by Ava Mason
“No!” I jumped forward, pulling myself out of Hunter’s arms, just as Avery crashed into Easton. They both tumbled to the floor. Avery landed on top and punched Easton in the chest. Blood was dripping from Avery’s nose all over Easton. Easton smacked Avery’s nose with the heel of his hand.
Avery howled, holding his nose. He fell, landing on his side and crumpling his wings. All the fight drained out of him in exchange for the pain in his nose. Easton didn’t move, just laid on his back, breathing heavily.
I stood over them, filled with such agony. What Avery said was right. I was breaking up the team. I couldn’t do this anymore. I had to do something, anything.
But I needed to know something first.
I held out both my hands, an offering. Easton used it to pull himself up but Avery ignored my offer. He stood up, staring at me, clutching at his broken nose. The look of rage he was giving me was so hateful, so spiteful. It was like he really did hate me.
I folded my arms. “Tell me the truth, Avery. Look into my eyes and tell me you don’t love me. Tell me you want to break the bond with me and I’ll let you go. I’ll sign the paperwork. If,” my voice caught, “If this is what you really want, I’ll let you go.”
He looked into my eyes and opened his mouth to answer. Every part of my body was taut, filled with tension. Afraid of what he was going to say. “I don’t hate you Lizzy but…” His face hardened, his burnt-sienna eyes turned to cold steel. “But I don’t love you.”
His words slammed into me and I felt a crushing weight, but I held his gaze. “Fine. I’ll sign the paperwork as soon as we get back.”
“Avery.” Christian’s voice cut through us. He wasn’t angry, his voice was soft even.
“What?” Avery’s voice was vicious, a stark contrast to Christian’s.
Christian folded his arms across his broad chest. “You have to tell her the truth.”
“She thinks she wants to know, but she doesn’t. Not really.” Avery’s nose was crooked and it was beginning to mend.
“I want to know.” Easton pressed into my side, giving Avery the evil eye.
Faster than I believed was possible, Christian reached out and grabbed Avery’s nose, straightening it. It made a loud crunching noise and I winced. Avery sucked in a breath but now it would heal back straight.
“It doesn’t matter.” Christian continued as if nothing had happened. “She deserves to know the truth.”
Avery exploded. “Why? Why does she have to know? I need to fix this first, before I tell her.”
Christian frowned. “You can’t fix this by yourself Avery. It’s bigger than just one of us.”
Avery took in a breath to argue but Christian shook his head, interrupting him. “You need to face the truth, Avery. It’s not about her at all, is it?”
Avery didn’t speak, he just stared at Christian, his mouth open. Hunter and Easton were growing restless but my heart was hammering in my chest. What was it? I wanted to run to him, to shake him, to make him just spit it out.
Christian touched Avery’s arm. “Tell her. We’ll make her understand.”
Avery clenched his hands into fists, breathing in and out as he stared at Christian. Christian’s hand was still on Avery’s arm and I saw Avery soften. Christian was helping him with his powers.
After a moment, Avery turned to me, and absolute fear and guilt slammed into me. His feelings.
I faced him, forcing a mask over my face, bracing for his words. He held his hands across his stomach and he glanced away, his mouth open but no words came out.
“Avery.” My words were a whisper but the room was so quiet, he could hear them. “Tell me.”
He looked into my eyes, giving me a pleading look. I bit my lip, forcing myself not to react.
“Lizzy, I…” He paused and his eyes were so penetrating, so guilty, so desperate. “I’m the one who shot you in the woods.”
“What!?” I froze. Tears sprung to my eyes.
“You bastard!” Easton smashed his fist against Avery’s face again. Hunter moved toward me, trying to pull me in his arms but I slipped away from him just as his arms wrapped around me.
I’d shifted so quickly, so seamlessly, that it took a moment for everyone to realize that I’d done it. And that moment was all it took for me to leap out the door and run off into the woods.
8
My lungs burned. My legs pounded. My heart ached.
