“You guys didn’t answer my question. Who are you looking for?” I pick up the bottle of perfume casually and I’m just about to spray it onto my neck when strong arms wrap around my waist and lift me up.
“Talon!” I yell.
Tyler still has a face of stone, and is now showing no emotion whatsoever. He reaches over and takes the perfume out of my grasp.
“What are you doing?” I shriek, as Talon throws me onto my bed. I grab hold of the towel I have wrapped around me, it has loosened somewhat but nothing is on display. They’re making me really nervous.
I try to lift myself off the bed, but Talon’s body covers mine and soon I’m forced to lay flat on the bed with his large frame covering my own. He looks down at me and the corner of his lips lift as he notices the effect his body has on mine.
I gulp looking up at him.
“Talon, get off me,” I say in a soft voice.
“Uh-uh.” He shakes his head. He’s so close that I can smell his minty breath. “Not until you’ve answered our questions.”
I pull the towel higher over my breasts. Holding the material tightly in my grasp. His eyes look down to my hands and a grin forms. He leans down until his cheek is almost touching mine, I almost sigh thinking that he’s going to nuzzle me. Instead he whispers in his deep husky voice, “Who were you with?”
The fucker is playing me, playing with my emotions; he knows exactly what he’s doing to me and the effect he has. He sees how badly I want him and he’s using it to his advantage. He thinks I’ll just spill my guts as soon as he gets all sweet and gentle.
I don’t think so.
I turn my head away from him.
“You think this is some game?” I spit out, avoiding his eyes as I look across the room at my closet door. His body stills on top of me, then slowly but surely he moves off of me.
“I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I slide my body off the bed and move to my closet, but Tyler’s body blocks me from opening the closet door.
“Please get out of my way. I’d like to get dressed.” I keep my tone even and attempt to open the door again, but he slams his palm next to my head ultimately slamming the door closed.
“Brother, we tried things your way and it didn’t work, now we do it my way.” Tyler uses that tone I hate so much and I immediately feel anxious.
“Stop it, you’re scaring her,” Talon says, from somewhere behind Tyler’s tall form. I turn to face Tyler, looking into his black eyes.
“Please leave,” I say, trying to keep the fear out of my tone.
His hands curl around my upper arms and he squeezes extremely tight, I cry out and hear Talon’s curse.
He growls, “Where were you?”
I clench my eyes shut, forcing the tingling sensation to remain within me.
“I went for a run in the woods.” The words quickly tumble out of my mouth.
“Whose scent did we follow to your room?” He asks, still squeezing me.
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” I grind out, trying to keep my anger at bay.
God, I’ve become such a good liar. What the hell is happening to me? His hold tightens and a certain flashback of the night Drake pushed me up against the door for the first time appears in my head. The fear I felt back then confirms all my suspicions about Tyler; he’s just the same.
The realization of that breaks me and I can’t control the tears this time.
“Please stop, Ty. You’re hurting me.”
I feel the tears fall and can’t bare to look at his black eyes right now.
I was doing good. I was finally getting over my fear of black eyes and I think Tyler’s just fucked that all up for me in a matter of seconds.
His hands are suddenly gone and I open my eyes to find Talon pushing against Tyler’s chest.
“Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re hurting her, you’re hurting our mate!” Talon tries to get Tyler’s wolf to see clearly. As if realisation suddenly hits, Tyler’s eyes clear and they find mine.
“Angel, no,” he says, out of breath and watching my trembling form. He takes a step towards me and I take a fearful step back, bumping my back into the door of the closet. My body trembles in fear and the tears continue to fall as I hiccup and snivel; I can’t hold that shit in any longer. I’ve never been more afraid of Tyler in my life, and this makes me look at things in a whole new perspective.
“Babe?”
He sounds as if he’s in pain. He takes another step closer and this time I cower onto the floor shielding myself, turning my face away from him.
“Go… Please, just go,” I say, trying to catch my breath.
It’s quiet for a moment, then he speaks and it sounds as if he’s having difficulty breathing.
“I’m so sorry,” he says softly, and then I hear his footsteps as he leaves.
I look up through teary eyes to find Talon walking towards me. I curl into myself as much as I can.
“Leave… leave me alone,” I tell him.
“I’m so sorry, Angel. It wasn’t meant...”
I interrupt him.
“Don’t! Don’t do that! You’re not sorry. Don’t stand there and fucking lie to me. If it was your intention to push me away, you’ve succeeded. Both of you have!” I shout, making him visibly flinch.
He raises his hand to touch me and I move away from him, he lowers it again and lets out a pained breath.
“We never wanted to hurt you,” he whispers.
“That’s all you two have been doing,” I whisper back.
“Please… I can’t leave you like this.”
He reaches out to touch my face.
“Go… Please…just go!” I’m almost to the point of begging, I don’t even care how pathetic I sound right now. I just want to be left alone.
I hear him let out a deep breath and then finally he stands up and moves to leave, walking through the bathroom and into his room. I wipe the tears away with the back of my hand, then move to lift myself up. I find a pair of panties and a big t-shirt, then climb into bed under all the blankets as I cry myself to sleep wishing I had that sweet sweet Tyler I once knew holding me tight.
