thought was so loud, and I had no idea if I’d be able to make that decision in the end becauseit would destroy me too.
That feeling had never been as strong as it was today. After getting to know this pack, leaving them would irrevocably change me.
“Tell me about your life growing up.”
His hands tightened as I jolted, panic my immediate reaction to that question. “Why do you want to know?”
He started those gentle strokes along my spine again, as if soothing a wild beast. “Because I want to know you. I have so many questions, but I’m aware that asking them will have you running and screaming. So… just tell me one truth.”
One truth. Might as well start with a doozy. “I was a mistake, and my mom never wanted me.”
Kellan’s grip briefly bit into my skin before he relaxed his hold. His heartbeat was faster though, and that cinnamon caramel sweetness tasted slightly bitter as his anger took over. “She told you that?”
“Yep. She mostly showed me, because, you know, actions speak a million times louder than words. But my mom was thorough enough to also use words to really reiterate the facts.”
His fingers moved higher, near my shoulder, tracing over the end of the ropey scar.
I knew what his next question was going to be, but to my surprise he didn’t ask; he just kept brushing the scar tissue.
My honorable alpha was sticking to the one truth today.
“She gave me the scar,” I freely offered, “before my shifter healing was strong enough to counter it, using a pure silver blade. Her pack helped in herdisciplines.” Silver didn’t bother alphas, but the rest of us were weakened by its effects.
Kellan’s chest rumbled under my ear, but he just kept up that soothing stroke over my skin. “As bad as it was to find her body,” I continued, the words pouring from me, “I was lucky she died when I was young. Her pack wasn’t interested in raping children, thank the goddess, but I’d been on the cusp of womanhood when she died.” Exactly around the time those four alphas had started to pay much closer attention to me with lingering stares and touches. It had only been a matter of time.
“I need to kill them anyway,” Kellan said in the deepest tone I’d ever heard from him, his dominance rising as his scent grew stronger.
Their deaths would only bring me joy and peace, but I’d never want him to risk himself in that pursuit. “I promise, for the most part, they left me alone. There’s no need to avenge me.”
His hands briefly stilled before moving again. “How alone?”
Entirely, completely, utterly. In every way that mattered. “Let’s just say that before I ran, they locked me in my room every day. My only freedom was when they left the apartment and I could escape out the window and hide in the garage downstairs.”
Kellan shot up in the bed, keeping his hold on me so I ended up sprawled across his lap. “What about school? What about your wolf? You would have been shifting by then, right?”
I nodded. “Yep, first shift was at ten, like most.”
It took him less than five seconds to figure out what that meant. “That’s why you ran circles in your room when you panicked. Your instinct wasn’t to race outside to the forest, but to hide in the only space that was yours. The only place you were allowed to run as a pup.”
Shame coated my insides, hot and bitter, as I tried not to reflect on those dark days.
“Being an omega helped. I—” I couldn’t finish as my throat tightened. Being an omega might have helped me through that part of my life, but it was also the reason I could never have my pack. A pack I’d have given anything to claim.
Even the ones who didn’t like or want me were a million times better than my mom’s old pack. It was unfair really.
A cruel curse of fate.
Chapter
Thirty-Two