A deer sprinted away, it’s white tail showing, and other small animals rushed towards their homes. Fearing the new white wolf in the woods.
I pushed myself, hard, harder, as far as my long legs would launch through the air. Barely clinging to the mud in between steps. I almost slammed into trees, sprinting so fast that trunks enlarged in my vision the second before I veered around it. The wind whipped my hair. Smells assaulted my senses and then passed a moment later.
Voices filled my head, yet only one mattered.
I shut them all off, flinging myself into the darkness of the forest. The darkness his betrayal threw me into.
A loud crashing sound brought me to my senses and I glanced backwards.
Dragon wings veered and stumbled through the woods, breaking small trees and shredding skin.
Avery was chasing me.
No! No. I lowered my body to decrease the friction of my body, and my steps grew more agile. I pushed myself even faster. Away from him. Away from the truth.
He’d been right all along.
I didn’t want to know the truth. I couldn’t handle it.
I jumped over logs and boulders. I smelled a body of water and headed away from it. The open space would only give Avery the advantage he needed to catch me.
The ground was slippery, wet from the melting snow and water sprayed over my fur as I rushed through it. My feet were wet, my fur was getting muddy and cold was seeping through my bones. I stumbled, tripping over a log. I grunted as I slid across the muddy terrain and then Avery’s arms wrapped around me.
Panicking, I squealed out. Wiggling my hips, I tried to slide out from his hold. Tightening his grip, he lifted me up in the air. I strained against him, pushing at his arms with my paws but his hold was too tight. I growled, angry now, showing my teeth.
“Stop it, Lizzy, just let me explain.”
I shifted into my human form and he had to grapple with me to keep his hold on me.
“You tried to kill me. There’s nothing to talk about.” His arms were around my waist and I pushed against him. “Let me go!”
He crushed me to him, growling. “Just let me land. We’re too high up.” I looked down, just now noticing that we were high over the tree line. I clasped my arms around him, afraid he would drop me. He flew lower, heading for the river.
As soon as he landed, I jumped out of his arms, forcing space between us.
“Please, Lizzy, just let me explain.”
“There’s nothing you can say, Avery.” I couldn’t stop the rage in my voice, the anger that churned my stomach at the violence of his betrayal. “You shot me. That pretty much says it all.” It was so cold and wet, and the wind blew through my hair, biting my exposed skin. I clasped my arms around myself, shivering. I couldn’t stop shaking. He stepped closer but I backed away.
“No. Don’t touch me. You don’t have a right to touch me.”
“I just want to warm you.”
I shook my head. “I’m not cold, Avery.”
“Then why—”
“I’m angry. I’m so angry, I can’t stop shaking.” I stared at him, trying not to cry, not to scream. I considered shifting, running away again. But I knew it wouldn’t do any good. He would just chase me again. “What? Tell me whatever it is that you want to tell me. Then get the fuck out of my life.”
Now my voice was the angry one, the one aimed to hurt.
He began to pace and I grew angrier by the second because he wasn’t talking. He stopped and yanked off his jeans, holding them out to me. I grabbed them and jerked them on, stepping away from hi
m.
“How could you? I trusted you! And how the fuck are you the angry one? How could you be so angry at me? What did I do to deserve that kind of treatment? These past few days, you acted like I was the one who shot you!”
“I know, okay! I know.”
“Then why? How could you?” My voice was on the verge of breaking and that just made me more angry. I wasn’t sad; I was furious.
“I was trying to push you away, okay? I didn’t want you to touch me, to hold me.” He looked up at me. “To look at me like I deserved any kind of love from you.”
“You!” I pointed at him. “It was you. It wasn’t Easton.” I remembered that feeling before I had sex with Easton, right inside the house, when I’d felt despair. Such darkness. I thought it was coming from Easton, but that part. That was Avery, not Easton. “Why’d you do it?” Now my heart was breaking, now I was upset.
“I don’t know how to explain.”
“Well you’d better come up with something! Or I’m going back to the cabin.”
He stepped forward but halted at my hard look.