I don’t like this scary version of Tyler very much. He’s making me reconsider everything I thought I knew about him.
TYLER POV
I pace the bedroom. My wolf won’t shut up about the way we’ve treated Angel. We’re both to blame and we know it. Nothing can take the image of her petrified face out of my head.
Talon storms into the bedroom and I sense the anger and hostility coming from him. He glares at me and speaks in a deathly even tone.
“Hurt her again and I’ll make sure Alpha gives me permission to end you. Blood or not, you touch our mate that way again and I will make sure she rejects you… That’s if you haven’t already just changed her mind about wanting us.”
He leans against the windowsill and lets out a deep breath, leaning his elbows on his knees, hair falling to cover his face. He always looks so untidy, but apparently girls liked that shit, calling it rugged. Whatever the fuck that means.
“Start talking! Tell me how we’re going to fix this shit. I think we’ve gone too far. I know you don’t mean half the shit you say to her, so tell me how we’re going to fix it?” Talon says, looking up at me.
I’m usually the problem solver, the one with all the answers, but that’s when I’ve had to fix Talon’s fuck ups. I don’t fuck up, but I know that this time… I’ve fucked up big time.
“I don’t know,” I say truthfully. I can tell by the look on Talon’s face that he wasn’t expecting that answer from me.
I sit next to him on the windowsill resting my head in my hands. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You need to make things better between the two of you. Apologise and make it better,” he says.
“Did you see how scared she was?”
I sit up and look at Talon. He nods his head.
“How am I gonna get her to talk to me when
she’s so afraid of me? How can she ever forgive me for what I did? What I’ve done,” I whisper, looking down at the floor.
“How will she ever forgive us for the way we’ve been treating her?” Talon says, resting his head against the window behind him and squeezing his eyes shut.
“We fucked up,” we say simultaneously.
“She deserves better than us, Ty… So much better. She deserves to be happy,” Talon says.
I know where he’s going with this and I’ve thought about it before myself, but it hurts too much to say it out loud.
“You think her second chance mate will be better than us?” I ask him.
“Look at what we’ve done! What we’ve put her through!” Talon spits out angrily, standing up and moving to the other side of the room where he starts to pace.
“You think Alpha wil forgive us for what we’ve put her through?” he doesn’t give me a chance to answer.
“No, he’s going to banish us the minute he finds out. Either way we are fucking screwed!”
“I know alright! Don’t fucking talk to me like that, Talon. We’re both to blame and there’s no use arguing about it. It won’t change anything. Kate was around when Angel wasn’t and now…God, Talon. I love Kate. I love Angel too, I love her too fucking much and I know she’s our mate, but I’m… I’m afraid to lose Kate. Don’t you understand how hard this is for me?” I keep my voice down hoping Angel can’t hear.
“Hard for you? This is pretty fucking hard for me too, bro! I care about Lucy, we’re in the same fucking boat. I’ve loved Angel from the moment I wrapped my arms around her that first day, but she’s so fucking closed off, she keeps so much shit from us. How are we supposed to trust her?” Talon flops backwards onto the bed with a loud curse.
“We need to keep our space from her until we can figure out what’s best for all of us. I don’t want to hurt Kate and I know you don’t want to hurt Lucy-” he interrupts me.
“I don’t want to hurt Angel either, Ty,” he says.
“We won’t. Let’s keep an eye on her from afar, just until we know what’s best for all of us, and until we can figure out what we truly want.
“And what are we supposed to do about Nixon, they’re always together?” He says with a low growl.
“I don’t know the history between the two of them, but there’s something there. Alpha said that he was from Point Bright too, so she must have gotten her father to accept him into the pack. I’m not sure what their relationship is though, they’re really friendly, but I don’t think it goes any further.”
Talon lets out a deep growl, I watch his hands as they turn into fists.
“I don’t want her touching him, I don’t care what their relationship is. I don’t like it.”
“Keep an eye on her, but don’t get too close. We’ve got some serious thinking to do, man. I don’t want her to hurt any more than what we’ve already caused her,” I say standing and looking out the window.
“Don’t think it’s going to be that easy, man. Someone is going to get hurt. We haven’t even thought of how we can even start to explain this shit to Alpha,” Talon says, standing up and walking out of the bedroom.
I tiptoe into the bathroom noticing Angel’s room is pitch black. This causes a pain in my heart thinking about how much I’ve upset her, she usually sleeps with the curtains open allowing the moonlight in. I hear her hiccups and snivelling and realize she’s still crying. I want to climb in bed with her and hold her tight. Take away her pain and promise her I won’t ever hurt her again, telling her that I’ll be with her and never leave her side. I’d tell her I love her and only her, but all that would be a lie because during the time Angel put so much distance between us, I met and fell in love with another beautiful soul named Kate. I never thought I could love someone that wasn’t Angel this much, but I do. The distance Angel put between us only pushed me closer to Kate, the only problem is that neither girl knows who I really am and the secret I hide. I don’t think either will stick around and wanna be with me once I show them who I really am; when they see I’m not so perfect after all. I think Angel is already starting to see the real person behind everything she thought I was before. She has begun to get a better idea of who I really am.
