by T. S. Joyce
Her white hair was thrown over his thigh, and she was curled in on herself, arms wrapped around her stomach, knees to her chest. Her skin was all scarred up now. That was new.
Ford wanted to slowly kill every lion who had ever left a scar on her body. Himself included. This world had chewed Sora up and spat her out, and he didn’t recognize much about her anymore.
He’d thought this world couldn’t be any more tragic, and then it had snuffed out the brightest part—Sora.
“Where do I go?” he murmured. Oh, he knew all about shifter senses now. Orion would hear him just fine.
“One more mile, then take a right on Dark Bird Road. It’ll lead us to Old Tarian territory. It’s abandoned.”
That wasn’t the way out of Telluride. Ford slammed on the brakes, and Orion barely caught himself before he went flying into the back window. “You aren’t keeping her here,” Ford growled.
Orion leapt out of the truck bed and gripped Ford’s open window with both hands. “And where the fuck do you propose we take her?”
“Uh, maybe out of the territory of a Pride that tried to kill her!”
“She wanted to die, Ford!”
Those five words stopped his rage in an instant. He reeled back, feeling like he’d been socked in the jaw. “What?”
“Those aren’t the Old Tarians. You think they wanted to kill her? Did you see them? They were putting it off. I know Ronin. I bet he gave her a dozen chances to run, but Sora doesn’t like life anymore. You want me to take her back to our Pride? Is that what you were thinking?”
“Yeah. Take her home!”
“Home doesn’t exist for us anymore! What do you think my father will do if I bring her home? Hmm? You’ve met him. You know what he did to her. You think he’ll welcome his precious daughter back into the safety of his Pride with open arms? No! Sora was always a bartering chip for alliances. She failed the Old Tarian alliance, went traitor on her own mate—”
“Wait, what?”
“Cassius had his throat ripped out by a lioness, Ford.” Orion’s eyes flashed white as he jammed a finger at Sora’s sleeping body. “I’ll give you one guess who had his blood on her teeth.” Orion sighed and loosened his grip on the window, took a few steps back on the road. “She’s a mate-killer, man. My father will sell her for an alliance again, but this time around will be even worse. No Pride in their right mind is gonna put a mate-killer on any throne. She’ll be traded to another Pride of psychopaths, one with low-ranking bachelors who are good at war with no moral compass. Probably not sane enough to keep willing females, so she’ll be passed around the Pride.” Fury swam in Orion’s eyes. “I’ve already watched her break once. I’m not doing it again. You look grossed out, Ford. Congratulations. You went and got yourself Turned into the worst possible shifter you could’ve chosen. Lions are newly out from under the rule of the council, and everyone has lost their fucking minds except that Pride back there.” Orion pointed up the road they’d come from. “Believe it or not, the ones who were going to end Sora are the safest ones for a lioness like her to be around. You have a better plan? Great. I’ll probably have to shoot it down though, because you don’t understand lion politics yet. Almost every Pride is a fucking disaster right now. I know because I’ve been watching for an opening. A safe spot. For a Pride I can take over and put Sora up high in the ranks and make her untouchable. The New Tarians were our best shot until she Turned a human woman against her will. She pushed my hand, pushed their hands. So, yeah, I’m gonna take her into the mountains and let her breathe and regroup and I’m going to go back to researching Prides, because I need one just weak enough to let me rehab it and just strong enough to keep Sora safe. From herself, if that’s what it takes. Females aren’t exactly respected in our culture right now. It’s not like how it used to be. The males are panicking and fighting for dominance in a new world without a council to govern them. Females with royal bloodlines equal power. Even broken females. She’s a killer now, Ford. I saw her in that Tarian War. She snapped. She’s a killer and a quitter. Wrap your head around that quick because it affects what I can do with our future. I’m not asking for you to fix us. You did what I needed, and you helped me get her out of there, but that was just the beginning. We have a lot of work ahead of us. I’m just asking for you to drop us in Old Tarian territory and move on with your life.”
