her chest rising and falling with each breath she takes. A sound rumbles within me as I look at her. She looks so small, so fragile. My chest tightens at the sight.
All that she told us, all that she said… My back teeth grind together. She wasn’t lying, she was telling the truth. All this time she was telling the truth.
We have been blind to a lot of things over the years, doing the Highers bidding, going where they commanded when their witches pointed us in a direction. We followed, no questions asked. Not anymore.
I didn’t enjoy being the Highers weapon, I just wanted to do what has been instilled in me since I was a young boy. To protect Vrohkaria, the people. When did we lose sight of that along the way? That’s what I had made my Elites out to be, protectors, and we have failed by following blindly and not asking questions.
The Highers are not fit to rule if this is what they have been doing, and are still doing with what Rhea has told us. How can this carry on? How have I been so fucking oblivious?
Anger swells inside of me and my power comes out of my hands. I look down at it, watch as it flows over my knuckles and between my fingers. What good is it being an Heir after what I have done, or didn’t do?
I have learned about the wolf Gods all my life, reading texts and old scrolls, always curious about them, though Cazier was said to have gone mad. But since Wolvorn Castle, I dove deeper, learning everything I could. I know now that I can’t trust everything I have read. History is always written by the victor, after all.
I glance at Rhea again, another sound leaving me. It’s concern and rightness. Seeing her in my bed, in my room, in my home, even under these circumstances, it feels like it’s meant to be. Having her close and in my space does something to me I have never felt before. Or ever wanted to feel.
Why does this need to keep her here fill me with this possessiveness? I want her scent to mingle with mine, to intertwine so we can’t tell the difference and our scent becomes ours. Something more, something heady, sweet and heavy.
Just one smell of either of us, and others would know who we belong to. Whether I like it or not, whether she likes it or not, I belong to her now. I have since The Deadlands, maybe even before then with what she told us earlier.
I sigh and run my hands down my face, unable to sleep but wanting to stay awake anyway to watch her, to make sure she’s okay. To have her in my sight after going so long without seeing her. I was shocked when we came across her near the Aragnis pack, but what shocked me more were her words ever since then in the dining room. I never expected her truth to be what she told us. Never thought, never imagined.
I’ve been seething in anger since she collapsed and I caught her, wrapped her in my power and brought her to my room. All that she had endured as a child, all that she has lost… It’s safe to say we all fucked up.
I fucked up.
Just thinking about the whip in my hand, the way her body tensed, preparing for another hit, the way her back bowed, and flinched, and shook after each strike makes me want to tear a hole in the wall and rage across the lands.
And then rage upon myself.
It’s no one’s fault but my own. As the Alpha of the Elites, I didn’t believe her, I didn’t want to listen to her, not after that fucking memory crystal. My grief over my mother and baby sister being murdered by rogures clouded my judgment, and with that, I couldn’t see the truth. Her truth.
I now believe her. Her words, what she did to survive, how she fucking survived. No one can fake the emotions pouring off of her, no matter how skilled in manipulating they are. I felt every single fucking one of them in my bones.
The anger doesn’t settle knowing I’ve been some sort of fucking puppet to the Highers’s whims, and have been lied to for years. I knew they weren’t the best for Vrohkaria, with the taxes they declare and the way they haven’t let anyone into the castle for sanctuary since the rogures. I just didn’t imagine how deep their atrocities ran.
Rhea whimpers in her sleep, and my head snaps up to her face. Her pretty features are twisted in something like pain. I rise from my spot in the chair, silently rounding the bed and sitting beside her, careful not to disturb her. The dark circles beneath her eyes tell me all I need to know about her sleepless nights. Hardly any according to Anna when I asked how she had been. She eventually told me, begrudgingly, how things are. I know she’s not eating either, not taking care of herself, and can I blame her? But I’ll make sure she eats, make sure she sleeps and make sure that I will help her. Whether she likes it or not. She may hate me, and I’m angry at her for so many things that seem pointless, but you cannot be released from what we are, and that will be to my advantage.
She may think of me as her enemy, and in some ways, we still are, and I know I have no right to be anything to her, but she is stuck with me until it is impossible.
I’m selfish, undeserving in this, but there is no other option, I won’t allow it.
