Chapter 36 Rage
Rage
Iknow why they gave me my name.
Rage.
I’m starting to remember.
The world is two things: black and white or painted red.
And it feels like everything is dripping red.
The only thing that was the good kind of red was her.
Her hair was the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.
And they took her away from me.
I don’t understand where she’s been taken. All I know is that they’re hurting her.
Rowan is angry. Scared. Gone.
I don’t mind him. He’s not mean. But he’s abandoned us. Abandoned me.
My shoulder throbs. It’s a mass of bruises. Sometimes I can’t help but throw myself at that door to try and get out. Try to escape.
Find her.
But I can’t. I’m helpless.
Everyone is terrified of me but no one will give me what I want.
The guards who come in to feed us now won’t look at me. They’ll shove the food through the bars with a stick.
Maybe they know what I’m thinking.
Can read my murderous thoughts on my face.
She always seemed to know what I was thinking.
“Stop pacing for a second,” Ash hisses.
I don’t stop.
Why stop when this is all I can do?
“Seriously! Someone is fucking coming, can’t you hear that?” He growls.
That makes me freeze. It’s not meal time, which means it’s someone new.
I strain to hear what Ash is hearing. It’s hard. It feels like I’m underwater. Has since she was taken.
But then I hear it. An ATV with a transport cage.
The bars of the stable door press into my cheeks as I crane my neck to see the barn door.
They open.
There’s Rowan, pulling a cage behind him.
I scent her before I see her.
Strawberries. Mine.
Small pale hands wrap around Rowan’s waist.
But there’s something off. Something different.
She smells like... Griffin. Not entirely. But her scent has changed.
“You motherfucker,” Ash snarls, throwing himself at his stable door with a crash.
The impact reverberates all the way to my door and my hackles rise.
Ash is smarter than me.
I’m stupid.
So if he’s angry, then I should be angry too.
The roar that leaves my throat echoes off the walls. It’s been pent up for who knows how long.
“Hey, hey, hey! Guys! Calm down, please!” Mirabelle says, clambering off the ATV and stretching out her hands.
“Calm? You want us to be fucking calm when the new guy bonded you to him?” Ash spits.
Bonded.
The word bounces around in my head. The true meaning keeps on slipping through my fingers.
“It was the only way to stop my heat! He had to bite me!” She pleads.
Bite.
I understand that word.
I want to bite her. Make her mine.
My insides feel like they’re going to explode.
If Griffin has bitten her, does that make her not mine?
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
She is mine.
I throw myself against the door, the impact travelling through my body. But I barely feel it.
“You fuckers have done it now!” Ash snarls. “You’ve gone and made him lose it. Mirabelle is locked away for weeks, and then you two disappear and come back with this bullshit.”
I think Rowan says something. But I don’t hear him. All my attention is on Mirabelle.
She picks at her fingers, flinching at every noise.
Then her eyes lift to mine and I freeze.
She’s crying.
Tears stream down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she says, before covering her mouth with a sob.
Ash freezes too. We made her upset. We made her cry.
I made her cry.
I slump against the door, keeping my face pressed against the bars.
I don’t want her to cry. She shouldn’t cry. Ever.
The whole barn remains silent, except for the sound of her soft sniffling.
The sight, the sound of her sobbing, makes everything in my mind still.
No more red. No more anything. Just her.
“Don’t... cry...” I croak out, swallowing past the baseball-sized lump in my throat.
If the room were any louder than silent, I don’t think they would’ve heard me.
But they do. They all do.
And now their attention is on me.
But Mirabelle is the only one I care about right now.
She quickly wipes at her cheeks.
“You don’t want me to cry?”
I offer her a single shake of my head.
No.
I don’t like it when they call me a monster. But if being a monster means she never cries again.
Then I’ll be a monster.
“O—okay, I’ll try,” she says, taking a shaky breath. “Thank you guys for giving me a bit of space to explain.”
Ash lets out a little huff as he shrugs his shoulders, nodding for Mirabelle to continue.
“I don’t think Rowan and Griffin did anything wrong. They did what they had to and what they thought was best for me because the doctor was concerned I would die if they didn’t stop the artificial heat Jett put me in.”
My lips peel back in a snarl at the mention of that guard.
I will kill him.
I know it just as certainly as I know Mirabelle is mine.
“So are us two just chopped liver?” Ash snarls, narrowing his eyes on her.
I don’t like the way he’s looking at her. But I want to know the answer to his question.
“What? No! Of course not! I never wanted any of you to feel that way. I like—I like all of you. All four of you. I don’t know when or how it’s going to happen, but I want to bond you both,” she says.
She wants to bond us. Both.
All of us.
“Come here,” Ash growls.
I have to turn away when he kisses her. Even now, the thrum of emotions swirling in my head are overwhelming.
A low growl leaves my chest as I tug at my hair until my scalp burns.
Am I jealous?
A little.
But I’m more possessive. I want that too. I want her too.
Can I share her?
Will I be okay with that?
The thought doesn’t make me angry on its own. What does is the idea that she’ll see how they’re better than me.
I’m fucking trapped in my head all the time. Barely able to string two words together.
Always fucking angry.
Always fucking scared.
“Hey,” Mirabelle says softly from the bars of my cell door.
My hands fall away from my head. I stand frozen in the center of my stable, unsure what to do.
The others can all tell her what they want. And she does it.
Can I do that too?
But what if she says no?
I don’t know if I can handle that.
“You—you were really upset earlier,” she says, nervously shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Were you mad at me?”
I shake my head. Back and forth. Back and forth.
No. Never.
I’m never mad at her.
“Okay.” A smile tugs at her lips. “That’s good. I was worried there for a second.”
Her smile makes my breath hitch in my chest.
I missed her.
So much.
I was so afraid and so angry when she disappeared.
The others try. Rowan, Ash, and Griffin. They’ve tried a lot more since Mirabelle came into the picture.
But no one would talk to me in the way she does.
I creep towards the door, bracing myself for her to tell me to stop. A single harsh word. A single flinch and I think I would’ve fallen apart.
But she continues to smile brightly at me like there’s no reason for her to do anything but smile at me.
I reach tentatively through the bars, brushing my thumb against her lips.
She swallows hard, her smile dropping ever so slightly and I jerk my hand back.
She reaches up, her own fingertips brushing against where I just touched.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying here. Or asking for. You could be saying you like my smile, but you’ve told me that before. I also just kissed Ash,” she rambles, glancing up at me through her lashes. “Are you asking for a kiss, Rage?”
Her pulse flutters at her neck, betraying her nervousness.
Is it because of the kiss or because she’s afraid?
I take a deep breath, her sweet strawberry scent filling my lungs.
Sweet. Not sour.
She’s not afraid.
I clear my throat. My throat feels swollen. Like I was choked.
I don’t know how much of the feeling is real or in my head. I haven’t even wanted to talk in so long.
No one has ever listened.
Maybe it was facing the silence while she was gone. But I want her to know what I’m thinking.
“Both,” I say.
My voice feels weird. Deep. Scratchy. Not me.
But I don’t even remember what my voice was supposed to be like.
Her bright smile returns and it makes all the discomfort of speaking worth it.
“Both!” She says, repeating my words. “You—you’re talking! That’s fantastic! I’ll smile all you want then.”
She presses herself up against the door, her cheeks turning pink.
“As for the kiss, you’re welcome to kiss me whenever you want.”
Her words are all the invitation I need.