Rogue Heart

by Samantha Wolfe

  I can't bottle it up anymore, can't contain it, and the tight little knot I'd shoved it all into earlier instantly unravels inside me. Tears start to sheet down my face and blur my vision, dripping from my chin to my lap. Hard agonizing sobs just explode out of my aching body, one after the other, making my head throb and pound as I hunch over the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip. It's a struggle to focus on the road ahead when all I want to do is curl up and die so the physical and emotional pain will go away.

  That's when the baby starts crying. It jolts me out of my own head enough to realize that the car is drifting into the other lane. I jerk the wheel to the right just as an oncoming semi blasts its horn, the headlights briefly searing into my aching skull as it barrels past.

  "Shit!" My heart is pounding chaotically in my chest as I stare fixedly at the road ahead, afraid to look away. By the time I catch my breath a few miles later, my sister has quieted down and settled back into peaceful sleep, having no idea how close I came to getting her killed right along with her weak pathetic brother.

  I grind my teeth together and stifle the sobs that threaten to start again as my guilt over almost letting her down just now overwhelms me. Who am I kidding though? I've been letting her down since the moment I pulled her into this fucked-up world. I don't have any money to provide for her. I have no safe place to take her. I have nothing to offer her, nothing but the certainty that I'll fail her again and again until it eventually costs my sister her life, just like it did my parents. I couldn't save either of them, and I won't be able to save her either. She'd be better off without me. They all would have been better off without me.

  And with that thought, I realize what I have to do. With my decision made, I find what little strength I have left to push the pain and sorrow into that tight little knot inside my heart again. This time, I wrap a blanket of insulating numbness around it, sealing it all up inside me, so I can do what needs to be done. The cold and detached calm that follows is a blessing, and I embrace it fully. If I don't have to feel, then I don't have to hurt.

  I drive onward, ignoring the feverish shivers that still wrack my body. When I reach my destination, I pass it by and turn the car into the entrance of an office building next door. I pull around behind it and park in the darkened lot. I shut off the car and pull the hood of my sweatshirt up, then gather up the baby in my arms, who's thankfully still asleep. I stare at her perfect little face for a moment, and know I'm doing the only thing I'm capable of doing for her. I pull my eyes away when my emotions threaten the empty calm holding me together, and force myself to move.

  I quietly get out of the car and make my way along the back of the building through the darkness, then stop at the corner. I carefully peer around it and see a small lot filled with a few cars between me and the building next door, and no people in sight. I scurry forward between two vehicles and glance around one more time, still seeing no one, then hurry across the open space as fast as I'm able. When I reach the brick building, I hunch down between the bushes that run along the side and stop to catch my breath as my head spins nauseatingly. Thankfully, my sister still remains quiet in my arms.

  I glance around to make sure no one's in sight, then step out from the bushes and creep along until I reach a recessed door into the building with a small pool of light in front of it. I hazard a quick peek around the corner and see an empty hallway through the glass door, then lean back against the wall behind me. This is it. I'm really doing this. I look at the baby with burning eyes and a churning stomach, then lean down and kiss her tiny head.

  "Goodbye, baby," I murmur against her downy black hair. "Your big brother loves you." I stare at her intently as I try to commit her tiny face and her baby smell to memory. "I'm so sorry," I add, my voice raw and broken as a few tears manage to escape.

  Before I lose my resolve, I hurriedly move into the light and gently place her, and the blanket wrapped snuggly around her little body, on the concrete in front of the door of the firehouse I passed earlier tonight. Then I whirl and run across the parking lot as fast as my weakened body can carry me, ducking between the parked cars and back to the office building to hide in the shadows around the corner where I can watch. I won't leave her here for good until I know she's safe.