Holy fucking fuck. Ford stared down at Sora in a new light. She’d really turned killer? What the hell had happened to the blood-shy Sora he used to know?
“Dark Bird Road,” Orion murmured. “I’m making it as easy to leave as possible.” But something flashed in his eyes, and his tone changed on the last few words.
“Did you just lie to me?” Ford asked.
Orion shrugged up one shoulder and made his way to the back of the truck with Ford’s wrecked motorcycle. He was about to get in, but Ford floored it and peeled away from him, spraying dirt and gravel onto Orion. “I fuckin’ hate liars,” he barked as he drove away.
As he sped off , Ford looked at Orion once in the rearview mirror. He was ass-naked, cupping his dick, eyes white, face twisted in fury. Ford dug down deep for any guilt he felt about leaving his dumb ass in the road, but he couldn’t find any. Orion knew better than to lie to him. That had always been Ford’s pet peeve, and now that he could decipher truth and lies, his fuse was shorter than ever.
He didn’t give a single shit that this was Orion’s truck he was driving. Orion could walk the rest of the way for all Ford fuckin’ cared.
Drag him out of his woods into this mess, got his bike wrecked, and then he’s lying about making it easy for Ford to leave? Whatever Orion intended to do wasn’t going to work. Monsters didn’t care about the plans of other monsters.
The lion was asking to come out again already. He usually had more time and a little more control right after a Change and a good fight, but his emotions were up, and the animal wanted to put a stop to all this…this…feeeeeling.
“What have you done?” Sora asked softly.
Ford jerked his gaze off the road and down at her. She hadn’t moved, except now her eyes were open, staring blankly ahead.
“I did what I thought I had to do.”
Her throat was all scratchy, and her words broke like she’d been in the desert without water. “What happened to your wife?”
Ford frowned. “I’ve never been married.”
Sora sat up stiffly and scooted all the way over, pressing herself against the passenger side door. “Yes, you did. I saw it in the paper.”
He heaved a frustrated growl. He didn’t like talking about the past.
“What you saw was an engagement announcement. We never made it to the altar. She figured me out before then.”
“Figured what out?” Sora asked, her whisper barely audible. Why was her voice shaking?
“That I already belonged to someone else.”
He looked over at her just in time to see her glance away. Her eyes were empty, though. Unreadable.
“Where did you get your lion, Ford?”
Ford shook his head, denying her. He was too riled up right now to talk about what he’d done. “If you want me to Change in here and have a second battle today? Keep asking questions,” he snarled.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m nothing,” she said, her eyes on her clasped hands in her lap.
He frowned as he took a right onto Dark Bird Road. “Talk to you like you’re nothing? Last I saw, you were throwing yourself at the mercy of a Pride of Tarians in a trial you had no business being in. I saw you, Sora. You didn’t even Change. You were okay with them ending your life, so don’t accuse me of talking to you like you’re nothing. You’re the one who thinks that of yourself, not me. I just don’t wanna fuckin’ rehash the past—”
“Because the past is my fault, right?”
“You’re goddamn right, it is!” Ford barked, pulling into a gravel lot in front of a swinging bridge. The place reeked of lion. “I gave you a choice, Sora. I told you I wo
uld keep you safe and take you away from there, and what did you do? You let your father sell you! Sell you! I was waiting with my fucking suitcase in that parking lot for five hours, waiting for you because you’d promised you would come. You’d never lied to me. I trusted you. I destroyed my whole life to leave that town with you, knowing it could damn well get me killed if your Pride ever caught up to us, and you didn’t show up. You chose to be sold over leaving with me.”
Ford slammed his open palm against the steering wheel over and over, trying to get his lion to stay inside of him. Sora flinched, squeezing her eyes closed, and that made him even more sick with himself. “Fuck!” Ford shoved open the door and got out. “I have to Change, and I can’t hold it back much longer. You need to get into one of those cabins,” he said, jamming his finger at the cluster of log homes across a swinging bridge.
“Ford—”
“Sora, I don’t know what I’m doing!” God, couldn’t she see he didn’t have control? “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he repeated softer, hoping to God she understood she wasn’t safe. “Move. Your. Legs.”
