“I said,leave it.” He’s towering over me now, menacing. I forget, sometimes, just how much taller he is than me. I have to crane my neck to keep his gaze.
“Or what?” I say through clenched teeth, unimpressed by his attempt at intimidation. “You’re going to lose control on me? I’d love to see it.”
“I guarantee you, princess, you wouldn’t.” His words hold dark promise that do nothing to cool the inferno raging inside me.
Drawing a ragged breath, he tries to turn away from me.
Fuck. That.
He’s made me face hard things head-on. He doesn’t get to shrug off the same.
I grab a fistful of his black shirt, then yank it up his torso, exposing the scars once again to the firelight.
They’re even more brutal this close. The dark ink does a good job of masking things from a distance, but now I can see that the skin all over his torso is gruesomely puckered.
These weren’t an accident. Every one of these cuts looks intentional.
Anger starts to build, shadows dancing at the edge of my vision.
“Does it scare you?” His voice comes out as a viscous caress, and I shiver. “This reminder of violence carved into my body?”
Underneath his brusque tone, I can hear something else. I don’t know if it’s some wolfish instincts or the ties we have binding us, but I hear the real question he’s asking.
Does it disgust you?
My eyes sting. How could he think that? How could heeversee himself that way?
I place a palm flat on his torso, the heat of him and the bumps from the scars underneath my skin. He hisses. But I don’t move my hand, and he doesn’t flinch.
“Who did this to you?” I demand.
Stark lets out a low laugh, pushing me off him. He turns swiftly, trying to walk away again. But I snare his wrist, yanking him back around.
He thinks he’s some tough, violent avenger.
Well, guess what, buddy? There are two of us.
I draw closer to him until he’s forced to stare down at me, to see how serious I am, to read it in the pain in my eyes. Then I breathe deeply, his amber musk filing my senses and lending me strength.
When I speak, it’s with all the depth of the darkness that thrives in my veins.
“Give me a name, and I’ll erase it from the earth.”
Stark’s nostrils flare with suppressed emotion. I notice every twitch in his jaw, memorize every eyelash as he blinks at my rage.
“I already did, princess,” he says, voice low. “You can stand down.”
“Who?” I demand again.
He lets out an aggravated sigh and shakes my hand off his wrist. I feel the loss of the contact acutely. “My weapons trainer as a child. He found me lacking.”
Horror roils inside me, cold and unrelenting. “Did Siegrid know? Why didn’t she stop it?”
“She hired him for a reason. She wasn’t around, anyway. The Sovereign Alpha was at the front, and I was given over to teachers who could make me, in her words, strong enough to survive the end of the world.”
The words hit me like a punch. She did this to him. Hismother—
The shadows are building now, starting to creep like leeches up my arms and legs.
