Now was later.
I traced one of the ridges with careful attention, and he went completely still above me.His whole body tensed like a wire pulled taut, the rhythm of his hips faltering, his breath catching audibly in his chest.
“What kind of animal did this?”
The question came out quiet, almost gentle, but I meant it literally.The marks were too wide to have been made by human fingernails.Too deep to be anything but deliberate.Four parallel lines carved into his flesh like something with claws had raked across his back and left these permanent reminders of its passage.
He tried to kiss me, his mouth seeking mine with desperate intent.The same distraction that had worked before, pleasure derailing thought, his body trying to make me forget the question I had asked.
I pulled back before his lips could find mine.
“No.”My hands stayed on the scars, feeling the texture of them beneath my fingertips, the way the raised tissue told a story I was only beginning to understand.“Tell me.”
The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy with everything he didn’t want to say.His body was still pressed against mine, still inside me, but everything else had stopped.His jaw worked, the muscle jumping beneath his skin.His eyes slid away from mine, unable or unwilling to hold my gaze.
“A punishment.”The words came rough, dragged from somewhere deep in his chest.“For a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
Another silence.Longer this time, weighted with the decision he was making about how much truth to share.I could feel his heartbeat hammering against my chest, too fast, betraying the careful control in his expression.
“Caring about something I shouldn’t.”
The words landed like stones dropped into still water.Ripples spreading outward in every direction, disturbing the surface of everything I thought I understood about this man and this marriage and the forces that had brought us here.
I understood, suddenly.With a clarity that made my chest ache and my eyes burn with tears I refused to shed.
The timing.Eight weeks between that cruel rejection and his return with the ultimatum.The scars, fresh enough to still be healing when he came back.The way he had looked at me in the courthouse, guilt warring with determination in his dark eyes.The patience he had shown since then, accepting my hatred as his due, never once defending himself or explaining.
This was about me.
He had been punished for caring about me.By something that left marks like claws, like an animal, like nothing human could have made.
Everything I thought I knew about him was crumbling like a sandcastle before the tide.
He was still inside me.Still waiting, every muscle in his body coiled with tension, for me to run.To recoil from whatever he was.To look at him with the fear and disgust he so clearly expected.
I didn’t.
I pulled him down instead, closing the distance between us.I pressed my lips to the scar on his shoulder, the one I could reach, tasting salt and skin and the wildness that always lingered beneath the surface of him.He shuddered at the contact, a tremor that ran through his entire body like an earthquake.
We didn’t finish what we’d started.
The intensity had shifted into something quieter, something that didn’t need release to feel complete.He eased out of me with careful gentleness and gathered me against his chest, arranging my body against his like I was something infinitely precious.We lay there in the darkness as full night claimed the windows, breathing together, holding each other, simply existing in the same space.
The hate I had clung to for weeks was gone.Burned away like morning mist beneath the rising sun, leaving only confusion in its wake.
I could not hate him anymore.And that was more terrifying than anything else.
16
RAPHAEL
She was still here.
I lay in the darkness with Lena’s body pressed against my chest, her breath warm and even against my skin, and I couldn’t make sense of it.She had seen the scars.Asked what kind of animal had made them.I had told her more than I had ever told anyone, and instead of running, she had kissed the raised tissue on my shoulder like the evidence of my punishment was worth tenderness instead of fear.
My wolf stirred beneath my ribs, a low rumble of satisfaction that vibrated through my bones.Mate.Ours.She stayed.She touched the marks and didn’t flinch.