“Okay, fine.” He started pacing again. “Have the guys told you what I do? What my job is?”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you kidding me? And break the bro code?” I changed my voice to imitate Hunter’s voice, “Avery has to tell you himself.” Then I deepened it, like Easton’s. “That’s not for me to say.”
He took in a deep breath and stopped and I suddenly realized that he hated his job. That it ate away at him. It made him hate himself. Looking me in the eyes, he took a step forward. It was tentative, asking me for permission. When I didn’t stop him, he moved even closer.
“Elizabeth, I’m a sharpshooter. That’s my job.”
My mind whirled. “Like a sniper?”
He nodded. “Yes, but more specialized. I don’t go out in the war zones anymore. They only use me for high-level operations.” His eyes darkened. “And I never miss a target. Not ever.”
I tried to grasp onto what he was trying to tell me. “So?”
“So? So?” His voice was incredulous, his hands fisted at his side. “You have no idea what it’s like. Stalking a person that you know will be dead by the time your mission is over. I’m the angel of death, Elizabeth.” He swallowed hard. “It’s a hard pill to swallow. I have no idea who these people are or what they’ve done. I have to follow orders blindly, and it haunts me. I snuff their lives out. They will never see the people they love again.”
He looked so pitiful, and yet, it wasn’t enough to even let a strand of anger go.
He took another step closer. “I met Sophia that morning, do you remember? You were at Hunter’s apartment and we weren’t supposed to be with you?”
I nodded, remembering everything. The look on his face when he knew he would be working in the morning.
“Sophia met me the next morning, handed me a sealed file. Said I was to open it when I was alone.” His hand reached for me, but I didn’t move and it fell to his side. “You have no idea what it was like when I opened that file and saw your name. I was in shock. I couldn’t even believe it. For a second, I thought there was a mistake, which is crazy. You don’t order a hit on somebody as a mistake. So I knew that this was real. Someone, high up in the Authority, with access to the highest levels of the military, wanted you dead.”
My heart was pounding so hard in my chest, it was making me ache. His face was a mixture of horror and shame.
“What did you do?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. I held no doubt that he could’ve shot me at any time. He had plenty of chances. And yet, he was gone for days. What was he doing the whole time?
He stared at the river behind me. “I tried to find out who ordered the hit. I spent days watching Sophia and Andre. Who went in and out of Andre’s office. I broke into his office, went through his files, his assistant’s files, Sophia’s files. I followed people whom I thought could be the key to finding out. I went to their homes, and when they left, I broke inside. Went through their houses, looking for something, anything, to find the truth.” He shrugged, his dark look mirroring his frustration. “But I couldn’t find anything. No secret files, no plot to kill you or the Queen.” My mind tumbled, assessing this new information. “Maybe there’s no secret files. Just a hit. Maybe it was just Andre and he wanted you dead.” He paused, thinking. “Except, that doesn’t feel right. He’s too smart for that; he wouldn’t have assigned me to it. He’d have assigned someone else.”
He began pacing again and I pressed my arms against my chest, now shivering with the knowledge of how easy it would’ve been to kill me. How lucky I was that Avery was the one assigned to do it. Was it mere luck that had kept me alive?
He continued. “I decided the only thing I could do was pretend to go through with my mission, to see if I could root out the person who betrayed us. So I followed you and Christian to the woods. And then I searched every inch of the area, checked every cabin and hotel and house in the vicinity. But there was no one!” His face was a twisted mask of anger and hate and it caught at me as he looked up, cutting off my thoughts and pulling my own anger out.
“So what, Avery?” I threw my hands in the air. “You decided that shooting me would root out the killer? And what happened when you did it? Did this mysterious person come out of hiding? Were they up in the trees, waiting? Did they jump out and reveal themselves, as soon as I was down?”
He frowned, his eyes throwing daggers at me. “It’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing!”
