Losing him would shatter her heart into a million pieces, and she probably wouldn’t recover from it. However, she was willing to give up her life to become a vampire for him, but she was unwilling to give up her dignity.
When Lucien’s eyes turned a fiery red, the hair on Callie’s nape rose. Even when she first saw him rushing at her from across the pit, she wasn’t this unnerved by him.
Just an hour ago, she would have sworn Lucien would never do anything to upset her, but she didn’t like this new, commanding side of him. And she sensed the fury oozing from him. It was the same kind of fury Carter emanated while his hands and feet connected with her flesh.
He’d beat her so badly she ended up in the hospital. He beat her so severely she hadn’t slept for a week because every time she moved, it made her battered muscles, bruised bones, and cracked ribs ache. She’d lain there, trying not to sob because it only caused more discomfort, as tears rolled down her face.
Now, she recognized that same unraveling in Lucien, and it frightened her. What Carter did to her was atrocious; what Lucien, with his vast power, could do to her would result in her death.
Her eyes darted to the door, twenty feet away. He was too close to her; she would never get to the door before he caught her, but she wouldn’t go down without a fight.
She hadn’t expected the violence from Carter; he’d caught her off guard and taken her down before she realized what was happening. It would not happen again.
What is wrong with you? Lucien would never do to you what Carter did. But though she told herself this, and believed it, she couldn’t deny the wrath he radiated. It crackled like static electricity against her skin.
Lucien would never hurt her, but something was wrong here. He wasn’t the Lucien she had come to love; he was unreasonable and a complete asshole.
She told herself this, but she couldn’t shake the fight-or-flight response screaming at her to run. When he stepped toward her, she bolted for the door.
From the corner of her eye, she saw him moving toward her. He was a blur of motion as he closed the distance between them. Before he caught her, she spun toward him, and, throwing out her hands, she slammed them into his chest. It was like hitting a brick wall as she shoved against him and stumbled back.
She’d meant to throw him off his pursuit, but all she’d done was cause herself to lose her balance as she stumbled back and hit the wall. Memories flashed through her mind. Carter had thrown her into the wall. He’d held her there as he gripped her hair and battered her head into the wall.
It had been so long since she allowed those memories to surface. So long since she found herself trying not to scream as she vividly recalled every punch and kick Carter delivered while he spat vicious words at her and she was sure she would die.
That certainty was back now.
“No!” she screamed as she threw up her hands to protect yourself.
The gesture was useless against him. What Carter started, Lucien would finish, and that was the saddest, cruelest twist that fate ever dealt her in a life already full of some pretty cruel twists.
Lucien seized her hands, but not before she managed to punch him in the side of his head. It was the only blow she would deliver to him; he was too fast and strong for anything more, but she at least got in one against him. As he leaned over her, he released her hands, and Callie lifted them to shield her head. A scream rose and lodged in her throat.
Her palpable terror as she held up her hands and shrank from him pierced through the storm building inside Lucien. He froze as he realized he was on the brink of losing complete control, of turning her and making her stay with him.
He couldn’t lose her, but she would hate him if he did this. And right now, he hated himself. He was terrifying her. He heard it in the frantic flutter of her heart and saw it in her body as she shrank away from him.
He recalled the times he’d glimpsed something in her eyes. The times she’d let her fear show before she’d covered it up, the times when he’d questioned what happened to her, but never asked. And now, looking at her, he realized someone like him, a monster, had happened to her.
No, no, no, he said as he reached for her, but his hands froze between them. He didn’t trust himself to touch her.
“Callie,” he breathed.
She couldn’t look at him as she kept her head turned away. If she screamed, one of the others might hear her and come to help. She didn’t doubt they loved Lucien and their loyalty was with him, but they wouldn’t let him kill her.
“Callie, I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered.
Callie kept her hands over her head to protect herself from him, but she dared to turn her head and peer up at him. He remained standing over her, but a look of abject horror had replaced the coldness on his face and in his eyes.
He reached for her, but she slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me!” she spat.
Lucien recoiled and held his hands up as he edged away. Self-hatred swamped him as he stared at the backs of his hands. What did I do?
He barely recognized himself. When he was starved and deprived and trying to save her, he’d had a reason for scaring her, but things were different now. She was his mate. He cared for her and loved her more than he’d ever cared for and loved anyone. The words may not be easy for him to say, but she was his everything, and he’d… he’d….
He’d been an out of control monster. It took everything he had not to batter the walls. If it wouldn’t scare her further, he would destroy every inch of these walls as the demon sought to break free of its cage. It seethed and twisted and demanded to change her as he battled to keep it locked away.
He’d spent centuries fighting his malevolent nature; he would not allow it to win now when he was so close to finding happiness with her.
Callie tried to push herself away from the wall, but she didn’t trust her legs to support her. She was still too caught between the present and the past to have full control of herself.
Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked them away. She refused to let him see her cry. Resting her hand on the wall, she steadied herself as he stepped toward her again.
“Stay away from me!” she ordered.
Lucien watched helplessly as her head bowed. The black curtain of her hair fell forward to shield her features. He ached for the distress she emanated. What have I done?
“Callie, please forgive me. I won’t hurt you.”
“No, you’ll just try to bully me around. Maybe it’s not physical hurt, but it’s still hurt.”
Her voice quivered, and she had to blink faster to suppress the tears burning her eyes.
Lucien had never hated himself more. He had to fix this, but he had no idea how.
“It will never happen again. I’m just… just….”
Callie lifted her head and scowled at him. “An asshole?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
But since meeting her, he’d become a lot less of one. However, he’d been a gigantic asshole to her and treated her horribly.
“You make me a better man,” he said. “But I’m not just a man; I’m also part demon, and I haven’t claimed my mate. Because of that, I’m losing it. That’s no excuse for how I treated you, and I will hate myself forever for what happened here today, but I can’t lose you. Without you, I will become a monster. When you said, you would leave….”
His words trailed off as rage burned through him again. He stepped further away as he struggled to regain control of himself.
Callie saw the unraveling within him as he edged further away from her. She was still irate, but watching him, she realized he wasn’t himself. This was not the Lucien she’d come to love over the past few weeks. This was not the Lucien who owned her heart.
This Lucien’s eyes shifted between black and red like a blinking stoplight. His fisted hands shook as the veins in his arms stood out. Behind his lips was the outline of his fangs. Some of her exasperation ebbed when she saw his strain.
“Is thi
s normal for vampires?” she asked.
“It is for a vampire who hasn’t completely claimed their mate.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Because you’ve had enough to deal with, and I was trying to give you time to adjust to everything that has happened. I also believed I could control it better, but when it comes to you, I’m far weaker than I ever realized. The idea of losing you….” His eyes blazed red again as he bared his fangs. “I would burn this world down if I lost you.”
He still hadn’t told her he loved her, but that sentence spoke more of his love for her than those three little words.
“I can’t live without you, Callie, but I won’t force the change on you, and I won’t ask you to stay here if you’re unhappy. Your happiness is the most important thing to me, and I lost sight of that today. I will forever be sorry for that.”
The tears burning her throat no longer had anything to do with her past intruding on the present; instead, they had everything to do with the anguish he radiated. She was still mad at him for being an asshole, but her heart ached for him.
“You should have told me you were going through this,” she admonished.
“I should have, but you know now.”
They stared at each other for a long minute before she nodded, but she wasn’t sure what to say.
When she remained silent, he asked the question he’d been holding back for weeks. “Are you going to tell me why you just reacted like you did to me?”
“You… you scared me.”
“I’m sure I did. I scared myself. But, Callie, you’re still shaking.”
Callie couldn’t look at him, so she focused on the bathroom door as she kept her hand against the wall. Her other hand went to her belly as the memories she’d managed to suppress once again bombarded her.
He’d given her the truth and admitted he was losing control. It couldn’t be easy, especially not for someone like him, but he did it.
“I’ve noticed your fear before,” he said. “You cover it well, but I’ve seen it, and it’s not normal. Though you’re the strongest and most courageous person I’ve ever encountered, you don’t always hide that there is something else going on. I believed it was because of me and the way I was in the beginning, but I’ve seen it in other situations, and there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
He couldn’t tear his gaze away from her as she kept her attention riveted on the bathroom. She was keeping something from him.
The demon stirred again.
CHAPTER 33
“Callie, tell me what happened,” he said.
She didn’t want to tell him about Carter. He was already on edge; this might push him over, but she couldn’t keep it from him anymore. She’d revealed a lot more than she realized, and he wouldn’t let it go until he had the truth. Trying to keep it from him now would only create a wedge between them.
“Callie.”
The pleading tone of his voice made her tear her attention away from the bathroom. Torment etched his face, and the pleading in his eyes tugged at her heart.
“There was… a… a man.” Though she wouldn’t exactly describe Carter as such, some apes were more of a man than him. In many ways, he was as much of a monster as the Savages. “We dated for a few months, and then….” She shrugged as she held her hands helplessly up before her. “Then it went so wrong.”
Lucien stepped forward and stopped when she held her hands up to ward him off. He ached to hold her, but she didn’t want that.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I’m not really sure.” She stared at him, but she felt like she was looking straight into the past. “His name is Carter. We never had sex, but he started becoming so possessive and strange. He called me all the time, and when I didn’t pick up, he would text me. One day, I received over a hundred messages from him while I was at work.
“All those messages demanded to know where was and what I was doing, even though he knew I was at work. When it first started, I would reply and tell him I was at work and would talk to him later. That wasn’t enough, and the messages and calls continued. At first, I was annoyed and stopped answering, but then I became creeped out and refused to reply. That was when the messages became more frantic and frightening.”
