She huffs a breath out of her nose, but it helps take the edge off of her nerves. “Malcolm, dirty-blonde hair, green eyes.” I share a quick look with Raiden, because we might be forced to wait for him to escalate and slip up if that’s all we have to go on, when she mumbles, “And he’s got the same marks that I do.”
Raiden’s voice is deadly calm. “I’m sorry, could you clarify that last part for me, please?”
Refusing to meet our eyes, she yanks up her sleeve. “I mean that, these? They’re homemade mate marks.”
My heart plummets into my stomach. “He wanted to make sure that nobody could deny his claim on you.”
Her throat bobs as she nods.
Raiden threads his fingers together in front of him. “I think you need to start at the beginning.”
Chapter 18
Amara
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At Stone’s insistence, we move to the living room where it’s more comfortable to settle in for a long overdue conversation. I commandeer the sole leather recliner while Kodiak takes a seat on the coffee table, elbows resting on his thighs and leaning toward me like he doesn’t want to risk missing a single word that comes out of my mouth, and the others aren’t far behind. To Stone’s credit, he keeps his gaze pinned on a spot over my shoulder to save me the intensity of his ethereal stare, and Raiden scrounged up a notebook and a pen to jot down anything important to save me the weight of his attention as well.
They notice everything, watching even when they don’t appear to be. With hardly any effort, they strip away my defenses and see far more than I want them to. And yet... for as terrifying as it is, it’s a welcome change to have anyone actually care enough to make the effort.
Curling in on myself, I take a deep breath, but when I open my mouth to get this over with as quickly as possible, I choke on the words. I’ve never spoken about it before; never had anyonetotalk to. But now that I have the opportunity, my vocal chords are frozen.
These three will be a part of my future in some capacity until the day I die. Whether that’s as friends, mates, or enemies I spend the rest of my days running from, they’ll know... everything. I’m handing them the proverbial key to use my past against me whenever they want, a surefire way to destroy what little hope I have left.
There’s trust, and there’s betting your life on someone’s ability to be a better person than all of the ones that have let you down. At least if I lose everything, I’ll always have an ace up my sleeve to take them down with me.
Blackmailing someone into being a good person. That always turns out well.
Sucking down a rattling breath to brace myself, I screw my eyes shut tight. “My parents kept me hidden until I was close to coming of age. They knew once they started interviewing potential dragons to match me with, word would spread, so they waited until the last possible minute and hoped they’d find a decent one to sell me off to before the attacks and abduction attempts started.”
A glutton for punishment, I force myself to watch them. As much as I want to hide from this entire conversation, their reactions will give me more insight about their true intentions, and that’s more important than comfort. All three visibly stiffen, but don’t interrupt.
“Malcolm approached them with an offer... and they laughed in his face. He had no legion, was working as an electrician at the time, and they didn’t consider him a threat, much less able to protect me. Things escalated to where my parents were having me meet their top contenders, insisting that all of the men in those legions touched me to rule out a mark-mate possibility.” I fist the hem of my borrowed shirt. “I hated it, hatedthem. My parents for forcing me into an arranged marriage I had no say in, the men for acting like they planned to get their dowry’s worth out of me, a thing they owned instead of a person.Everyone and everything. I was angry all of the time, and there was nothing I could do about any of it.”
I blow out a heavy breath, voicing something I’ve never even admitted to myself. “Malcolm snuck in one night and butchered my parents in their beds, and I... I wasgrateful. He saw that I was miserable, and was the first person to care enough to actually do something about it, to-” I swallow “- to save me. Add in the fact that my parents brushed him off the same way they always did to me, and it felt like fate.”