My brows draw together at the thought, but instead of shoving it away, I accept it a little this time.
A whine leaves her, moving something painful within me. She mumbles words I can’t quite hear, so I move a little closer. “Lesia flowers.” I reach forward, touching a gentle finger to her cheek and soothe her with my touch. Drax comes to the surface, and I can feel her wolf underneath, greeting each other, comforting. She relaxes instantly, sighing into the pillow and burrowing deeper into it. Into my scent. I can’t help but feel a sense of pride at that. I run my fingers over her loose hair, drawing it back from her face and feeling the silky strands run through my fingers, before I do it all over again.
A moan, so soft I barely hear it coming from her, and my hand stills, my gaze on her face to see if I woke her, but her pretty, ice-blue eyes stay hidden. So I continue, moving my hand from her hair and down to her neck, feeling her pulse, steady and relaxed under my fingers. I wonder if she realizes that I have done this many times before in Eridian. I would wait until she was asleep in her room and sneak in, unable to stay away, and I would sit on the bed like I am now, and just touch her. The need to do so was undeniable, just like it is now. She was none the wiser of my obsession with her. Maybe now it’s time to change that.
Rhea didn’t know that I would leave a few hours before sunrise to make sure my scent didn’t linger, making my way to my own room and hearing her wake before I would go downstairs. I was furious at first that I could just walk in and she wouldn’t wake up, what if someone tried to attack her? But now I know it’s because deep down, I wasn’t a threat to her, or at least, I shouldn’t have been.
We were both wrong in that assumption after what I did.
A quiet knock sounds at the door, and I scowl at it, daring anyone to disturb her from her much-needed rest. With one last look at Rhea, I stand and storm silently toward it. Opening it up, Josh stands on the other side, hand raised like he’s going to knock again, but I slap it aside and growl quietly. When he begins to open his mouth to speak, I shove him back with a hand on his chest, none too gently, and he hits the opposite wall. The little shit should be grateful his head is still on his shoulders.
I close the door quietly behind me and walk further down the hall, entering a sitting room, knowing he’s following like a kicked puppy. I grab a wooden cup from the table at the back of the room and fill it to the brim with mead, not offering one to him.
He can get fucked.
I move toward the fire and sit down in one of the chairs there, my legs spread out in front of me as I take a drink, tasting its sweetness sliding down my throat as I relax back into the cushion and close my eyes.
I hear Josh take a seat across from me, feel his nervousness, and it pisses me off more.
“What the fuck do you want?” He’s either stupid or brave coming to me, alone like this. Especially when I want his head hung from my Keep walls. Rhea is the only thing keeping him breathing.
My little wolf has a hold on me whether I like it or not.
“Is she okay?” he asks.
“She will be.”
“I don’t blame you for hitting me, shit, for choking the life out of me,” he eventually says after a long pause.
“I don’t really care what you think,” I grunt, but satisfaction swirls inside of me at seeing his bruised face.
“I don’t doubt you do, just, what is she to you?” I peel my eyes open at his question, arching a brow.
She hasn’t told him.
“That’s none of your concern.” He has no right to ask me this, and I have no intention of telling him. Not even my own brothers know, though they suspect.
He releases his own sigh and I narrow my eyes on him, watching him look into the fire with a frown on his face. “Do you believe her?” he asks, his gaze still on the flames.
“I do,” I tell him, my own eyes going to the fireplace as I take another drink, listening to the crackle of the wood.
His breath whooshes out of him in a rush, and he runs his hands down his thighs. “She’s a good woman,” he murmurs, and I tense, my eyes swinging to him in warning.
“You want her?” I practically growl the question, my body locking up to prepare to slit his throat there and then, uncaring what he means to Rhea. Even if she’s pissed at him right now.
His wide, gray eyes come to me, sputtering until he finally gets the words out. “Fuck no. No, no, no.” I arch a brow at him. “Not that anyone wouldn’t be lucky to have her, she’s great.” I frown, possessiveness rising within me. “Gods,” he sighs, “this isn’t going well.” He leans back in his seat, his brows drawn together. “She’s like my sister, we may not be blood related, but we treat each other as siblings. She’s important to me.”
