Chapter 16
Ariella was quiet for a long moment, but he didn’t press her. This was her decision to make.
She shifted on the furs, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. The posture was defensive, like a creature trying to make itself small enough that predators might overlook it, and his heart ached for her. But when she looked up, her expression had changed.
“What happened to Lilani’s mother?”
The change of subject surprised him, but he’d known this day would come. Known and dreaded, but she’d given him her secrets. It was only fair he give her his.
He settled back against the cave wall, stretching his legs out before him.
“My parents died not long after I was born and my grandfather raised me. He was a hard male. Not cruel but stern and uncompromising. He was determined to mold me into the next Alpha, and he was unwilling to overlook any indication of weakness.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, but he shook his head.
“I wasn’t unhappy. I was Vultor. The clan was everything.
My life had purpose, structure. I was being trained to lead.
” His claws scraped lightly against the stone floor.
“But as I got older, I started to chafe against it. The endless traditions, the expectation that I would become a carbon copy of my grandfather. The last straw was when he decided to arrange a mate for me. I left, and somehow I ended up in Port Cantor.”
He stared into the dying embers of the fire, seeing the reflection of a younger version of himself, arrogant and convinced of his own immortality.
“I made a lot of mistakes. I was young and reckless, flush with a freedom I’d never known. I fought in the underground rings for money. I worked security for people I should have avoided. I was… adrift.”
He paused, gathering the words that felt like stones in his throat.
“That’s where I met Lilani’s mother, Tabitha.
She was a human working in a tavern by the spaceport and I’d never met anyone like her.
I thought… I thought she cared for me.” A bitter, self-mocking smile touched his lips.
“Or maybe I just wanted her to. For a while, I let myself pretend I could have a different life. That I could be someone else.”
Her hand came over to rest on his knee, a small, warm point of contact in the cool cave air. She didn’t speak, but her presence was an anchor in the sea of painful memories.
“She got pregnant,” he continued, his voice lower now, roughened with the old pain.
“I was ecstatic. I would have a child, a family of my own. Something that belonged only to me. Something that was mine.” He let out a harsh breath.
“But the Vultor are possessive. Tabitha didn’t understand the bond I felt with our child, even before it was born.
To her, it was a complication, a mistake that could ruin her plans.
Her plan, I eventually discovered, was to attach herself to a wealthy merchant—a man who could give her the wealth and status I couldn’t. She’d been using me to pass the time.”
He could still remember the sickening lurch in his gut when he’d seen them together, Tabitha laughing up at the older man, her hand resting possessively on his arm. The memory was a physical ache, a phantom wound.
“I confronted her. She told me the baby meant nothing to her, that she’d planned to get rid of it, and that the only reason she hadn’t was because I was paying for her medical care.
” His fists clenched, claws digging into his palms. “My beast took over. I didn’t kill the merchant, even though I wanted to.
I just… made sure he’d never touch what was mine again.
But I threatened Tabitha. I said if she ever tried to leave me, to take my child, I would hunt her to the ends of the universe. I thought I was protecting my family.”
The shame of that admission was a familiar, bitter taste in his mouth. The young warrior he’d been, so arrogant and so broken.
“She ran anyway. She left Port Cantor, left the entire sector, and I never saw her again.” He stared down at his hands, at the scars that marked a history of violence and poor choices.
“But months later I finally tracked her down. She’d died in childbirth, alone in a cheap clinic in a backwater town. She’d never even told them my name.”
Her fingers tightened on his knee. “Oh, Valrek.”
“When I held Lilani for the first time, everything changed. All that mattered was this tiny, perfect little child.” His throat tightened. “I went home, determined to make a new start for her. But my pack wouldn’t accept her.”
The memory of that day was etched into his soul—returning home with a screaming infant in his arms, only to be met with cold stares and muttered accusations. He had expected shock, perhaps, but not outright revulsion.
“They called her an abomination,” he said, the words tasting like ash. “A pollution of the Vultor bloodline. The elders said they would only allow me back into the pack if I abandoned her.”