“Usually someone meets you at the end of the mission. I don’t usually write up reports but I give an unofficial account to someone. They’re supposed to meet with you, even if the mission goes south. But this time, there was no one. Just a dead fucking phone number.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I thought about watching Andre again but I was worried that someone else would be assigned to finish what I didn’t do, so I watched you instead. Day and night, I didn’t sleep. I was so worried.” He rubbed his hand over his face and I noticed the dark lines under his eyes had grown even darker. “But no one else came. And I knew that I’d failed.” He looked up at me now, a beseeching look, now that his story was over. He stepped forward one more time and we were only one step away from each other now.
I took in a deep breath, trying to focus on everything he’d said. Trying to rationalize in my mind why he thought it would’ve made a difference. How shooting me would root out my killer. He was so confident that he wouldn’t miss, or hit the wrong vein. I remembered Christian’s words, he said that Avery was good at his job. And that meant, that he thought he could play with my life, just because he thought he was good enough.
Nostrils flaring, I grit my teeth. I took that last step forward, closing the gap between us to jab in his chest. “So this whole time, you’ve been trying to tell me that just because you’re good at your job, that because you were confident you wouldn’t kill me, that that gave you permission to, what? You think that because your bullet missed my heart, that makes it okay to shoot me?” I shoved him and he stumbled back.
“No!”
“You think you can take on the world, figure everything out on your own. That because you’re good at your job, it’s okay to shoot me without talking to me first?” I picked up a rock and threw it at him. It hit him in the chest, harmlessly. “Because if you’d have taken a second to even think about it, you’d have known what an idiotic plan that was.” I threw another one, and then another, just leaning over and throwing rocks and sticks and clumps of dirt and anything I could get my hands on. “If you’d even just trusted me enough to talk to me about it, I’d have told you how stupid it was!”
His lack of response to defend himself, just like with Sophia, is what broke me out of my anger filled trance to fall to the ground. There was nothing left to say, nothing left to throw. My hands were filled with dirt and sandy mud but I grasped at it, trying to cling to something, anything.
“Lizzy, please.” He came towar
ds me again, his chest marked red where my stones hit him. His voice was desperate, needy, and filled with so much fucking self-loathing. There was nothing I could say that he hadn’t already said to himself. He hated himself, and that’s why he’d lashed out at me. He honestly didn’t believe that he deserved any sort of love or forgiveness.
But the truth was, that even if what he had done was wrong; that I should hate him forever for even taking the chance; he could have redeemed himself if he’d only talked to me. Trusted me. We could’ve worked through it, together.
“Please, Lizzy, you have to forgive me.” He knelt next to me. “I know I fucked up. And I don’t deserve your forgiveness. And I failed at everything. I couldn’t find the person who wants you dead. There was no trace. I couldn’t stop myself from taking it out on you. I know I deserve your anger. But please don’t hate me forever.” He leaned forward, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me to him.
I was still angry. So mad at his lack of trust and furious at how he’d treated me since he got home, yet I couldn’t deny that I still loved him. That even after everything he’d done, I still wanted him. That he was deserving of my love. That he deserved to be happy.
His eyes were staring intently at me, but now they weren’t begging me for forgiveness. They were smoldering and needy. “I saw him, Lizzy. Christian. In the jacuzzi when he pushed you away. You were trying to talk to him, to show him how much you cared for him. And he stopped you. I wanted to wring his neck.” His chest pressed against me and his hand skirted up my side. “I wanted that to be me with you. I wouldn’t have pushed you away, Lizzy. I would’ve taken every single bit of love and attention that you would’ve given me.” His eyes were on my lips and his hand was moving over my shoulder.
My body was responding to him, I was pressing my chest into his and my insides were on fire. But I was still angry, so angry. Not only for what he’d done, but for how he’d responded to me since he’d gotten home. He’d pushed me away and said such horrible things.
“Please, Lizzy. I can’t live with myself if I don’t earn your forgiveness.” He gripped the back of my neck and smothered me with his mouth. I opened my mouth in shock and his tongue snaked forward, tracing the tip of mine. He pulled me down, flipping me over so that I was lying on the sandy ground.