“I don’t need your concern, Darius. I don’t need you to play hero. I don’t need anything from you!”
The realtor clears his throat awkwardly. “I’m going to step outside for a moment.” He edges toward the door, giving us both a wide berth. “Take your time.”
He practically flees, pulling the door closed behind him. Leaving us alone.
I turn my full attention to Violet. She doesn’t back down. Doesn’t shrink away. Just glares up at me with those blazing, hazel eyes.
“Why are you looking at property in a human-owned area?” The question comes out harsher than I mean it to. “You could live among your own kind. At the estate. You have a home.”
“Are you an idiot?”
I stiffen at the insult.
“I belong here. Among humans.” Her voice drops, turning bitter. “They don’t discriminate against me for being weak. They don’t care that I can’t shift. They see me as a person, not a failure of nature.”
Each word is a knife sliding between my ribs.
“Besides, I don’t want to stay at the estate.” She wraps her arms around herself, a defensive gesture that makes me uneasy. “I prefer my solitude.”
I stare at her for a long moment before forcing words out. “If you want your own place, I can give you a better one than this. Better security. Better location.”
“I don’t need your charity.”
The word “charity” makes me flinch as if she has struck me.
A look of guilt suddenly flickers across her face. She looks away, her arms tightening around herself.
“Please just leave me alone,” she whispers.
The defeat in her voice destroys me. “Do you truly hate me that much?” I ask quietly.
She looks back at me, and what I see in her eyes makes my breath catch. She is haunted. And tired. So tired.
“I don’t hate you.” Her voice is barely audible. “But I know you’re just like everybody else. So, I don’t trust you.”
The knife twists. My wolf claws at my ribs from the inside, desperate and frantic. I swallow the howl of an animal watching its mate walk away.
“I’ve tried apologizing,” I say.
“Apologies are just words to me.” She meets my gaze directly. “Words mean nothing when actions prove otherwise.”
“Then let me prove it. Let me—”
“Why?” The question explodes out of her. “Why do you care so much? It’s not like I matter to you.” Her voice cracks. “My own mother can’t tolerate me. Why are you trying to get me to believe you care?”
“Because I do.”
“If I’d had my way, I never would have returned to the pack.” The words come faster now, sounding desperate. “If I could have, I would have preferred to die alongside my brother and my father. Not live this miserable existence.”
Terror floods through me. Ice-cold and absolute terror.
“You want to die?” My voice shakes. “You can’t. Violet, you can’t—”
“I don’t want to die.” She looks at me, and the emptiness in her eyes is worse than any anger. “But I don’t care much about living, either.”
The world tilts.
Pain explodes in my chest, sharp and visceral, like the mate bond itself is being torn apart. My knees nearly buckle. I have to lock my leg muscles to remain standing, have to dig my nails into my palms to keep from reaching for her.