My eyes narrow. “Yet you let her bare herself to us, guilted her into it. I heard what you said to her.” He hangs his head, shame spreading across his face. Good, the asshole deserves to feel like shit for what he did.
“I don’t know why I did that. I just needed you all to see we aren’t the bad guys here, and we needed something, anything to give us some kind of hope that you can help us. Even if we didn’t want it, even after what you have done.” His hands fist in his lap. “We are nothing compared to the Elites and the Highers, anything we would have attempted would have been suicide, I realized that too late after I directed my anger at Rhea. We needed help, she needed help, and in that moment, that was the only way I could think how to.”
“There could have been other ways” I snap, and it’s his turn to raise a brow.
“I don’t think there could have been anything else we could have done to convince you. You didn’t listen at Wolvorn Castle, you didn’t listen in Eridian. The price of you now hearing us is high, especially for Rhea,“ he mumbles and my shoulders lock. “I did that to her, and although you believe her now, believe us, I wonder if the cost was too much for her to bear, never mind myself. I wouldn’t be surprised if she never speaks to me again.” His words come out pained. Good.
“I rather she wouldn’t.” All the better if she hates him.
“There is nothing going on between us, you don’t have to get possessive over her, but we are close, or…we were.”
“You had your dick in her, what’s to say you don’t want her again.” My eyes flash black at the thought, Drax growling within me.
He scowls. “How the fuck do you know that?” I keep my stare blank, and he huffs. “It was a one-time thing, and I did that for her. Gods, it was barely anything. A quick in and out.”
Now I scowl. “Are you telling me you just shoved your cock in her and that was that.” If this bastard hurt her…
“You could put it like that, I guess.” He shuffles in his seat, uncomfortable. “I took care of her, I was gentle and that was it. She wanted it over with and trusted me to do that, and I did. I’m not sorry for it, not when her reason was that she wanted it to be her choice, well as much as she can. She was scared the Highers or her family would find her, and that choice would be taken away. How could I not help her?”
My hand clenches around the cup, hating that she thought she had to choose him to be her first, over being fucking raped. It should have been me, it should have been mine, and they took that choice away from both of us.
“I would do anything for her,” he whispers.
“Sounds like more than brotherly love to me.”
He shakes his head. “For fuck’s sake. It’s not, I don’t see her that way. She’s like my sister. No way would I do that again, even if she asks it of me. Especially not now.” His gaze goes back to the fire, and I read between the lines.
Not now since Sarah it seems. I saw the way he watched her at Wolvorn Castle, the desperation in his eyes as she stood in front of the Highers with her father. I thought she was scared to be around the pack that had taken her. Now, I see it differently.
I take another drink, my glare still on the side of his face, trying not to rip it off at the thought of his dick anywhere near her.
“Rhea is the strongest person I know, but right now, she needs more than just herself. When I first rescued her from our old pack, she was a mess. Bloodied, cut, burned, slashed, thin, weak.” He releases a shaky breath, his eyes turning cloudy. “I could go on and on about her injuries, tell you in detail of every single fucking mark they put on her body. You only saw the aftermath, I saw it first hand. Even so, she still stood tall, held Kade in her arms, and she still killed to help us survive as we escaped out of the Aragnis Pack.”
My body reacts uncontrollably to the thought of her like that, and a growl builds up in my chest, I’m barely able to swallow it back down. I hate what’s she’s doing to me, but I can’t fucking help myself.
“How did you find her in the basement?” I ask him, trying to calm my rage, my regret.
“It was by chance,” he sighs. “By fucking sheer luck. I’m an orphan, my parents were killed when I was young and I was always around Rhea’s parents’ house. They kind of took me in, but I didn’t stay at their house. I lived with some other orphans, but I knew that house like it was my own. After Paul told the Aragnis pack that Alpha Derrik and his mate had died with Rhea, I was distraught. They were my chosen family, and I like to think they chose me too for the time we had together. It was coming up to what would have been Rhea’s eighteenth birthday. I was still grieving their loss after so many years, so I went to their old home. I don’t know why I did, I just wanted to be close to them again. The basement had a small, long window that Rhea and I used to sneak out of to play, and I wondered if Alpha Paul had put their belongings down there as I never saw anything leave that house. I thought maybe I could find something of them, something small that I could keep.” His hands tremble as he shakes his head. “I found Rhea instead.”
