by Woods, Erica
“Are you okay?” Had something happened? Did his alpha suspect something?
A quick nod of his head, then he placed his hand on my upper arm and pulled me around to the back of the stage.
I suppressed a shudder, my skin buzzing with discomfort. We’d never been this close before. Never been allowed so much as a handshake. At one point in my life, I’d have given anything for this, for a simple touch that didn’t intend pain or torment. I’d hungered for closeness, for human contact, and I’d lost count of the times I’d stared at Matthew, wishing he were closer just so I could have someone to hug; to share comfort with.
But now . . . now it felt wrong.
“Finally,” Matthew whispered as soon as we rounded the corner. The big stage guarded our backs, hiding us from the cabins and any lycan prowling the most common paths, but if someone were to approach from the dark forest edging the circle . . .
We wouldn’t see them until it was too late.
Shaking off Matthew’s touch, I took a step back and pretended to re-tie the string on my sweatpants. “W-why did we have to meet here?”
“I told you, I can’t risk my alpha seeing us together.”
“But why? I know,” I said, holding up a trembling hand before he could interrupt. “I know you said he’d kill you, but . . . why?”
“The Hunters, they . . .” His voice trailed off and died.
“They what?”
He shook his head.
“Please talk to me, Matthew. Please. I . . . I have to know.”
“Did you tell them?”
The sudden change of topic left me reeling. “W-what?”
“Your pack.” His eyes were wide. Glassy. “Did you tell them about . . . about me?”
“No, I . . . I told you I’d wait, and I wouldn’t lie to you. I owe you that much.”
“Owe me . . .” A shudder moved up his body, twitching his shoulders. “And they don’t know . . .?”
“No, but after tonight I do have to tell them. Once they know what you did for me, they won’t hurt you. Just . . . Please, whatever trouble you’re in, let me help. Let us help.”
Eyes flickering from side to side, Matthew half turned away and looked out at the stillness of the forest. For a while, he just breathed. Did nothing. Said nothing. Just . . . existed. “Okay,” he finally said. “You can tell them.”
You can tell them.
You can tell them.
You can tell them.
My lashes fluttered shut and the world went quiet. Disappeared. All that existed was the thumping in my ears, the rush of racing liquid in my veins.
Tonight, I thought, feeling that one word hammer at my soul like fate’s final judgment. Tonight I’ll lose them.
The last obstacle standing between my guys and my secrets had fallen. I should’ve been relieved—I’d come here planning to convince him—but I’d expected more of a fight. Not this . . . this easy capitulation.
Not after what he’d insinuated.
My shoulders slumped and whatever starch had kept my spine upright promptly dissolved. I’d almost begun thinking my secrets were dangerous, that if any lycans knew where I’d spent the last eighteen years of my life—it doesn’t matter. “Thank you,” I choked out. “I . . . Thank you for trusting me.”
Matthew didn’t reply, just made a pained sound deep in his throat.
“I’ll talk to them. They’ll . . .” I swallowed hard. Even if my guys hated me, they’d still help an innocent. “They’ll help you, I promise. And I—I’ll repay you for everything you’ve done for me. For . . . for what you did that night—”
“Stop,” he whispered, pushing his knuckles against his closed eyes with punishing force. “Just . . . stop.”
“W-what?”
“You don’t need to repay me. What happened . . . It wasn’t your fault.”
Something hot and ugly and festering burst from my stomach. “Of course it was!” I bit down on my lip, felt the skin part, tasted blood. Bit harder. “It was all my fault.”
“No, what they did to me . . .” He winced, muttered damaged, half-lucid words under his breath. “Not much I can do. But I can fix this. This one thing.” His eyes glowed a shade of blue I’d never thought to see again. “That day when Gregory—” A short, sharp moan. “It wouldn’t have mattered what you did. Or said. It was planned, right? Planned.”
I shook my head, breath coming in short, shallow gulps.