I slide down onto the bathroom floor and wait till her snivelling and crying dies down completely, until I’m positively sure she’s asleep. Creeping into the dark room, I’m able to immediately spot the small bundle in the middle of the bed. I pull the blankets from over her head and find her soundly sleeping with her hands curled under her chin; her pillow with damp patches from where her tears fell.
She’s so fucking beautiful.
I pull the covers down slowly to inspect the spots where I hurt her. Lifting her sleeve, I find a bruise marring her pale skin and I’m certain there’s a matching bruise on her other arm.
“I’m so fucking sorry, sweetheart.”
I feel the tears falling, watching them drop onto her skin. I press soft kisses to her upper arm where the bruise lies, and catch the faint smell of an unfamiliar scent as I brush my nose against her upper arm.
Moving my nose along her shoulder and towards her neckline, the scent is weak and that’s most probably why Talon didn’t catch it. I have a much stronger sense of smell than he does. The scent is definitely male… A male from another pack.
I move my face away from her neck and look down at my sleeping beauty. How can something so pure and innocent looking, be so cunning and manipulative?
TALON POV
“What the hell are we gonna do?” I mumble to my wolf throwing a rock into the lake.
“Who are you talking to out here?”
I jump and nearly fall over the dock and into the water when I hear Lucy’s voice. She walks closer giggling to herself and shaking her head.
“Fuck, Luce, you gave me such a fright.” Despite my wolf’s protests, I wrap an arm over her shoulder and bring her into my side. I can’t help but feel disappointed when the scent that catches my nose isn’t Angel’s.
“What did you mean by, “What the hell are you gonna do?” She mimics in a deep voice.
Lucy is aware that Angel is my mate, she knows the history and what went down and I guess she’s under the impression that I’ll reject Angel. She was there when I needed someone to talk to and I suppose that’s the reason why we’re so close. Tyler had started seeing Kate and wasn’t around much and Lucy and I have been friends for a long time, always friends though. The girl is wild and she’s the type I usually go for, that’s exactly why I kept the relationship platonic, but after Angel’s attack and after things started changing, Lucy was the one I turned to. I woke up the next morning after one drunken night in Lucy’s bed and just like that we moved from friends to dating. It happened so fast and whenever I needed to get my mind away from thinking about Angel, I turned to Lucy.
I was going through so much, blaming my brother and myself for allowing someone to hurt Angel so brutally. We tried to be there for her, but it was as if she was afraid to be around us. She closed herself off and continued to move back and forth every weekend to Point Bright. Alpha’s orders also prevented us from asking questions about the incident and trying to find out who had hurt her. He didn’t want to cause her anymore pain in bringing up the subject; I think he was afraid that if we found out who whipped her we would beat him to it and kill the fucker first.
“I will find the person responsible for hurting our mate and I will rip him to shreds,” my wolf, Jett, growls.
“You and me both!” I think back.
Tyler and I were under the impression that Angel was going to move to Point Bright indefinitely once she graduated, that was one of the main reasons I started dating Lucy exclusively. I needed to move on and be with someone that wanted me just as much as I wanted them, but that all changed when Angel came back that night and I found out she was my mate.
I regret all the terrible things I’ve said to her and all the terrible things I have done, but I needed to make
her feel how much it hurts when you see the one you love with someone else. I couldn’t stop myself as the hurtful words flew out of my mouth, I couldn’t control lashing out at her. The memories of her promising to leave her ex and be with us, and then never following through entered my mind.
Every single time she went back to Point Bright to be with her boyfriend, then coming back smelling like him felt like a knife to the heart. I don’t want to hurt her, but I constantly keep doing it. I notice her doing stupid little things and it just sets me and my wolf off. Every time I see her with Nixon, every time I see her touching him, I want to release my wolf and let him do the damage he keeps promising me he will, but I know it will only cause an uproar in the pack and Angel will never forgive me for taking away her only friend.
“Uh hello? Talon, I’m talking to you!” Lucy waves her hands in front of my face, clearing my thoughts suddenly.
“Sorry, I’ve just have a lot on my mind,” I mutter, as I look back at the lake and the moons reflection shining off of it.
“You mean you’ve had a lot of Angel on your mind,” she says, in a snarky tone. I whip my head back to her and glare as my wolf takes over my words.
“You better quit with the attitude, she’s done nothing to you. Show her respect, she’s the Alpha’s daughter.”
Lucy quickly looks down at the ground in respect letting off a little whine. Her eyes are fixated on the wooden boards of the dock beneath us as she speaks, “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful… I just miss you. We’ve hardly spent any time together and you haven’t been over to my place since… well…” she looks up and moves closer to me. “…since she arrived.”
I run my hand over my jaw and let out a deep breath.
“I’ve been busy, Lucy. Alpha has us doing more duties now that he’s out of town more often trying to keep the rogues from entering the allied packs. I have more responsibilities now.”
Angel Blackwood Page 14