by Erica Woods
A soft sniff came from Hope’s bent head. Her shoulders were curled inward, protecting herself.
I went back to brushing Queenie. If I wanted her to talk, to open up and show me some of her scars, I would have to be patient.
After a few minutes of silence, I was rewarded by a faint whisper. “I . . . I want to be strong too.”
“You are strong, banajaanh,” I replied, keeping my voice soft and soothing. “It takes strength to survive, to open your eyes each day and remember.”
A small whimper tore from her throat, raw and desolate.
Ah, little bird with broken wings. You long for flight.
I fought against the desire to rush to her side, gather her in my arms, comfort her and keep her safe. But I knew if I did that, I would be doing her a disservice. She needed to talk, to purge some of these things from her soul and to know that there was no judgment here. Only acceptance.
“I-I d-don’t want to r-remember.”
“I know.”
I let the quiet settle around us. A quiet only broken by Queenie’s faint sighs and rumbles when we hit a particularly good spot with the brushes, and Hope’s occasional, heartbreaking sniffles.
Her pain was a spear through my heart.
“It-it wasn’t always b-bad,” she stammered, making every muscle in my body tense with the need to go to her. “In the beginning . . . at first they treated me okay.”
“Hmm.” It was difficult to keep my anger at bay, to not clench my fists and grit my teeth while I raged against the unfairness of the world. But I exercised the tight control I always surrounded myself with and kept my voice calm and noncommittal while inside a detached fury grew.
A peculiar cold spread through my veins as a calculating presence made itself known. Violence was a melody sung in blood, vengeance a terrible, silent roar through the sky. We watched the little female. Weighed her mettle against what was known. Assessed the torn but not quite broken spirit.
And we felt . . . something.
The ice spread, reached out, took control of my hands and—
I drew in three deep breaths, urging my flesh to follow my spirit, to allow me back in control.
The scent of fresh dirt, of blooming flowers, of green trees filled my senses, and the cold receded.
Just in time, I thought as Hope’s fragile voice drifted up past Queenie.
“I-I mean . . . it was boring. In the beginning I had very little to do, and I was grateful when they took an interest in me. It meant a break from the monotonous waiting and sitting around.” She stopped, took a deep breath. “T-then one day . . . one day it c-changed and I would have given a-anything, anything, to go back to the boredom.”
Fury rose once more. Swift. Unbidden.
Thank the Great Spirit for Hope’s human ways, I thought. Had she been like me, the scent of my anger would have coated her tongue, the quickened thud of my heart as I struggled to curb my lethal response would have echoed in her ears. I, of all people, knew how important it was to always be in control, to never let instinct rule the mind or control the body.
Listen to your instincts, yes. Feel them and the emotion they brought forth, yes. Process and learn, but never let them rule.
Despite that knowledge, I had to fight for control, fight against the feral nature of my beast as it clawed to get out, to destroy. And all in response to my own, wild emotions.
When Hope hesitated, the only sound I could squeeze through my tight chest was a soft chuff. It was a low, soothing sound, meant to comfort our young, and it seemed to work on females too.
Thank the spirits.
“I f-feel s-so d-d-dirty,” she choked out, a heart-wrenching sob following her devastating confession.
That’s it.
I could no more ignore her sorrow than I could stop breathing.
As Hope fought against her emotions, one hand clutched to her lips to stem the flood of anguish spilling from her in heaving cries, I ducked around Queenie and came to the grieving female’s side. Taking a chance, I touched her arm, then her shoulder. When she did not object—only stood there, staring at the ground with near-silent tears running down her pale cheeks—my heart stopped, my breath caught, and when the blood once again rushed through my veins, I was no longer the same.
I gathered the fragile body against my own, wondering if she knew how much strength resided within her delicate bones, the resilience of a mind refusing to break. Did she know the great power it took to not only survive, but to live with demons so great you felt their weights like iron around your neck? Should she fail to understand it now, there was no doubt in my mind that Hope would survive. That she would endure and, eventually, thrive. She simply needed a little help.