Sora’s eyes were rimmed with tears. God, his chest felt like it was imploding. Her hollow blue eyes had seen more horrors than he could stand to imagine, and those tears were because of him. How many had she shed since she’d left him waiting in that damned parking lot?
Sora pushed open the door and got out, kept her eyes on the ground as she made her way to the swinging bridge. Her bare feet were dirty and her dress was torn, stained, and flapping in the wind. Her hair was wild, and both fists were clenched at her sides so tightly her knuckles were the color of bone.
And then she said it again, those awful words. Just a whisper, but thanks to the lion, he heard them just fine.
“You’re hurting me.”
And as the lion shredded him bone by broken bone and muscle by re-shaping muscle, the last thought he had was, You’re hurting me, too.
Chapter Four
Sora ran her finger along the countertop, drawing a long line across the dusty surface.
When she’d lived here, dust was a punishable offense. Cassius was very particular about how he wanted his house run.
The dark lion roared again outside, and she froze for a moment, waiting for the sound to fade away. Which it did, as had happened a few dozen times already. Ford was a mess.
Sora was here, she wrote into the dust. Frowning, she wrote out, Sora is still here, but that didn’t feel right, so she smudged it with the heel of her hand.
A hundred memories lived in this place. She could see the ghost of herself floating from one room to the other, cleaning, cooking, always with her head down, trying to be invisible so she wouldn’t catch the wrath of Cassius or the other Old Tarians. They were awful, awful men. She hadn’t been the only queen here either. Cassius had taken four mates, the prick. Two of them, Rae and Frieda, had been sisters. Gross. Just a few days after the New Tarians had set the females here free and given them a choice to stay or go, they’d gone rogue. Emerald, the final queen, chose Ronin as her mate. And Sora…well, she’d gotten kind of stuck.
The door swung open, and Ford stood there, even bigger than she’d remembered, his muscles bulging and his tattoos dark, even against his olive-toned skin. Here was this familiar stranger. His legs were thick and powerful, his shoulders as broad as the doorframe. He was probably close to three hundred pounds of pure muscle and power, yet somehow managed to still have a six-pack. His dick was enormous. He’d always been intimidating in his size for a human, but she didn’t remember him looking like Ford the Pussy Impaler. She snorted to herself, and he canted his head, curiously. Those eyes. “Do they ever turn brown anymore?”
He shook his head slowly, then moved to the hallway and disappeared down it. She could hear him rummaging through one of the rooms, so she turned toward a decorative mirror above the table to straighten her hair. What she saw there was the ghost she’d been imagining earlier: hollow eyes, pale skin, dark circles, and wild hair. And the scratch on her cheek looked bad. She leaned closer to examine it. The little cut wasn’t healing. Probably because Ford’s dark lion dipped his claws in poison or something.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he murmured low.
Sora jumped and let off a little squeak. “Wh-what?”
“The cut on your face,” he said, gesturing to her cheek. “I was trying to get my paw up fast enough to keep the Alpha off us.”
“Oh. It’s okay. It’ll probably heel.” She hoped.
He was wearing a pair of jeans he couldn’t even button over his muscular hips and was pulling a T-shirt over his head.
She snorted again. What was wrong with her?
“What?” he growled.
Sora cleared her throat and bit back a smile. “That shirt looks like spandex on you.”
“Yeah, well, there isn’t a whole lot of options, and my lion doesn’t exactly give me time to undress before he takes over. Honestly, I stay naked half the damn time just to save money on clothes.”
“Even in the winter?” she asked, frowning at the black fog that was starting to seep Ford’s way. She wasn’t really in the mood to pass out again.
“The cold isn’t so bad on me anymore,” he said. “Where are you going?”
“Well, I don’t mean to be rude, but you feel terrifying, and you’re sucking away all of my black smog. It makes me feel queasy, so I’m just going to stand way over here and you stay right over there.”
His dark eyebrows drew up. “Black smog?”
“Can’t you see it billowing from me? Or smell it? It’s like burned dog hair.”