I drain my cup in one go and listen to him, listen to him tell me all about what happened at her old pack, her home, and I feel the walls closing in. Feel the rage building once again as I stand quickly and go to grab another drink.
He continues. “She was in a cage, bloody from what I could tell as it was so dark, only a small lantern on a table. I didn’t know who it was at first, I was shocked, mortified that Alpha Paul had someone down there, I didn’t understand. Was it a prisoner? A pack member being punished? I didn’t know but I wanted to see who it was, so I managed to get the window open and get inside. It was quiet, the air suffocatingly still, like death lingered there. The person in the cage wasn’t moving, and didn’t react to my presence at all. Just laying still on the floor. I thought they were dead. It wasn’t until I eventually went up to the bars, crouched down that I saw someone who I thought had been dead for years.”
I pour another large drink, also knocking it back in one go before filling it up again and moving back to my seat. Josh’s eyes are on the wall, locked in his memories and I can only imagine what Rhea looked like at nearly eighteen, locked in a cage for years. His story matches what she told me about being in her basement.
“I managed to reach through the bars and gently shake her awake. It’s like she didn’t see me at first, her eyes were dead, cold, full of so much fucking pain. Then she whispered my name and tears fell from her eyes, and I vowed I would get her out of there. I didn’t understand how she was alive, why we were told she was dead, why the fuck she was in a cage?” he growls, his body tensing. “At that moment it didn’t matter, I just needed to get her out of there. Over the next two weeks, I visited her as much as I could, and that’s when she told me bits of what happened the night everything went to shit. It would be years though until I got the full story out of her, though I don’t know everything. What she told you all in the dining room, some of that was new to me too, about how they…” He trails off and my fingers tighten around my cup.
How they raped her. How they shoved their dicks in places it wasn’t wanted, how they touched her with hands that shouldn’t have.
Soon, I think to myself. I will have their dicks and fingers removed from their bodies.
“She wasn’t the Rhea I knew as a child,” he goes on. “Carefree, bright, so curious about the world that she would drag me off to explore and discover new things. They took her light from her and tainted it with darkness, with pain and suffering.”
Is that what Rhea used to be like? Full of light and laughter? My mother and Isabell flash through my mind. They were like that, even Isabell, as young as she was. Her innocence was pure and warm before the rogures killed her, and I didn’t have a little sister to crawl all over me anymore, or climb on my back, wanting me to play.
I would have given anything to have that back, would Rhea give anything to have herself back?
“How did you get out?” I ask him, forcing the memories of my family from my mind.
“I set fire in one of our crop fields, big enough to have most of the pack needed to put it out, and to get the attention of Alpha Paul and his family to leave the house, and they did. I rushed inside, straight to the basement, took the key off the table, and got her the fuck out. It wasn’t until we made it back up the steps and through the basement door that Rhea noticed Kade there. I didn’t even fucking see him. She refused to leave him, and neither would I. We got his chains off and snuck out the house and toward the boundary of Aragnis territory. That’s when we ran into two Aragnis guards. I fought them as best I could, but they were a lot stronger than me. Rhea snuck up behind one of them and shoved her knife in their throat, the other ran off. That was her first kill, the first of many to survive.”
“How many has she killed?”
He narrows his eyes on me. “Do not judge her, any life she has taken was to keep her alive, or for Kade, Cassie, and I to live. We both did what we had to do. Including when we sent the bora to you in The Deadlands.” I know that now.
I’m not judging her, not after what they have both told me and I’d seen for myself what she has been through. I can’t blame her for surviving, and can’t deny the sense of pride that goes through me over my fierce, little wolf doing what she needed to do. To stay alive long enough to reach me.
That’s what the Gods intended, for us to meet, at least according to Solvier when he spoke to me in Eridian. He told me that I would protect her at all costs and to prepare for what I needed to do. I didn’t understand at the time, didn’t think anything of it.
Now I understand everything.
“Who is Cassie?” I hadn’t heard that name in Eridian.
“She was Kade’s mate.” The pup’s? “She died. Rogures.” I look away from him.