“You are not dirty,” I pushed out, swallowing twice around the painful lump in my throat. “You are strong and resilient, and no matter what they did to you”—my hands shook as I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her against my chest—“you are not dirty. You are not to blame for the actions of others, nor your own,” I added, keeping her cheek trapped against me when she tried to pull back, probably to argue my point. “Listen,” I emphasized, knowing how important it was that my next point stuck, “you cannot be held responsible for anything you did in the name of survival. And you cannot, you cannot, hold yourself responsible for what was done to you.”
By the time I finished speaking, Hope’s small frame shook with the force of her sobs. Instead of pulling away, she clung to my shoulders while her tears soaked through my shirt.
“It was not your fault,” I said adamantly. “And you will be all right. One day you will wake up and realize it has been a full day since you last thought of your trauma. And then it will be a week. Then a month. A year.”
She made a choked sound of disagreement.
“It is the truth, banajaanh. You survived. Now all that’s left is to heal. If Queenie here can do it”—I turned us so we faced the drowsy mare—“you can do it. And we will be here for you. Every step of the way.”
The sobs were slowing down, but her wispy body still trembled in my arms. How someone could hurt an innocent—especially someone as good as Hope—made a familiar, deadly wrath twist through my belly.
I closed my eyes, concentrating on my surroundings, on the waif-like girl in my arms, her chilled, velvet skin, her sweet scent, and the soft, hiccuping breaths fanning across my chest hot enough to leave me feeling branded through my shirt.
An unwelcome feeling slipped through my veins, tearing my thoughts away from Hope.
Concentrate on your surroundings, on what is safe.
I refocused my mind, picking up on the faint sounds of the horses moving around in their stalls, the swish of their tails, their sighs and grunts.
Hope’s small palm as it glides across my chest.
I took a step back, almost dropping Hope in the hay. “Sorry.” My heart gave a painful squeeze as I steadied her.
“T-that’s okay.” Her face was ravaged by grief. Wet, pale cheeks, a red nose, bloodshot eyes. She was a mess. And I had never seen anyone more beautiful.
What is happening to me?
It had been centuries since I was stirred in this way—not since that fateful day I lost my name, rising from the ashes a broken man.
The silence between us lengthened. If I didn’t fix this she would never open up again.
“Forgive me, banajaanh,” I began, unsure how to explain my sudden urge for distance. “I did not mean to take advantage of your grief.”
Using the back of her hand to wipe tears from her cheek, she lifted her soulful, brown eyes to mine. “Y-you didn’t. I feel . . .” Her long, dark lashes fluttered as she sighed. “I feel like . . . like some of the poison was drained.” She looked back up at me, a world of sorrow reflected in the deep pools of her eyes. “It probably won’t last, but it’s a start.”
Without thinking, I clasped her hand in my own, marveling at how small she felt, how fragile her thin bones seemed swallowed up in my grip. “It will get better
with time. Talking about it helps.”
She blinked up at me, a hesitant, tremulous smile hovering over her mouth. “I don’t think I can say any more. At least not now . . . but thank you. Thank you for listening.”
“Whenever you feel the need, my door is always open for you.”
She let go of my hand, a silent plea for space to process, or maybe to think.
“Should we finish with Queenie before she falls asleep?” I slipped around the sleepy mare to pick up my discarded brush.
“Yes. Please.” It was barely above a whisper, but then I did not require an answer, not when her eyes revealed so much of her emotions.
If she wanted to pretend everything was okay I would support her.
So we went back to pretending. She pretended to feel better, that nothing was amiss and she hadn’t just revealed a little more about her mysterious, dark past, while I pretended being near her did not arouse feelings in me I long since thought dead.
Feelings I would have preferred stayed dead.
What would happen if pretending was no longer an option?
I never wanted to find out.
27
HOPE
I couldn’t stop shivering.