“Hmm,” he said through a tight smile that said he definitely thought she was crazy.
She didn’t know why, but that made her mad. “I’m not crazy. Something is wrong with you, not me.”
“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. I’m going to go see about my motorcycle.” He spun on his heel and left, the door slamming behind him. The force of it rocked her back on her heels.
What a rude titan Ford had turned into. Rude and impatient and snarly. “You suck now!” she called.
The door swung back open, and he stuck his head in. “I’m aware! I suck, and you and I are both psychos. I wouldn’t hate it if you came out here with me.” Slam!
The slamming door blasted wind in her face.
She did not like this man, not even a little bit. He could fix his bike his own self. Sora stomped as loud as she could down the hall and into the bathroom, and then she slammed the door. Two could play that game! She turned on the water as hot as she could stand it and peeled out of her blood-crusted, mud-splattered dress. How many hours had she spent in his garage in Wyoming, watching Ford fix up old motorcycles? Huh? How fucking many? And now this—this—monster! Wanted her to come watch him fix up another. An old memory mixed with this new terrible Ford imposter, and it wasn’t right.
“And you could learn to say please!” she shrieked as she scrubbed her skin raw with a soapy washrag. She wanted to wash away the entire past two years. All of it. She wanted it gone. If she could push a button in her brain that deleted the last twenty-four months, she would do it with never-a-regret.
Hell, she would delete all the years before that, too. All the good memories with Ford. The feeling of falling in love, the feeling of safety, the sensation of belonging and being important. The good memories made everything worse because she’d known what happiness really was, and it had hurt that much more to have it ripped out of her grasp. Dark Ford reminded her of Cassius, and that was the biggest tragedy of her entire life.
A sob escaped her. Stupid stupid Sora full of stupid tears! She didn’t want any of this! She didn’t want to be in her own mind and she didn’t want Ford’s memories to be tarnished by this beastly man who wore his skin but had snuffed out his soul.
Overtaken, Sora threw the rag at the wall with a splat, and she screamed as loud as she could. And then she screamed again. And for the first time in a long time, something felt good, s
o she kept on screaming until her breath ran out. Until her voice went hoarse and her sobs made it impossible to scream anymore. And then she slid onto the shower floor and buried her face in her arms as the hot water beat against her back.
The scent of burning fur wafted through the steamy bathroom, and she froze as a big hand cupped the back of her soaking wet hair. Ford’s hand. He turned the water off and pushed the shower curtain back and there he was, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, his mouth set in a grim line, his eyes full of emotion as he searched her face. “Everything went bad for both of us, didn’t it?” Each word sounded like glass on gravel. Even the voice she loved was gone.
Her face crumpled, and she nodded as another tear slid out of the corner of her eye. Raggedly she whispered, “I will never be okay for a man again. Not after what Cassius did to me. And I’m so angry I can’t think straight. It feels like I will burn up with anger until my last breath, and I’m not…I’m not…me.”
“Tell me, Sora.” Ford gritted his teeth and looked sick, but he repeated, “Tell me. Don’t hold what happened inside. Unload it. Get it out so you can move on.”
Sora huffed a breath. Sweet monster. “There’s no moving on. There’s just being stuck. For always. I can’t get rid of what I turned into, or of what happened to my lion. I can’t undo any of the damage.”
“Say it and find out, because you don’t know for sure. I’m looking at a woman who ain’t done yet. You’re still alive, still breathing, and as long as that’s happening, it’s on you to find your fight. Shit happened, bad, bad shit, and I wish it didn’t. But that doesn’t automatically mute your value. You get that, right? Say it.”
“Promise not to Change and eat me if you get pissed off at the things I tell you?”
“Stop changing the subject.”
Sora was already shaking just thinking of talking about any of this. Just say it willy-nilly. Just state the facts and don’t think about it, don’t let it hurt your heart. Sora closed her eyes because she couldn’t see his face when she admitted to all of her shame. She couldn’t stomach disappointing Ford any more than she already had. “I didn’t want to be with Cassius.”