“Nothing could have stopped it. Had you reacted differently . . .” Matthew shuddered, seemed to slip away. By the time he came back, I stood frozen while the world spun around me. “They might have stopped. But only then, you understand? It would still have happened, only . . . only later.” His voice dropped to a low, distracted mutter. “I’d have been stuck in that hellhole even longer. Chickened out once. Couldn’t . . . No more.”
“I . . . I don’t understand.”
Matthew’s bright blue eyes came stuttering back up, locking on my face as though he’d forgotten I was there. “What was the purpose of all that torture? I don’t mean their research or what they did . . . what they did for pleasure”—he shuddered so hard his teeth chattered—“But for each of us. You. What was their goal?.”
It clicked. “To break me,” I whispered. And they’d been close. So close.
“Right. What they did to me . . . they did to break you.”
I recoiled. That . . . It wasn’t . . . It couldn’t be . . . “N-no.”
“Breaking us was always their goal—”
“Please.”
“—but to break you, they used me.”
No.
Slapped a hand over my eyes.
No.
Choked on a truth that was so obvious it couldn’t be denied.
No.
Felt guilt rush through each crack, each tear in my skin and drown me from the inside out.
Matthew . . . Matthew had only been a pawn; his pain a means to an end. My end.
My fault my fault my fault. “My fault . . .”
“No, no, it wasn’t.” Matthew dragged a hand down his face, pulling at the skin until it looked stretched and grotesque. Like a mask made of melted candles. “No matter what you did, it would’ve still happened. So stop . . . stop thanking me!” The last burst from him like a sudden, sharp wave that crested before it could reach its peak.
He froze, but I didn’t have it in me to care.
This . . . this made his torture my fault. And not just the last time, the time I came face to face with myself and saw the coward I really was, but all the times! He’d been hurt only as a way to break me. If I hadn’t been there, would he even have been caught? And how . . . how had that happened?
He’s lycan.
I forced my mouth to move, pushed out a broken, bleeding, “How?”
He misunderstood; gave his ears a tap. “Lycan hearing. They weren’t . . . The Hunters are many things but not . . . not discreet.”
“No, how did you—” My voice broke then came back again, raw and ruined and ravaged beyond recognition. “How did they capture you? You’re . . . a lycan.”
Matthew grabbed the edge of the stage like it was a lifeline. “They . . . the Hunters . . .” His fingers went white, and one of his knees wobbled. “They hunt everything, Hope. Everything. No being, no supernatural is off limits. No one is safe. No one.”
The world tilted in a dizzying rush. My legs buckled and my knees hit the grass. Then my hands. Then my forehead. I tried to breathe but couldn’t manage more than a short burst of air, a single panting breath.
They hunt everything.
My lungs wouldn’t expand. They were . . . in a vice. I was in a vice. My ribs were being squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, so tight, so tight I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t survive the pressure.
No one is safe.
I was back in the Hunter compound. Skin scraped raw and split open on the stairs leading down to the basement. Ankles and wrists strapped to the tab
le. Waist too. Trapped. Trapped under the knife of Matthew’s truths, each revelation another cut, another slice of a blade that hadn’t been sharpened, that didn’t cut clean lines but rather tore and ripped and pulled flesh apart by slow, agonizing inches.
No supernatural is off limits.
The Hunters took down lycans.
Lycans.
Black spots danced across my vision.
This whole time, I’d known I was putting them at risk. I’d seen what the Hunters could do. I’d witnessed the power of their weapons. I’d experienced their cruelty. But once I found out my guys were lycan, some part of me, a small part, must have thought they’d be safe. Why else would I have stayed? Why else had I given up on finding Uncle Gavril?
But you weren’t going to bring them with you to take down the Hunters. So you knew. You knew they could get killed, and you still did this. You still stayed.
A hand on my wrist, my skin prickling. Then I was pulled up, pushed against the stage until the edge dug into my back and my palm slapped against the cool surface.
“Breathe.”
They hunt lycans.
