“I do. Help me kill him.”
“I can’t interfere anymore. I’m ready for the soft place, the quiet place where my babe waits for me. Free us both. Drown your hope and love the darkness. Be the sin eater. Devour all of our sins and save us.”
He roared as the plane around him shattered like glass and thrust him back into the world.
Armand dropped between them, and Victoria launched herself at him, clawing and biting at his throat. He didn’t fight back, didn’t do anything but try to push her out of the way to face Breslin.
But it was too late.
Breslin sank his teeth into her shoulder, his face shifting back to human just long enough to grin at him with a bloody mouth, and then he launched himself into the woods at a full run.
Armand was faced with a choice. Chase Breslin down, or tend to the body of the woman who was his mate. The shell that no longer housed her, but a darkness.
At first, the answer seemed simple. But it wasn’t. There were others hunting Breslin. It didn’t have to be him. He could choose Victoria.
Love the darkness, the witch had said. Find Victoria in the hulking, mindless beast before him.
Eat her sins.
Did that mean he could save her?
His connection with her had been instant. She was his mate. His powerful, beautiful, amazing mate. He loved her strength. He loved her heart. He loved her brain. He loved her. He loved every bit of her, he realized. Even the darkness. It was part of who she was.
Even now, with no sense of the woman he knew, it was still her. All along, he’d thought it wasn’t.
He had to bite her, claim her.
As a beast. As a mindless, slavering agent of darkness. He had to prove that he accepted her.
That he didn’t hope to change anything about her.
He embraced her, letting her bite and claw at him, and on the other side of her neck, he gave her his bite.
Her blood was bitter like bile, but he drank it down. Let her darkness fill him.
He didn’t fight. Didn’t hope to keep himself, he only let himself fall and prayed to the Goddess that this was what she intended.
Unimaginable pain speared him, all of his bones breaking simultaneously, healing, and then breaking again. He did not suffer in silence, he howled his pain so that it echoed far and wide throughout the Ardennes Forest.
But never did he ask for it to stop.
Ask me to stop, a soft and unfamiliar feminine voice whispered in his ear.
No.
Ask me to stop, and it will.
But if he asked for it to stop, the Curse wouldn’t be broken. That’s what his magic told him. He remained in howling agony.
Let go. Surrender this pain.
He was going on only instinct now. “It is my right, my honor, my privilege to bear it for my pack. It is mine,” he growled through his suffering.
Is this what you want? Forever?
“Yes.”
So it shall be, until the hatred and pain is put to rest, only you shall suffer every moon cycle. You are the sin eater.
And the agony redoubled, it wasn’t even pain anymore. It was pleasure. He couldn’t tell the difference.
But never once did he ask for it to stop.
Not even when he lay spent on the ground, naked and bloody with his skin on fire and his and pain and pleasure receptors still firing simultaneously.
All he cared about was Victoria, prone on the loamy earth with two bites at her neck, both healing slowly, silver filling in the gaps between the flesh.
Chapter 9
Two months later
“I’m going to the witch’s place.”
The moon had risen high in the sky and it was long past time that Armand had secluded himself away from the rest of the pack. They’d all his hear howls and his screams, the night of suffering he endured once a month, much like the Change, to keep his people from suffering the same fate.
Until the pain and hatred was gone.
He accepted this as his duty.
Already, it wasn’t as bad as it had been the first time. So healing had begun.
Breslin was still on the run, but no news of any other silver-immune wolves had come to his ears and he was in touch with the hunter Lenore Breslin who’d taken the contract on her brother’s head.
“I’m coming with you.” Victoria said. “You made me stay away last time. Let me be with you.”
“It’s hard and ugly. I don’t want you being angry at Melissande. That only makes the pain worse.”
“I won’t be. I’m not just your mate, I’m your Beta. I have strength to share. Let me give it to you.” Victoria sighed. “If you can stand it to be done, I can stand to watch it. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“My love, my life.” He kissed her forehead.
His joints were already starting to ache, warming up for the main event. He wasn’t looking forward to it or anything, but pride surged in his chest. He was worthy. He’d saved his pack.
He’d saved his mate.
He’d broken the Curse that had haunted them for centuries.
He’d earned his place as not only the Ardennes Alpha, but at Victoria’s side.
“How about some ‘sexual healing’ when this is all over.”
“Are you trying to kill me?” He cocked a brow. “I can’t think of a better way to go out.”
“I love you, Armand. You saved me. You saved us all. Thank you for teaching me to believe in fairy tales.”
“Thank you for teaching me how to love the darkness.”
They ran together, shifting into natural wolves, and ran toward that place in the woods where witches cried and beasts howled, where darkness and hope twisted together, and where fairy tales were real.
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The Ardennes Curse (The Woolven Secret) Page 7