Trembling lips kiss my neck, my wet cheek. He whispers, “I’m here, my love. Right here. I am so sorry. So, so sorry.”
Gods, but I am a failure. He should not be comforting me.
Wiping my eyes, I pull away. “Has anyone hurt you?” I frame his face in my hands, looking for any injury.
He shakes his head, dark locks clumped together with dirt, blood, and sweat. “No.”
Reaching up, I check the cuffs. They’ve dug into his wrists and brought blood to the surface. I have seen people lose their hands from how tightly cuffs were fitted to their flesh. Drawing him close, I kiss his dry lips and try to fight back another wave of anguish. “I will get you out of here. I swear it.”
My heart sinks when Soren shakes his head. “Wulfric seemed adamant that I was never leaving this basement until the moment of my judgment.”
A growl rips from my throat. “You are my mate. He cannot keep you here!”
“Lyall…” Soren’s voice is soft, pleading. Even when we were boys, I could never deny him anything when he took that tone with me. “You have lost so much. B-because of me.” Tears spill down his cheeks, mixing with blood and sweat. “I will not be the reason you lose the rest of your family.”
I press my forehead to his, swallowing back the rush of tears. “This was not your fault.”
“But it was,” Soren says, face twisted in anguish. “This happened because of me.”
Soren and I had met beneath our favorite elm tree and claimed each other as mates at last. He’d still been inside me when a man had come up behind us and touched his blade to my neck. All the blood in my body had turned to ice when I’d recognized the man in hunters’ apparel as the leader of the missionaries who’d come to our shores earlier that same day.
Soren had recognized him too, but for very different reasons.
Thorald, the man who’d murdered my father and led the attack on our village, was Soren’s father. Soren hadn’t been the sole survivor of the attack on his childhood village after all. Unbeknownst to us all, his father had survived and spent years training and gathering an army for this very moment.
“You are not responsible for his actions.”
Soren scoffs. “Tell that to your brothers. They have decided my guilt by association with him.”
Shock ripples through me, and I shake my head. “No. They can’t.” It wouldn’t be fair to blame Soren for his father’s actions. Yet I could envision Wulfric doing exactlythat, lost in his grief and rage and guilt, desperate for someone else, anyone else, to blame. “I will speak to him, make him see reason!”
My own brother would not part me from the man I love. Hecouldn’t.
“It’s too late, Lyall.” The finality in Soren’s voice turns my blood to ice.
I stare, unblinking, into his defeated eyes. “Why would you say that?”
A broken laugh escapes Soren. “I already confessed.”
Bile rises in my throat. “Towhat?”
Soren averts his gaze, lips trembling. “To betraying the pack.”
I rock back on my heels, swallowing hard so I won’t be sick. “What… why would you…”
“While you were recovering from the battle, mistrust spread through the village. The townsfolk thought I had turned you against your own family, that you were somehow in on my father’s plan to attack the village and kill Erik. I couldn’t let them think so poorly of you. So I… confessed. Told them I alone knew my father’s plan. That I used you all for protection until the day I could be rescued.” He swallows hard, and the bond between us sours with despair.
The room spins around me, and I close my eyes and take several deep breaths. Chest tightening, I lurch away from him and pace to the wall, leaning on it for support.It’s all a lie, of course. Soren was as surprised as I was to find hunters in our village. All these years he’d believed his father to be dead and gone, just like his mother and his friends from the village he’d grown up in.
Snarling, I rake my claws down the wall. “Then I will tell them it’s not true, any of it! I will make Wulfric listen to reason. I—”
“No!” Soren’s broken shout fills the chamber. “I will not be the reason you lose your family, Lyall. I can’t!”
“Youaremy family!” My roar tears at my throat. “And I have already lost so much. I will not lose you, too!”
“So… if you had to choose… myself or your family… you would choose me?”
Yes, I want to say, but the word won’t come. I swallow hard, trying to speak, but emotion chokes me. I am the eldest brother, and unlike my twin Anders, it’s a duty I’ve always taken to heart. Ever since I held newborn Gunnar in my arms, then Wulfric a couple years later, I knew I would protect them with my life. That is my duty as their big brother. My brothers come first. Always. That is the promise I made to myself. To Father.