Ever since Ash brought me back to the house an hour ago, an insidious cold had penetrated deep into my soul, making me want to burrow under blankets and hibernate for a year or two.
The more time passed, the colder I felt, until my teeth chattered and my hands trembled with the ice in my veins.
What was I thinking? I shouldn’t have told Ash anything. If he ever found out the truth—
Another shiver wracked my body. After how he’d made me feel today the thought of seeing the warmth in eyes turn to disgust and hatred was more than I could bear.
I closed my eyes and tried to think about something else. Anything, as long as it didn’t involve the guys and the contempt they would shower me with if they knew my secrets.
Hot chocolate!
The image of a steaming cup of sweet goodness popped into my head. It’d always seemed to make me feel better when I was young. Unfortunately, I had no clue how to make it. As a child, it had just appeared in front of me when it was the most needed, courtesy of my amazing father.
How hard could it be?
The harsh glare of the midday sun shone through the large windows in the guys’ kitchen. Its bright blaze tickled my skin, a promise of warmth that I couldn’t feel.
As I bounced on the balls of my feet in front of a kitchen cabinet—attempting to thaw my frozen limbs while searching for the magical drink of hot chocolate—a shadow loomed above me.
I twisted around, hand shooting to my chest as if to stop my galloping heart from escaping during its mad frenzy.
“Hope,” Ruarc muttered darkly as he brushed past me.
“R-Ruarc.” My teeth smashed together, mangling his name with the force of my shivers.
His abrupt halt startled me almost as much as the stillness in his body when he turned to face me. Compressed lips, brows lowered in an angry scowl, but when his luminous eyes studied my face, his expression altered.
“What’s wrong?” He tilted his head. “You’ve been . . . crying?” An ominous growl erupted from his chest, raising all the fine hairs along my neck.
“I-oh,” I exclaimed as, in a blur of motion, he appeared in front of me. He tilted my head back with his long index finger, examining my face.
“You have!” he snarled, twisting his head to look behind us, as though the reason for my tears were lurking in the corner. “I will kill him!”
“You—what?” Alarmed, I took a step back, pretending my rapid breathing was not a sign of fear when Ruarc followed so close there was less than an inch of space between us.
“Ash! He did this!”
“What?”
The continuous growl rumbling in his chest rose in volume. “He made you cry!”
I gasped. “No! Just . . . we just talked. I-I wasn’t sad because of him!”
Ruarc didn’t look convinced. The mulish way his chin jutted out, the dark, slashing brows lowered as far as they could go, it all spoke of a furious man not ready to let go of his misconceptions.
“Then what?” His hard eyes searched my own.
“I . . . I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Please don’t make me say it all again. Please . . .
“Why not?”
“Because its painful!” I blurted and the cold shivers that had temporarily stopped came back with a vengeance.
“But you can talk to Ash?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I averted my gaze and stared at the tiled floor.
Why did I speak to Ash? I asked myself, aware of Ruarc’s harsh breathing above me. I didn’t reveal much, at least I don’t think I did.
Ruarc’s face suddenly hovered inches from my own. “Hope,” he hissed, and if I wasn’t so cold, if I hadn’t just had an emotional upheaval leaving me drained and heartbroken, I would have found it funny that this massive, proud man was bending at the waist—almost doubling over—just to glare at me.
“Why can you talk to Ash and not—” He stopped as a particularly harsh tremor shook my frame. “You cold?”
“N-no,” I lied, pressing my teeth together to stop them from making that terrible noise.
Ruarc narrowed his eyes, the silver orbs growing hard until they looked like flat, unyielding metal. “Do not lie to me!”
I shrank back, unsure whether the lump in my stomach was caused by fear or shame. “Sorry,” I muttered, unable to look at him.
Ruarc grunted.
After several tense seconds of squirming, waiting for him to question me further, I couldn’t take it anymore. Sneaking a quick peek, I held my breath as my eyes darted to his face.