My lungs ached. I shook my arm until the unwanted touch fell away.
“Breathe.”
The Hunters took down lycans, and when they inevitably found me, I’d have led them straight to my guys’ doorstep.
“Why . . .” I choked on air, felt it scrape my throat like a mouthful of glass. “If they hunt lycans . . .”
My head was spinning, my thoughts came slow and smothered in tar.
Can’t ask the Council . . .
What was I . . .?
. . .taken them down already?
If they could, wouldn’t they have . . .
Human. You’re human.
“W-why take me?”
“Don’t know.” Matthew stared down at his hands. “Does it matter?”
“Yes! I’m . . . human”—a human harboring a monster no one could see or smell or hear—“and if they’re after me, then—”
“They are,” he whispered. “They’re coming for you.”
My heart slammed against my chest. Just once. Just a single hot, awful thump that left behind a wound bleeding horror.
“W-what do you mean?”
A faint grimace twisted his lips, but he didn’t reply, didn’t even look at me. Just kept staring down at his hands with a wide, unsteady gaze.
Icy tendrils of dread stabbed me in the stomach, and I took a single, shaky step back.
This couldn’t . . . This wasn’t . . .
No. Matthew would never hurt me. He . . . he wouldn’t.
But then why could I feel my pulse thudding in my ear? Why was my throat so tight I struggled to breathe and my mouth so dry I couldn’t speak?
Another stumbling step back, then another, attention never leaving Matthew. He looked like a stranger. “W-what’s going on?”
Leaves rustled in the forest behind him, and far away, so far I couldn’t possibly have heard it, the faint tread of bare feet on damp ground.
My gaze flew past him, focusing on the dense forest, but there were only shadows playing at its edges, darkness swallowing anything beyond its borders.
“Are they really your pack, Hope?” Matthew asked, and my gaze whipped back to him. “Even . . . even him?”
“H-him?”
“The mahír fáinn. Does he dominate you, take your body against your will?” His voice wavered, grew reel thin and bled black hope. “At least the Hunters can’t violate you like that.”
“The Hunters . . .?” I blinked. “I don’t . . . Why would you . . . No! Ash doesn’t—he’d never hurt me!”
He slumped. “And the others? Do they . . . misuse you?”
“No!” Why was he asking me this, and why . . . why did he sound like he wanted the answer to be yes? “They’re amazing. All of them.” How could he compare my guys to the Hunters? I’d rather die than go back there!
“You would?”
Had I said that out loud? “Of course, I . . . W-why are you asking me these things?”
“I’m so sorry, Hope.”
Cold sweat trailed down my back. I tried to make my legs move, tried to turn and run, but my limbs were numb. I was numb. “Matthew, h-how . . .” I swallowed, tried to dislodge the fear that sat like a lump of poison in my throat. “How did you escape the Hunters?”
“I didn’t.”
58
Hope
I didn’t.
For a single beat of my heart, the world slowed. I heard nothing; not the wind darting between trees, flirting with leaves and grass and branches, ruffling feathers and tumbling fur; and not the melody of tireless crickets chirping, chirping, chirping, or the sudden, jarring absence of their song. I didn’t hear the labored sound of my own too shallow breathing or the thunder of my racing pulse.
I was enveloped by a thick, choking fog that dulled all senses and kept the horrors at bay. Until my ears rang, Matthew’s mouth moved, and the night came rushing back in.
“ . . .to happen, but then you showed up and of course he knew.”
“W-what? What are you talking about? What have you done?”
“I can’t go back, Hope. I’m . . . I’m so sorry, but I can’t.”
“B-back?” Pressure built in my chest, so quick and so violent I choked on a scream.
This was wrong. All wrong.
My legs tensed, preparing to catapult me into a run, but Matthew lunged; grabbed my wrist in a hold that should have been weak and shaking but wasn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, grip tightening. “I . . . I have no choice.”