Lucien inhaled a deep breath through his nose and let it out through his mouth. Declan had been teaching him how to keep control of his emotions while he lived in this state of flux and not knowing. However, the deep breath in, deep breath out thing was not helping right now.
“That was when I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore and to leave me alone,” Callie continued. “But the messages and calls continued, and I also started finding things on my doorstep. I was renting a house at the time, and when I opened the door in the morning, there would be roses or chocolates or some other gift there with a note saying he was sorry, to please forgive him, and he loved me.”
Lucien’s fangs lengthened at this revelation. She was his to love.
“I always threw everything out. And then, after a few weeks, things got really bad.” Her voice broke on the last couple of words, and she couldn’t suppress a sob.
It took everything Lucien had to keep himself restrained from approaching her, but he was afraid that if he went to her, she would stop talking or push him away.
“What happened?” he prodded gently.
“Instead of flowers, jewelry, and candy, he started leaving me birds, snakes, and finally, cats.” Nausea churned in Callie’s stomach as she recalled her daily offering of dead animals. “The letters became nastier, and he started promising to make me regret leaving him.”
Callie sniffled as she recalled the horrific spectacle of those broken animals lying on her doorstep. She cried over every one of them as she buried them in her backyard. He’d known how to upset her the most by bringing her those offerings.
“After the first week of flowers and candies, I went out and bought one of those doorbell camera things, and I had him on video for the first couple of visits. But then, he broke it. I bought another camera and put it up high so he couldn’t get to it, but he started wearing hoodies and keeping his face averted from it. After the second day of dead animals, I went to the police.”
“And what did they do?”
“They talked to him and told him to cut it out, but there wasn’t much they could do. I had him on video for the first couple of times, but though we all knew it was him, there was no proof once he started disguising himself.”
Unable to support herself anymore, Callie slid down the wall and drew her knees up to her chest. She looked up at Lucien, who remained five feet away from her. His eyes were a vivid red, and his fangs glinted, but she wasn’t scared of him anymore.
“Then, one day, he decided playing with dead animals wasn’t enough. He broke into my house while I was at work, and when I came home, he was waiting for me in my bedroom.”
Callie shuddered as she recalled walking in to find him sitting on her bed, in the middle of her things. He’d pulled out all her underwear and laid it out on the mattress. He was holding a pair when she entered.
She hadn’t known he was there or how he got in, and that was the creepiest thing of all. The police eventually discovered he’d pried open a basement window, out of view of her cameras, and climbed inside.
As she told him this, she saw the fury building inside him, but now that she’d started talking, she couldn’t stop. Every detail, every horrible second of it, poured from her like water flowing over Niagara Falls.
“I turned and ran, but before I made it to the front door, he was on me, beating me. As he battered me, he screamed that I’d betrayed him and he would make me pay. It was all so fast that I could barely react. I remember throwing my hands up to protect my face, but when he hit me in my stomach, they instinctively fell, and that was when he broke my nose.
“It was like a wild animal was on me, kicking me, hitting me, choking me.” Her hand touched her throat as
she recalled his fingers squeezing it. “I was sure he was going to kill me, and I still don’t know what made him stop. I don’t know if he got cold feet in the end or heard something, but I woke later with a pounding headache, and I was so sore I could barely drag myself across the floor to where my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket.
“When I lifted it, I saw the broken screen, but I still managed to call nine-one-one. I tried speaking to the operator, but I’d lost my voice. I could only hit buttons in response to her questions, but it must have been enough because the police arrived at my house five minutes later.”
Lucien crouched down across from her and rested his fingers on the ground as he studied her. If he ever met this Carter, he’d beat him bloody before allowing him to recover and doing it all over again until the bastard finally died.
“What happened after that?” he asked.
“They took me to the hospital, and when I was able to, I wrote down his name. That took some time to do as I had a concussion and couldn’t really hold on to one thought at a time, but finally, I could tell them who did it, and they arrested him. I pressed charges. He was put in jail, but he made bail. I was given a restraining order, but I still don’t understand what it was supposed to do against someone like him.
“I packed up all my things and left my home behind for a third-floor apartment because I wanted to be near other people. I preferred not to be all alone again, and I wanted someone who could hear me scream if he came back. And my life went on.
“As the case against him progressed, I learned he had a history of harassing women. It had never progressed to what happened between us, but I was his third restraining order. One of the women moved to California to get away from him.
“The night the Savages took me, I was out celebrating with friends because my life was returning to normal. It had been three months since I heard anything from him, and though his trial date was still pending, he’d left me alone. I didn’t understand what good a restraining order was, but obviously, it was good enough to deter him. My life was finally mine again, and then it all came crashing down.”
Bound by Danger (The Alliance, Book 6) Page 19