Her skin glowed with a sudden, fierce anger—indigo and crimson mixing in a storm of protective fury. “They wanted you to abandon your own daughter?”
“To them, she wasn’t my daughter. She was a mistake. A reminder that one of their own warriors had defiled himself with a human.” He looked up, meeting her furious gaze.
“And your grandfather?”
“He turned his back on me. Told me I’d brought shame on the name of our ancestors.” The old wound, scarred over but still tender, began to throb. “He said if I chose the half-breed, I was no longer his grandson. I was no longer Vultor.”
He had stood there, in the center of the village square, with his daughter wailing in his arms, surrounded by the faces of the pack he had known since birth. Faces that were now as cold and hard as the winter stone.
“So I chose her. I’ve always chosen her.” The decision had been simple. Brutally, devastatingly simple. “I walked away and never looked back.”
“And you’ve been alone ever since.”
“We’ve had each other. That’s enough.”
He watched as her anger slowly faded, replaced by an expression of such profound empathy that it made his chest ache. She understood. More than anyone he’d ever met, she understood the pain of being rejected for something beyond your control, the loneliness of being different.
“You’re not alone anymore,” she whispered. Her fingers traced a new path on his knee, a slow, deliberate circle that sent heat spiraling up his thigh. “You’re not the only one who’s been made to feel like an abomination.”
The word hung in the air between them, stark and ugly. He hated that she saw herself that way, hated the father who had carved that belief into her soul with scalpels and indifference.
“You’re not an abomination, Ariella.” He caught her hand, bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss to the center of her palm. “You’re a miracle.”
Her breath hitched, and he watched the color on her skin shift from sympathetic blue to a warmer, more uncertain gold.
“I have to go back,” she said, and the words were like a bucket of ice water thrown on the fragile hope that had been growing in his chest.
“You don’t.”
“I do.” She gently pulled her hand from his grasp, and the absence of her touch was a physical ache. “Merrick expects me to complete the deep dive tomorrow. He’ll be monitoring my progress.”
“He’ll be monitoring a piece of equipment. Not a person.”
“It doesn’t matter what he thinks he’s monitoring.
If I disappear, he’ll come looking. And he’s not the kind of man who comes alone.
He’ll bring security, high tech devices, people who will tear this coastline apart until they find me.
” She looked around the cave, at the simple furs, the rough-hewn stone walls, the small alcove where Lilani slept.
“I can’t put you and Lilani in that kind of danger. I won’t.”
Rage, cold and sharp, flooded him, but he forced it down. She was right.
“So go back,” he said, forcing the words past the knot in his throat.
“You do the dive. You play the part. He thinks you’re trapped.
He thinks you’re a piece of property he can possess.
Use that.” He turned back to face her, and this time he didn’t hide the fury that burned beneath his skin.
“Let him believe you are broken. Let him believe he has won.”
“And then?”
“And then we find a way to end this. For good.” He rose to his feet, pacing the small space like the caged animal he felt like.
“We?” The question was small, hesitant, filled with a fragile spark of hope that he wanted to nurture into a roaring fire.
“I am your mate, Ariella.” The word was out before he could stop it, raw and primal and undeniable. “My beast has claimed you, and the male who stands before you claims you too. I will not let you face this alone. I will not let him have you.”
Her breath hitched. The patches on her skin blazed with sudden, brilliant light—gold and blue and violet swirling together in a storm of emotion.
“But my father—”
“Will have to save himself.”
He could see the doubt on her face, but she nodded and rose to her feet. He walked to the entrance of the cave with her. The moon was high now, spilling silver light across the water.
“I’ll come back,” she whispered, her gaze fixed on the distant horizon where the sea met the stars. “After the dive. I’ll come back.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
He watched her dive into the waves, a flash of moonlight on water, and then she was gone. The beast inside him howled its protest, wanting to go after her, to haul her back to the safety of the cave and never let her leave again.
But he didn’t. He stayed watching the empty water, the moonlight catching on the cresting waves. He would wait. For as long as it took.