“Just,” Josh trails off, elbows on his knees as he looks at me. “Don’t hurt her, not anymore.” I tense, my eyes narrowing into slits. “You fucking whipped her at Wolvorn Castle, I don’t understand how you could fucking do that after you helped her through her heat. I’m not sure you understand the importance of her letting you near her body, never mind in it, but I do. If you care for her—“
“I don’t.” She is my obsession sent from the Gods. My responsibility. Ignore the lie rolling off my tongue.
“Sure, we will go with that,” he scoffs, before sighing and leaning back in his chair. “I saw you after you whipped her unconscious. Your body remained calmed, but your eyes betrayed your thoughts before you could hide them. You made sure she was breathing, made sure she was still alive when you had finished. I wanted to kill you at that moment, I still do. How could you do that to her because of lies from poisoned tongues? She is the best person I know. My family, sister, best friend, and all she has ever done is help others and done nothing for herself. I need to know I can trust you with her.”
I take another drink and lean forward. “Trust me to do what exactly?”
His jaw ticks. “Not to hurt her again, to believe her words, always, and help her. You’re an Heir, you both are, and I suspect you know more about that than she does, at least where your power is concerned.”
I watch him watch me, seeing the determination in his eyes that if I say no, he will unsheathe the knife from his back pocket that I know he has there, and try to take me out, even though he would know he can’t win. This is what Rhea does to people, makes them lay down their life to protect her, like she does to protect them. I have to admire the balls of the fucker, but fortunately, I’m grateful she has people around her that would protect her.
“I won’t do anything to hurt her like that,” I begrudgingly admit to him. I would never whip her again, never mar her flesh, never cut, never slice, never cause her pain like that.
“But other ways of hurting her?” He tilts his head curiously.
“She likes it,” I smirk, taking another drink.
“Gross, I do not need to know that.” He shakes his head. “Though it will be fun to watch you try and get in her pants. She would cut off your balls.”
“I have my ways.” And I do. She’s a puddle when I get my hands on her, unable to deny what we have, whether we both wanted it or not. We are tethered, so we may as well enjoy some things that come with that.
“Be careful with her, Darius,” he warns, and my nostrils flare at his tone. Who does he think he’s talking to like that? “She would kill me for saying this, but at this point, you may be the only one that could help her. She may be tough on the outside, but when she lets you in, when her walls are down, you will see what kind of person she truly is. She’s hurting really bad, more than she will ever let anyone know. I know her enough to know she’s one nudge away from either doing something really stupid, or shutting down. If she shuts down Darius, we’ve all lost her. I don’t think you want that, do you?”
I say nothing, but the little shit can see clearly that I don’t want that. He’s more observant than he lets on, just like Zaide.
“I’ve told you all of this in the hope that we can all work together, and get not just Sarah back, but our pack too. I don’t know what you plan to do regarding the Highers now you know what you do, but know that she is out for blood, we all are. Rhea hates me right now, so why not have her hate me more if the price is what I deserve, but also, a chance to save her from the Highers. They cannot have her, Darius.”
“They won’t.” I vow to myself, and we stare at each other, letting him see the truth for himself.
He nods, satisfied and gets up. “I hope you keep this vow this time, Darius, because if they have her, all is lost.” He leaves without another word, and I’m left alone with my own thoughts.
Everything has changed in a few months. The Elites are apparently made to hunt Heirs, as Zaide confirmed, the Highers are now enemies like the rogures, and they lied about the memory crystal that I still need to show Rhea.
The biggest change of all is now I will accept my need to protect her at all costs. An instinct I can’t ignore anymore. I have to go against my father’s last wishes to do so, his wish to do what Lord Higher Charles asks of me, but I’ve had enough of being his lackey.
Many changes are coming, we just have to survive them.
But first, I have to make Rhea sheath her claws and accept her new life. One with me in it.
Permanently.
But first.
“Meet me in the basement,” I say down the link, moving out of the room and following the hallway.
A pause. “We went there just two nights ago,” Leo replies back.
“I’ll be there soon.”
“Brother—“
“Now, Leo.” He sighs down the link, but I know he will do what I asked.
“You don’t need to do this, Darius.”
Yes, I do. Now more than ever.