Terror bloomed in my mind like a poison cloud, trembling my thighs and eroding my strength. I opened my mouth, preparing to scream, but a thread attached to my heart gave a violent jerk, and then I couldn’t move.
Frozen, I stared at Matthew, watched his already pale face grow as white and brittle as long-buried bones. His eyes widened, pupils expanding in a sea of black and fixating on something over my shoulder.
Slowly, terrified any sudden movements would draw the sweltering wrath crackling in the air, I turned.
“L-Lucien?”
The male stepping out from the stage’s shadow was a male unleashed. His mask had splintered, shattered in some places, torn in others, gaping to reveal flashes of burning fury and patches of frozen wrath.
“Hope,” he replied, and despite the dangerous tilt of his head, the voice falling from his lips was smooth. Controlled. Fire encased in ice.
I had the strangest thought that this was Lucien. The real Lucien. That the ice wasn’t a mask, but a part of him, a part he’d built to smother rampaging flames; an inferno he couldn’t control.
A touch under my chin; a cold, whispered accusation, “You were not in your room.”
You lied, hung in the air, unsaid but not unheard.
My eyes burned. “I’m s-so sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” His eyes narrowed, but a sound from behind had his gaze whipping over my shoulder. One second he was looming above me, the next he was gone.
I turned just in time to see him throw a vicious punch and hear the sickening crunch of bone being crushed. Matthew landed in a heap on the ground, cradling his broken nose. Blood streamed between his fingers.
Lucien advanced again, and Matthew scrambled back, shielding his face.
“Don’t!” I cried, almost wishing I had remained silent when Lucien spun around and speared me with a glare so filled with fury, accusation, and agonizing torment I almost doubled over.
“Don’t? That’s all you have to say? After I catch you with your lover? The male you hid and left our den for?” He turned back to throw a disgusted look down at Matthew. “You stink of betrayal.”
Betrayal? Did he mean . . .?
My lungs seized, and for a fragile, bruised minute, I couldn’t catch my breath.
Lucien thought . . . he thought I’d had sex with Matthew? “No! We . . . we didn’t!”
“I am aware
you did not sully yourself with this male,” he said. “At least not today.”
I jerked back. The old Lucien had returned. Contempt dripped from each syllable, the fire in his gaze freezing over until only a barren tundra stared back at me from the cold, green orbs.
I’d done that. It was my fault. I’d lied, kept secrets, snuck out without a word. Whatever affection he’d once felt for me was gone.
The ground rushed up as my knees gave out and my spine bowed in pain. A thread I’d been almost unaware of, a thread connecting my heart to another’s, pulled hard and threatened to snap.
“No!” Lucien was at my side in an instant, face set in brutal, cutting lines that didn’t match his ravaged gaze.
I lifted my hand and cupped the blade of his cheek, so relieved he didn’t immediately jerk away from my touch that tears filled my eyes and ran down my face. “Matthew has never been my . . . my lover.”
“Matthew?” Lucien spat. Then he shook his head, gaze hardening. “I do not believe you. The lies, the secrets . . . If he is nothing to you, then why do this?”
My hand fell. “I didn’t say he was nothing to me.”
Lucien staggered back. “You betrayed us. You betrayed us for someone who was going to betray you.”
The dread that had been slithering up my spine since the moment I’d set eyes on the stage that night culminated in a fine sheen of cold sweat dampening my skin.
I hadn’t wanted to believe it was possible, hadn’t wanted to think Matthew could ever hurt me, but . . . Lucien wouldn’t lie, and hearing the words forced the truth down my throat in a single, ugly shove.
You were going to run.
I glanced down at my wrist.
He wouldn’t let you.
Slowly, as though moving through a dream, I looked at Matthew and asked the only question echoing in my mind, “Why?”
59
Lucien
Betrayal.
Our female had betrayed us. Betrayed me.
If not for the bond we’d formed, I would not have felt her. Would not have known where to look when I found her room empty and her scent faint. Did she comprehend the terror she’d sentenced me to? The nauseating fear?