His jaw was a taut line, brows slightly raised as he studied me.
“What?” I squeaked when I grew too uncomfortable with his perusal.
“You’re afraid.”
Of him? I . . . wasn’t. A realization that came as a shock. True, he sometimes scared me, and true, I found him intimidating. The feelings he evoked in me did make me afraid, but I wasn’t scared of him, not really. “N-no . . .”
Ruarc rolled his eyes, a gesture I would have found faintly endearing on such a big, scary-looking man if it hadn’t been so insulting. “You want tea?”
The abrupt subject change threw me. “Um . . .” What I wanted was hot chocolate. If I told him no, would he be upset?
“Yes or no, Hope.”
“Uh, sure.”
For the longest time he simply stared at me. His gaze roamed across my face, lingering on my eyes for so long I was afraid he was trying to see straight through to my weary, damaged soul.
“Lie.” His jaw clenched.
Asking for what I wanted shouldn’t be this hard, should it?
“I’m sorry.” When my lower lip wobbled, I drew it between my teeth in an attempt to hide the emotional response from Ruarc. I hated being this weak.
“Tell me,” he demanded, closing the distance between us while tilting my chin up until I was looking into his magnetic eyes. “What do you want to drink?”
I blinked slowly up at him, caught in a seductive web of emotions I didn’t quite understand and the harsh beauty that was Ruarc. Despite his scarred face, the brutal angle of his cheekbones and his severe, slashing brows, he was a perfect example of the kind of fierce, savage warriors that mother-nature was capable of producing. And there was beauty in that. An unmerciful, violent kind of beauty generally reserved for predators in the wild, but beauty nonetheless.
The way he looked at me, with such intensity, such naked need . . . Need to understand? To help?
“I . . . I want . . .” My voice was breathless, uneven. My body was thrumming with a kind of sensation I had never felt before. It was new. Exhilarating.
And it terrified me.
Ruarc’s fiery gaze trailed down to my lips, his pupils dilating until only a faint circle of glow
ing silver remained.
A soft gasp parted my lips, and he jerked back; his eyes wild and nostrils flaring. The sudden distance, the alarming way he was staring at me both combined to chase back the warmth that had enveloped my body at his nearness.
“I—”
A rumbling that sounded unnervingly like thunder filled the space around us. Eyes glued to me, Ruarc’s chest expanded as another rumble cracked through the air. Deeper than a growl, a heavy bass sound I could feel down to my marrow, the rumble caressed my skin, my senses, and nudged at my slumbering monster.
“W-what are you doing?”
The sound grew and my breath caught, a gasp flying from my lips.
Ruarc’s glowing, silver gaze shot to my mouth. He shook his head. Once, twice. Then, taking a step back, he leaned against the counter behind him, rubbing a big palm over his jaw.
The rumbling stopped.
The scary, potent sound had evoked a response deep inside me. A primal instinct I hadn’t been aware of existed. It was as though a whole new sense had unfurled, had reached up through me and basked in the thunder Ruarc had created. And now that it was gone I felt its absence keenly.
A muttered apology rasped from Ruarc’s throat. There were lines of tension between his shuttered eyes, and his mouth was set in a grim line.
“I-it’s okay.” Every fiber of my being wanted to ask what had happened, what that terrifying, amazing thrum of sound had been, and what it meant. But before I could think of a way to phrase my question Lucien strode into the kitchen. His eyes skimmed over me before he turned his head dismissively, but once he looked at Ruarc he came to an abrupt stop.
“What happened?” he asked in a chilled voice. When Ruarc failed to respond, he turned to me, eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What did you do?”
Ruarc, with his teeth bared, stepped forward, blocking Lucien’s view of me with his substantial bulk. “Lucien, so help me . . .” he growled.
Lucien drew back, a hint of surprise coloring his skin before his expression closed. His beautiful, green eyes were just as frosty as ever, and his dark eyebrows were raised just enough to give him a haughty, superior look.