Chapter 12
TWELVE
Lucien
Shame over what I’d done was hot and thick in my throat as I watched Olivia back away, sadness marring her beautiful features. Kane finally allowed me back to my feet once she was behind Reed and Gael, clustered in among the women.
Protected from me.
The very first thing I did was turn to Samuel, who stood warily a few feet away and off to the side, where there were a few rows of expensive leather seats between us. “I apologize. I don’t know what came over me. I— There’s no excuse. But I truly don’t know what happened.”
“I think I do,” Brielle said, tapping Gael’s shoulder for him to let her through. She stepped up to Kane’s side, giving me a sad look.
No, not sad. It was pity. And that burned hotter than the fucking sun.
“Based on what I felt, it seems the prolonged exposure to a lower dose of wolfsbane has damaged your connection to your wolf. It’s not severed.
If that were the case, you wouldn’t have any access to your wolf or the ability to shift.
But it was in your system long enough, it’s had some negative impacts, causing you to lose control. ”
“Are you able to reverse it?” Kane asked.
She hesitated, twisting her lips with that pity again, and I knew. The words were merely bitter confirmation.
“No, I don’t think I can. There’s nothing physically left for me to heal. The connection with one’s wolf is deeper, a bonding of two unique spirits. It’s something that over time might correct itself.”
Might.
She was trying to couch the blow in that patented way healers had, but I was no idiot. What she wasn’t saying was that if it didn’t, I would be a danger to my pack permanently.
Worse than that—my gaze swung to Olivia’s coppery hair, the only part of her that was visible around the wall of alpha muscle between us—I would be a danger to my mate.
I’d drawn her blood, could have permanently maimed her.
She was painfully perfect, from her sweet citrusy scent down to the way she looked at me with those trusting doe eyes, as if I hadn’t done a speck of wrong in my nearly four hundred years of life.
And I couldn’t bear to hurt her again, not even by accident.
“I understand. Thank you, Brielle.”
She nodded, trying and failing to hide her emotions. Her still-water scent was bitter with the edge of sorrow.
But hers weren’t the feelings I was most concerned about. Olivia had to be my top priority. I was a selfish prick, but even the little snatches of time with her had me getting attached.
If my wolf was a danger to her, I couldn’t allow that. If there was even a chance of her getting hurt like… No. I viciously yanked my thoughts away from the painful past.
Letting myself go down that path was a dead-end road to sorrow, and I knew it.
I cleared my throat, lowered my voice for only my high alpha’s ears. “I’ll keep my distance. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Especially not her.”
Kane nodded, and for the first time since I’d been hauled out of Dominik’s torture pit, I saw sadness in his eyes.
But no amount of regret or pity in the world would rewind the clock. All it would do was form a chasm of pain, as the repeated impacts chipped away at the bedrock of who I’d been. It yawned before me, wider by the day. Uncrossable. Permanent. Deadly.