Chapter Fifty-Eight
Cadence
As the bond settled over me, panic swirled in my gut.
What had I done?
In a moment of passionate rage, I claimed Ryker as my mate, embraced our bond, destroying the last vestige of hope I had for attaining my freedom.
And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it. It felt… right.
I stared down at him, my breath still coming in ragged bursts. He lay sprawled across the bed, his eyes heavy-lidded, his lips swollen from our kisses.
When he looked up at me, it wasn’t with gloating or triumph. He was just… content. Happy, even.
Fuck.
He wanted this — more than power or control — he wanted the connection. Me. Us.
I could feel it through the bond, the weight of his need tangled with fear, devotion, and something dangerously close to hope.
The realization stole the air from my lungs more effectively than his hands ever had.
My chest tightened as I studied his hand wrapped around my wrist, his thumb stroking absently over my pulse as if he couldn’t bring himself to let go.
The savage conqueror, so desperate for something real that he could barely keep his hands off me.
All this time, I thought he’d only wanted to own me.
But it was more than that. He wanted me to be his other half.
His mate.
And gods help me, I wanted that too.
He tilted my chin, forcing me to look at him. The bond throbbed in my chest, frantic and alive.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
My eyes darted between his, searching. “I want to know what happened. All of it.”
He didn’t have to ask what I meant. It was evident in the way he stiffened, how his throat bobbed as he struggled to swallow his unease.
When he spoke, his words were rough, as though they were difficult to say out loud.
“It was during the assault on the palace,” he began. His fingers traced the curves of my body, as if the feel of my skin anchored him to the present when the past threatened to pull him under.
“By the time we entered the fray, the place was almost overrun. Riordan, he —”
The words got caught in his throat at the mention of his brother, and I cupped his cheek, lending him the strength to continue.
“He was young and full of himself back then.”
“So not much has changed,” I said, trying to ease the tension.
Ryker chuckled, but the sound was tinged with sadness. “No, not really.”
Something dark lingered beneath the surface of his hard expression, and I had an uneasy feeling that I wouldn’t like what came next.
“He went in assuming he would win, and easily at that.”
The silence between us coiled tight with everything he didn’t say.
“He was captured.” Ryker’s gaze met mine, unflinching. “By your father.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. The mention of my father was an unwelcome reminder of all that I was still hiding from him.
“How do you know it was my father?”
“I didn’t. Not then, anyway.”
“What changed?”
“I only made the connection recently when I realized that the woman I’d killed was your mother.”
Pain lanced my chest as tears filled my eyes. I knew there was more to it, but my grief was no easier to swallow.
Ryker shifted beneath me, sitting upright so he could lean against the headboard. He raised his hand to my face, his thumb swiping at the tears I hadn’t meant to let fall.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I may not have known you then, but I still regret that what I did caused you so much pain.”
My eyes lifted to meet his, and I saw the truth of his words reflected there. Yet, behind his remorse, his resolve did not waver.
He hated that he’d hurt me, but he harbored no guilt for taking my mother’s life.
“Tell me how she died.”
Sorrow twisted his features as though the memory haunted him.
“My mother died when Riordan and I were young, and we lost our father soon after.”
I recalled Riordan’s somber admission: that the death of his mate had burned away whatever humanity the King once had.
“He was all I had left. I promised I’d do anything to protect him, keep him safe.”
Ryker’s gaze drifted, growing distant, caught in the shadows of his childhood. He drew in a ragged breath. “When your father’s hands closed around his throat, I knew all it would take was one burst of magic to tear my brother from this world. It was then that I realized I had failed him.”
Wraith Borne power was decisive. Had my father willed it, Riordan would have been dead before Ryker could raise a single finger in his defense.
“He played with him for what felt like hours. Though it could only have been minutes. He would pull on his life force, yanking his soul from his body inch by inch, then release it, only to begin the torment again. And all I could do was watch.”
A mixture of anger and pain laced his words as he relived the torture inflicted on his brother at the hands of the father I had once adored. The man who joined the rebellion to free his people from oppression. The one who wanted a safer realm for his daughter.
Or so he would have me believe.
The person Ryker described wasn’t the father I remembered, but he fit the man leading the Crimson Enclave.
“It’s excruciating, you know, wrenching a soul from its body. Riordan still has nightmares, though he would never confess it. But I hear them. The screams, the raw terror.”
He shook his head, as if the motion alone could keep his own terrors at bay.
“I can still recall their laughter, sharp and merciless, as I begged for my brother’s life. The Night Cursed Prince kneeled before them, and they took perverse pleasure in seeing me on my knees.”
A single tear slid down Ryker’s cheek, and he turned away from me.
My palms cupped his jaw, forcing him to look at me. “Don’t hide your pain from me, Ryker,” I said, pressing my lips to his. “If we are to be mates, then share your grief with me.”
His arms wrapped around me, pulling me flush against his chest as he buried his face in the curve of my neck. His shoulders shook, and I could feel him inhaling my scent as he fought to regain his composure.
“I thought I was going to lose him,” he said, his voice muffled by my hair. “I thought —”
Ryker trembled, and I rubbed my hands up and down his arms, offering what little comfort I could.
“I thought I was going to watch my baby brother die.”
The silence that followed wasn’t suffocating; it was contemplative. It hung between us like a fragile thread, weighed down with all the words we weren’t yet ready to say.
When Ryker lifted his head to meet my gaze, I knew this was it: the answer to the question that had haunted me for decades.
Why her? Why my mother?
“There was a single, fleeting second when your father removed his hands from my brother to clap at a joke one of his comrades had made at my expense.”
Ryker’s jaw clenched, and his eyes narrowed. “I didn’t hesitate. I sent my shadows racing, wiping out every Wraith Borne in my vicinity. That’s when I heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“The blood-curdling scream coming from the woman standing behind my brother. I hadn’t even seen her, too focused on taking down the men torturing Riordan.”
My eyes slid shut as fresh tears streamed down my cheeks.
Ryker’s voice turned hollow. “The knife in her hand caught the light as she angled it toward Riordan’s throat.”
He exhaled slowly, his shoulders sinking with the weight of remembrance.
“I didn’t falter as I drove my shadows forward, coiling around her skull like a vise. One twist. That’s all it took.”
I couldn’t help it, I flinched.
“She would have killed him, Temptress, and while I understand you may not forgive me, I will never regret choosing my brother.”
My thoughts turned to Callum. To that hollow, gut-wrenching moment when fear had clawed its way up my throat as I felt him slipping from my grasp.
I could still feel the slick warmth of his blood on my hands, the crushing doubt that had consumed me when I believed I wasn’t enough… that I couldn’t save him.
I knew what it was to stand helpless, forced to watch as the world tried to tear the one you loved the most away from you, and to feel utterly powerless to stop it.
In that instant, I finally understood Ryker. Given the same choice, my hands would be just as bloody.
I took a minute to collect myself, letting the ache in my chest settle before finding my voice.
Then my gaze returned to Ryker’s.
“I forgive you.”