  It doesn't take long before I see a pair of headlights pull into the lot, and a vehicle turns into a parking spot mere yards from my sister. It's a police cruiser. I pray the shadows are enough to hide me as I watch a police officer step out of the car. He's about my height and maybe in his early to mid twenties, lean yet muscular with dark hair and a few tattoos on his upper arms peeking out from beneath his short sleeves. His shrewd eyes take in his surroundings as he walks toward the building with a calm and confident demeanor. However, his steps falter when he sees the little bundle by the door, and one of his hands eases down to grip the butt of his pistol as he moves cautiously closer. But when he gets within feet of the baby, his cautious expression turns to concern. He bends down and scoops her up in his arms, then turns to scan the area.

  I instinctively still as his eyes slide over my hiding spot, then relax as his attention returns to my sister. He gently uncovers her, and a warm smile spreads wide across his face. His lips move as he starts talking to her, and though I can't hear his words, there's no mistaking the tender and protective way he's holding her. He swaddles her back up again before reaching for the radio strapped to his shoulder and speaking briefly into it in a gruff voice I can't understand from this distance. Then the officer opens the door and carries her into the building and out of my life forever.

  I have to believe she'll be safe now. I have to believe that sacrificing the last piece of my family that I have left is what's best for her, regardless of the cost to myself. I have to believe she'll find her way to a good family, one that can give her a name, a home, a life, all the things that I can't because I have nothing to offer her.

  I let out a long shuddering breath as my heart breaks into a thousand pieces, the shards cutting into the knot still wrapped around it as I stagger back to the car and climb into the driver's seat. A sob threatens to escape as I drive away, but I stifle it and harden the knot inside of me with stony cold detachment before I shatter apart completely.

  My dream ends as my eyes abruptly snap open to find a pair of worried baby blue eyes looking down at me from only a few inches away. I struggle to focus on them, my head feeling hazy and muddled for some reason.

  "Thank God, you're awake," Lyric exclaims.

  I catch a glimpse of tears in her eyes before she buries her face against my neck. Her soft warm body is pressed against the right side of my mine as she lies half on top of me. I revel in her closeness, her weight on me comforting, reassuring. I look around to see that we're on the sofa in Rowdy's tiny cabin with faint early-morning light just starting to brighten the darkness of night. I close my eyes again and nuzzle my nose in her hair and breathe in sunshine and honeysuckle and wolf...all the scents of my Lyric. I feel her relief, underscored with lingering worry and fear, and wonder why she's so upset. My recent memories feel foggy and just out of reach.

  "I was so scared," she says against my skin and snuggles even closer. "You slept for so long, and then you were dreaming and crying."

  Crying? I reach up to touch my face and confirm that there are indeed cooling tear tracks on my temples that disappear into my hairline. It's no wonder, considering the subject matter of the dream still vivid in my mind. It was the second horrid nightmare I'd had in as many nights about the day that I lost my family.

  "I...I couldn't wake you up," she says, then begins crying in earnest, her fear and concern pouring out of her in a cathartic rush. "I thought...I thought the wolfsbane was killing you," she adds with a gut wrenching sob.

  Wolfsbane?

  And then everything comes back to me in an instant. The wolfsbane gas. The poisoned bolts. The old and powerful vampire that tried to enthrall Lyric's mind. The fight I nearly lost and would have left her easy prey to that fucking
undead bloodsucker, and how she risked herself to save me. She could have died, or worse at Khaalida's hands, and it all would have been my fault for dragging her into this situation. And along with the heavy and oppressive guilt that follows that realization, I know what I have to do. I won't let anything happen to her because of her association with me, and just like my sister so long ago, I have to make this sacrifice too. I have to let Lyric go.

  20

  LYRIC

  Ronan's body goes abruptly stiff in my arms, and I feel horrified alarm rise up inside him. It's immediately followed by a wave of guilt that quickly leads down into a deep sinking well of sorrow. Concerned, I lift my head to meet his eyes, and I don't like what I find there at all. He's staring up at the ceiling looking lost, devastated, and I don't like it.

  "Ronan?" I whisper as I reach out to touch his face, needing to comfort him.

  His eyes snap to mine. "You could have died, been enthralled by that...that thing."

