Chapter 22
I found Umbra in his room, seated on his bed.
On the bedside table were two coins and a knife. His eyes flickered to me as I opened the door but he didn’t move.
There was something wrong. He was hiding in the bond, but something surrounded him, a numbness I’d never felt.
I crossed toward him, and his eyes followed me, and I reached out and took his hand in mine. He flinched, sandstorm eyes hard—more than I’d ever seen. Even his scent was different, blood so much sharper than the cooler tones of wolfsbane.
“Where…” He shut his eyes, jaw clenched. “Where were you?”
I took a breath, hating saying it now more than I had with Dusk. But they couldn’t know. If they found out, I think they would guess the truth I’d learned, and we couldn’t afford hopelessness. Not now.
Not when there was one more thing I needed to discover. One more piece of the puzzle beyond even Uncle.
And I needed to find it before the Lincoln pack opened the safe.
“I can’t tell you,” I whispered. My eyes burned. I hated lying to them. I hated tricking Ransom.
I hated that it was the Lincoln pack doing this to us.
Umbra tugged his hand from my grip, gazing up at me, and I saw what I’d been feeling at last. That quiet numbness. He reached up, hand cupping my cheek.
“I love you, Shatter.”
“I know.”
“I can’t lose you.”
I frowned. “Umbra?—”
“Tell me where you went.” His voice was low, his aura sweeping into the air like a frigid autumn wind.
Shock hit my system as I felt the command lock into place. A demand for truth fuelled by the bite on my neck. Fuelled by the massive weight of his alpha aura.
I opened my mouth before I realised it, words forming on my tongue before panic gripped me and I shoved him out with every ounce of strength I had.
I shut my mouth, and my breath caught, pain tearing through my body, a thousand needles driving into my skin as I warred with the bond on my neck. The command was a harsh whisper in my head, demanding I succumb. That I make this pain go away.
Umbra was on his feet, still cupping my chin, and I clutched his arm as I shook, tears filling my eyes as he stood, gaze locked on me.
“Shatter.” His aura flared as the command grew to a scream.
I grit my teeth, drawing a sharp breath, and shook my head. “No.”
“Umbra!” The door behind me slammed open.
The command dropped, and I took a breath.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dusk demanded, reaching us. Ransom was on my other side, hand on my back.
I still gripped Umbra, nerves frayed. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Everything was wrong…
“Stop me again, I’ll take pack lead,” Umbra snarled at Dusk.
Stop him?
I was catching up slowly, mind foggy from the pain. The command had dropped because Dusk had dropped it. He had the final say on my commands.
“You will not hurt her—!” Dusk began, but Umbra cut him off, letting go of me and seizing him.
“I will not survive the day when she is gone because I was too weak to face this now!”
Dusk sounded unnerved. “Umbra?—!”
“Leave.” I was shocked at how steady my voice was as I turned to Dusk.
“Shatter—!”
I shoved between them, turning on Ransom in fury when he tried to pull me back. “Leave us!”
Something changed in the room. I don’t know what it was, which meant it was probably me. Umbra’s aura was gone and Dusk stepped back, yellow eyes wide as he glanced between the two of us. I looked at Ransom, who was staring at me in shock.
I didn’t know anything in that moment but pure instinct. I grabbed Umbra and shoved him back toward the bed. “Sit. Down.”
He just stared at me for a moment, unsure, but my hand snapped up and closed around his neck. “I said, sit.”
He did almost instantly, and I sank against him, breathing settling only when I felt his hands rest at my waist. My fingers tangled in his sandy blond hair and I tugged his head back. His grip on me tightened as I sank my teeth into his neck.
A temporary bond between us flared and my pulse settled.
That was until I heard one of the others shift behind me.
A vicious growl rose in my chest and my grip on Umbra’s hair was unfairly tight until the door shut and their scents were gone. I shut my eyes, releasing him, and winding my arms around his chest.
Then I did something I’d never done in my life.
I sought out my first memory.
The flashing ERROR.
The rising scent of death around me.
But more than that, the bone-shaking agony that had torn through my body for endless second after endless second.
Umbra’s grip tightened, but I didn’t let it go, sinking so far into those memories that I became them. Letting him feel them through the two-way bond.
I needed him to know it wasn’t just agony I’d endured. It was agony I’d been born into.
Pain wasn’t what I feared.
It was what had happened after that… The months and months that slipped away in silence at the Estate. Becoming nothing… losing who I was.
That was worse.
The place he had been when I’d walked into his room moments ago.
I don’t know how long had passed.
When I opened my eyes at last, we were laying on his bed. He was holding me tight, an unsettled purr in his chest.
I looked up at him cupping his cheek, and I could see the relief in his sandstorm eyes.
“I’m…” He scrunched up his nose voice thick. “I’m sorry.”
“You aren’t allowed to leave me,” I whispered. “Not like that. Not again. You mean too much to me.”
“You can’t give yourself up for us.”
“You’re my alpha, and husband, and I’m yours,” I replied. “We have to protect each other.”
He winced, not meeting my eyes. “There’s nothing…” His voice shook. “Shatter, I’m already…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I’m not…”
I cupped his cheeks, making him look at me, and I found the thing at the centre of all he was with our souls entwined closer than they had ever been with my bite between us.
When I reached out to him in the bond, he turned to smoke. Wind blowing him away like he was never there.
I heard at last the words he couldn’t say. The truth that trapped him. And I realised it had nothing to do with trials or the experiments he’d endured for Dusk over and over. Those didn’t haunt him—they weren’t even pain. They were relief; salve on a burn.
From the burden he’d carried before any of it.
The core of what made him what he was and the reason, his aura was like it was—perhaps the reason he had been in the Cimmerian Vaults in the first place, when he’d broken enough to become too dangerous to be left free.
And I heard the words that were carved into his very soul, his truth that meant pain where there should be happiness. Guilt where there should be love.
I’m not supposed to be here.
A scar deeper than any left across his skin, borne of every day that passed, of every moment of happiness he couldn’t bear.
Of surviving.
Tears leaked from my eyes.
“I don’t know how to…” He took a breath. “I don’t know how to face what you want me to face. I don’t know how to be more for you.”
“I’m your mate,” I whispered. “I’ve always been your mate and I will not give up on you.”
He held me tight, fingers lacing through my hair as he arched my neck. Relief shocked my system as I felt the brush of his teeth on my skin.
Aside from Dusk, their bites weren’t needed for the bond, but I wanted them, anyway. All of them.
I shifted, dragging his teeth lower until they were on my breast, over the place Eric had left a mark.
A low whine escaped my chest as I felt his mark upon my flesh, and a claim that bound us together.
A claim that meant I would never leave him behind.