“Good. Okay. Good,” Rowan nods, his hands shaky as he unlocks the cage door. “Sorry, I’m a fucking mess.”
“You’ve got it rough, kid,” I say, straightening. “Your family’s a piece of work. You’re just trying your best. I get it. I know Ash gives you a lot of shit for it, but I think that’s just ‘cause he’s scared about how much he cares.”
I’ve spent enough time with the other two alphas to pick apart their brains a little. They’ve both spent so much time here being treated as nothing but animals. That kinda shit does stuff to your head.
But living here with the Satan spawn that run this place and calling them family?
Shit’s been rough for Rowan too.
If anyone would know, it would be me. I guess I feel a bit protective of the kid. We’ve both got shitty-ass families.
He pushes open the door to his trailer, and I have to stifle a groan.
Even though I thought the sweet perfume clinging to Rowan’s skin was intense when he first showed up at the stables, it’s nothing compared to the thick fog that is Mirabelle’s scent.
“Rowan?” She whimpers from further in the trailer.
“I’m here, Sugar,” Rowan calls, kicking off his shoes and gesturing for me to follow.
He doesn’t have to tell me twice.
I’m surprised. He’s set up his bedroom into a pretty decent nest. I know the kid probably had nothing more than a basic comforter before she got here, which means he got all the new soft blankets and pillows just for her.
The hanging lights on the wall cast a dim glow through the room, illuminating Mirabelle’s sweat-slicked body.
The sight makes me stop in the doorway. I don’t dare take a single step further.
My pulse roars in my ears when I see the bruises dotted on her arms and the mottled rings of deep purple and blue around her wrists and ankles.
“It hurts,” she whimpers, rolling over and curling up onto her side, reaching desperately towards Rowan.Her eyes are glazed as she blinks up at him. “Help.”
“I know it hurts. I brought help, Sugar, see?” Rowan says, gesturing over at me, looming in the doorway like a fucking creep.
It takes all of my self-control not to throw myself into her makeshift nest and knot her until the only thing leaving those pretty lips of hers isn’t whimpers of pain but cries of pleasure.
I need to pull myself together. I may teeter on the edge of being made into a feral alpha from the drugs that’ve been forcibly pumped into my system, but I won’t touch her without her permission.
My control, that tighter hold I have on it compared to Rage and Ash, was why Rowan chose me.
But still. It’s the hardest thing in the fucking world.
Well, maybe second to my throbbing cock.
I haven’t seen Mirabelle naked before. Supposedly, she was stripped naked when she was first “introduced” to Ash and Rage, but I didn’t get that privilege.
The sight of her pale, freckled, sweat-slicked skin calls to me. She’s thinner than when I last saw her a couple of weeks ago. The soft curves that were filling out, thanks to Rowan’s help have all but disappeared, reminding me of when we first met.
But despite the marks of the fucking torture she’s had to endure, everything about her still calls to my soul. I don’t know how to describe it.
It’s everything.She’severything.
I’m shaken from my trance when I see her eyes, glazed over from her heat, find me.
“Griffin?” She whimpers, her perfume exploding out from her, calling my thick eucalyptus scent out to swirl with hers in the small room.
“I’m here, sweetheart. Can I come in?”
“Please,” she whines, parting her thighs and revealing the glistening slick that coats them.