  "I'm okay," I say as I caress his scruffy jaw line, sending just a trickle of comfort through our bond, not wanting to overwhelm him like I have before. "Is that what those red eyes were about?"

  He nods. "The older vamps gain those powers with age. It doesn't usually work on our kind, but your wolf was weakened by the wolfsbane gas."

  "But she didn't enthrall you, and you had more wolfsbane in your system than I did."

  "I know not to meet their eyes." His expression turns pained as guilt flares inside him again. "I should have warned you."

  "It all worked out," I say. "I'm fine. Are you?"

  I was so terrified when he passed out last night. Luckily, the gas in the cabin dissipated quickly, and thanks to my trueborn strength I was able to carry him awkwardly inside and lay him on the sofa. I found tweezers and pulled all the slivers of wolfsbane soaked wood out of his body, then cleaned his wounds from the crossbow bolt and the cuts from that undead bitch's sword. They were finally healing now, but at first they weren't disappearing like they should, and it only added to my fear that he was dying. I'd stayed right next to him all night until he finally woke moments ago, but I'm still worried.

  Instead of answering me, Ronan stares through me with that far away expression again, but this time instead of sorrow, I feel a sense of hard resolve eclipse it. I feel him retracting his emotions, pulling them in so deep that they're dampened and muted.

  "You need to leave," he says in an unexpectedly harsh and detached voice.

  "What?" I ask as I sit up, making him flinch a little as a flash of guilt briefly escapes his tightly reined emotions.

  "You're a distraction I can't afford," he continues, his expression cold and dispassionate. "Whatever this is between us, it's over."

  "A distraction?!" I leap to my feet to glare down at him. "Over?!"

  "I'm here to do a job, and then I'm leaving," he replies as he sits up, then stands to walk past me toward his clothes, that are still scattered on the floor from yesterday. "There's no point in continuing to hook up if it's not going anywhere."

  "Hooking up?!" I shout as I march after him, then grab his arm and shove my fury into him like a barb. He flinches again with more guilt as it hits home. I shake my head in disbelief. "Are you fucking delusional? We're already bonded."

  He whirls to face me, the instant puzzlement on his face echoing what I feel through our bond. "What?" he asks, and it just makes me angrier.

  "I'm your mate, you dumbass," I say with a scowl.

  He just continues looking at me in complete bewilderment. Is he really this dense? I stare at him in gape-jawed incredulity for a second before a sudden realization smacks me in the face.

  Oh my God, he doesn't know.

  He said he has no pack, no friends, and his parents are dead. Now I wonder how long ago that was, how long he's been alone, and what it would be like not to have anyone to explain what he is or how things work for our kind. My poor Ronan. My anger is instantly replaced by a wave of sympathy and sadness.

  "Oh, Ronan," I say as I gentle my grip on his arm.

  His eyes instantly harden. "I don't want your goddamn pity," he growls out as he yanks out of my grasp. "Just tell me what the fuck you're talking about."

  I move forward to touch him again, but he backs away with a wary and suspicious expression. I stop, clenching my fists and staring daggers at him as my anger surges back to life again, but now it's edged with hurt at his rejection. What does he think I'm going to do to him?

  "We were drawn to each other because we're meant to be together, to be mates," I explain with a slight waver dampening my fury. "The mating bond was permanently cemented when we had sex that first time. We're connected."

  His pissed and wary expression turns to shocked realization, and then a horrified dismay that makes my heart ache to see.

  "That's how it works with our kind." Bitterness sours my stomach. "I thought you knew."

  He shakes his head in reply, his mouth hanging mutely open as he backs farther away from me. His reaction only hurts me more, which in turn makes me even angrier at him, as well as myself for not realizing his ignorance before now. I step closer to him as venomous rage burns white hot inside me.

  "And it's not pity when you love someone!" I shout, and instead of coming to me, like I'd hoped in my heart that he would, he recoils at my declaration.

  I splinter apart inside.

