I resist the urge to reach out to touch him because I’m registering it’s the last thing he needs when he has so much self-hatred inside him right now.
“When my parents died, Lucien distanced himself from our pack and wanted to create his own. Vile men who only wanted to make others suffer. I didn’t know what I was signing myself up for at first, but I was fourteen. I had no other family,” he murmurs through endless tears. “Once he started his own pack, that’s when they started abusing women for their sick pleasure.”
“Pups…breathe for me,” I whisper as his lungs start working overtime.
His watery blue eyes find mine as he shakes his head. “H-he tried to make me do things to them,” he cries. “I protested andbegged, but he still forced me, beat me, and taunted me, and I can’t?—”
In the next moment, he heaves from how hard he’s sobbing.
“Hey, hey. Breathe, baby, breathe. I’m right here.”
“I can’t say it out loud.”
“You don’t have to. It’s okay.”
“I-I should have done more,” he sniffles. “I should have helped, but I was so scared.”
“You were a child, Evan.”
“That doesn’t mean anything!”
“Yes, it does. You were scared of your brother.”
Evan’s mouth quivers as he stares back at me. “I wish I did more. I wish I hadn’t done it.”
“Ava is here,” I say softly. “Ava is alive, and I know that’s because of you.”
He blinks at me once and then twice, remembering my conversation with Jaxon from a few months ago.
“You let her go, probably at the expense of your own life.”
“I wanted him to kill me,” Evan says through gritted teeth. “I wanted him to know what I did, and I wanted him to end it all. I deserved it. Letting Ava go doesn’t make me a good person after everything I did.”
My nostrils flare at his words, wanting nothing more than to bring Lucien back from the dead and kill him again myself.
“But you still survived.”
Evan shakes his head. “He beat me to an inch of my life and continued to force me to get involved. I dissociated then. I let them beat me, praying for death.”
“Did they…”
He lifts his eyes to mine. “Touch me?”
I nod.
“No, but if it meant those girls would still be alive, I wish it had been me instead.”
My throat feels like I’ve swallowed a thousand razor blades. “Don’t say that,” I rasp.
“I deserved everything—the beatings. The pain.” He clutches his hand over his chest, fisting the fabric tightly. “So I pray to the Moon Goddess for forgiveness. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane.”
My heart twists in agony at the tremor in his voice.
“That’s one of the reasons I hurt myself, because I want to feel as much pain as possible.”
My eyes burn as I watch him. “What are the other reasons?”
Evan’s nose wrinkles as he inhales a breath. “To remind myself that my dreams aren’t real. If I feel the pain, I know I’m awake, and I can breathe again.”