  And I'm fucking done. I can't do this anymore right now, and I whirl away from him to gather up my things, the she-wolf and the woman inside me both seething and hurting as tears sheet down my face. I yank my clothes on as he continues standing there immobile, the lead weight of his eyes on me as tension lies heavy in the room between us. When I grab my boots up off the floor, planning to put them on in the truck, I spot that fucking pendant of his lying on the worn rug nearby. I impulsively scoop it up.

  "Here!" I fling it at him from across the room. He snatches it out of the air before it hits his bare chest. His face is still wearing an expression of shock, his eyes wide with panic. "Why don't you put that fucking thing on and make sure you shut me out completely since being my mate is so horrifying to you!"

  I don't even wait for his reaction since I know I don't want to see it, and turn to hurry to the front door. I yank it open and rush outside into the brightening morning sunshine, I nearly run in my haste to get away from Ronan and the pain in my heart that I know I won't be able to leave behind so easily. He doesn't come after me, and right now I can't decide if that's a good or a bad thing.

  I hurry past the stinking corpse of the vampire, still lying in the grass where it fell, and notice smoke and tiny licks of flame erupting across the remains as the sun begins to burn it away. Well, at least that problem is taken care of now, since I didn't know what to do with the disgusting thing last night.

  I climb into my truck and toss my boots on the passenger-side floorboard, deciding that driving barefoot will get me out of here quicker since I'm barely holding myself together. I start the engine and throw it into drive before hitting the gas pedal hard, sending a spray of gravel flying up behind me as I peel away. I glance one more time at the cabin in the rear-view mirror to see that Ronan still hasn't come after me. At this moment, I finally decide that it's definitely a bad thing because if feels like a piece of myself was violently ripped out and left behind in that cabin. Then I pull my eyes back to the windshield and start sobbing uncontrollably.

  Most of the drive home is a blur of tears, but when I'm a few miles away I realize that I need to get my shit together in case Wyatt and Harmony are still home. After getting an unconscious Ronan back into the cabin last night, I texted my sister to tell her I had a date and didn't know when or if I would be home anytime soon. I figured she could make whatever she wanted of that vague text since I didn't really care. I refused to leave Ronan until he woke from the almost coma-like state the wolfsbane put him in. Now my loyalty seems misplaced since it seems I'm mated to a man who obviously doesn't want me or love me. How is that even possible from what
I thought I knew about mating bonds?

  Damn it, there go the tears again, and I'm still sniffling and wiping them away when I pull into the empty gravel driveway. I'm relieved that my brother and sister's vehicles are gone. They must have left for the orchard already. Now I can take a shower and wash my clothes so no one ever needs to know how stupid and naive I've been, then go cry in my bed for the foreseeable future.

  I park and shut off the engine, then lean over to gather my boots up off the passenger floorboard. I hear the rumble of a familiar vehicle as I straighten, then glance into my rear-view mirror to see the last person I want to see right now pulling in behind me in his old Ford Explorer. Son of a bitch. It's Cooper Rollins, Emmett's best friend and my would-be suitor, who I've yet to let down easy after he cornered me in my parent's kitchen on Saturday to ask me out and declare his feelings for me. The feelings I don't share. The feelings I still have for Ronan, even after he rejected me. My eyes burn and my chest aches with more sobs, but I lock it down and climb out of my truck. The sooner I get Coop out of here, the sooner I can fall apart in private.

  When I turn to face him, he's already out of his truck and approaching me with a big smile. "Good morning, gorgeous," he says with warm affection as he walks closer to me with his arms out like he's going to hug me. "What has you up this early?" he asks as the wind shifts, sending my scent his way.

  He breathes in and his smile instantly evaporates, his lips flattening into a hard line as pain steals the warmth from his brown eyes. He knows. He can smell the lingering scent of Ronan and sex on me. I know I should feel bad that he's finding out this way, but after what's happened this morning, I don't have it in me to care. I just want him to go away.