Chapter 31 Olivia #2
“You’re right. You’re absolutely fucking right, and I’m sorry. You deserve so much better.” He wearily rubbed a hand over his face, and I lost some of my bluster.
When the tight smile and pretense fell away, he looked exhausted.
But I wasn’t ready to let him off the hook yet, not after he pushed me away again, when I’d thought we were finally past the bullshit. So I waited, holding on to the very last scraps of my patience.
“I would understand if you wanted to walk away.”
A stab of regret nailed me square in the chest, and I knew without a doubt it was his.
“You know what? No. If you want to be done with this relationship, you’re going to have to look me in the eye and say the words. Say it. Right here, right now.” I stepped forward, eating up all the space between us, our chests brushing as we breathed.
“I can’t do that, hellcat.” A single stroke of his fingertips over my hair, light as gossamer and a thousand times as devastating as anything he’d ever said to me, as he caressed the ends of my hair.
“I don’t have the strength to set you free.
But if I hold on to you…” He shook his head sadly, and I saw the moment he closed himself back off, shutting me out, but this time, I wasn’t having it.
“You know, for an alpha, you sure are a coward. What are you so damn afraid of? I’m not taking another step until you tell me everything.
Because, Lucien, Goddess help me, I’m at the end of my rope here.
I— I love you. I am actively in love with you.
And I can’t just flip a switch like you can.
So tell me. What is so horrible that you’d push me away this time?
” My chest was heaving—with anger, with short, panting breaths, with the unfairness of it all—but I couldn’t stop it.
“I’m scared I’m going to hurt you.”
There was no shout, no thunder, no heat behind the words. Only deep, rending sadness that threatened to steal my breath from my lungs and leave me permanently desolate.
“What does that mean? Help me understand.” I resisted the urge to reach forward, to lace our fingers together as if we were lovers.
Right now, we weren’t. Right now, we were on the edge of something, and frankly, I still wasn’t sure if we were going to sail into the sunset or crash on the rocks, and my shaking hands showed it.
“My father was a politician. His job wasn’t all that different from my current job with the IGC, actually.” The wry twist of his lips told me he was deeply unsettled by that fact, but now that he’d started talking, no way was I interrupting.
“From the outside, our family was perfect. A fated couple with their two perfect children, high achievers in school, in athletics for me, and my sister, Lilly, was exceptional at the violin. But on the inside? We were rotten to the core. He was. Nothing we did was ever good enough. There was no degree of perfection that wouldn’t make him snap the second we were alone behind closed doors. ”
And he thought he was turning into his father. Because of the episodes? I wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know if he hit my mother before I came along, all I know is that once I was big enough to get between them, he transferred the beatings to me. It was hell on earth, that house. And I didn’t want any damn thing more than freedom. But it was the one thing I couldn’t have.”
His smile was bitter, then, as he rocked back on his heels and stared up at the treetops, the little bits of blue sky we could see through the leaves casting a dappled pattern over his face. Such a beautiful day for such a tragic story.
“Because you didn’t want to leave your mother and sister?” I guessed, the deep sense of regret I now felt from him telling me this story didn’t have a happy ending.
“Because I couldn’t let him go back to hitting them. So I stayed. But I was an angry kid by that point, and it pissed me off that I was stuck. More than that, it disgusted me that everyone we knew worshipped the ground he walked on. Like he was Zeus in the flesh, straight off Mount Olympus.”
He laughed, the sound hollow. “One day, I came home from a day out with a few of my buddies. He’d come home early from work.
He’d beaten the shit out of both of them.
I found Lilliana hiding in a closet, still crying.
He’d broken her favorite violin in a fit of rage.
Her lip was bloody, and she was covered in welts.
But he got away with it because we always healed so fast. He could beat me to a pulp at night, and every day, I woke up fit as a fiddle, ready to be trotted out like a show pony all over again. ”
“Goddess,” I whispered, the mental image too awful to contemplate. I finally reached for his hand, unable to hold myself back anymore.
“The Goddess wasn’t in that house.”
I bit my lip, unwilling to argue that point. He’d obviously felt completely alone, with no one to turn to, and no way in hell was I going to invalidate that experience. But what did that have to do with us?
He shook his head, continuing with a different kind of regret in his voice. “I was so mad at myself. If I hadn’t gone out, they’d have been safe. If I could just get a job, I could get them away from him once and for all.”
He closed his eyes, and the dread in the pit of my stomach grew claws, sank them in deep.
“I got wind of a job two towns over. The pay was shit, but it came with a room over a tavern. I could give Mom and Lilly the bedroom, and sleep on the floor. We’d be safe.
We could pack up while he was at work, and be gone before he knew where we went.
The packs back then didn’t care about abuse, so the Alpha would never step in.
We were on our own, and it was the perfect opportunity.
But I had to sneak out one night to get the owner to give me the job. ”
He paused, as if it was too painful to continue, the words lodged in his throat. “Lucien, it’s okay—”
“No, it’s not. Because when I snuck out, Lilly followed me.
I didn’t know it at the time. I’d shifted, carrying my clothes in my mouth so they wouldn’t get messed up by the trip, and I could get there quicker.
She was always a smart girl, smarter than me by a mile.
She stayed downwind. When I heard the gunshot, I got this feeling that something was wrong.
Our family bond was never healthy, but the darkness—”
A tear slid down his cheek, and I leaned forward, wrapping my arms around him as tightly as I could. His pain was so thick, it was choking me. And I hadn’t lived it.
“It was a hunter. She was smaller, not an alpha like me. The hunter had been tracking me with his wolfsbane bullets, but caught her instead. The bastard left her there for the vultures.”
“I’m so sorry, Lucien.”
“I’m not done yet.” The acid in his tone was enough to melt my bones. But I held him tighter. I probably should have run, but there was no way I was letting him go. Not now.
Not ever.
“I carried her body back home. I didn’t know what else to do.
My parents were awake, my mom frantic. She’d felt it in the bond, but didn’t want to believe it.
But when I lay her on the couch, my father lost it.
He beat me to a pulp, and I let him. Didn’t raise a fist to defend myself.
The funeral was three days later. We laid her to rest in the family crypt, and by then, I was so numb, I couldn’t even cry, not even for my baby sister.
So numb, I didn’t realize anything was wrong until my mother lay down over the coffin and didn’t get back up. ”
I gasped, tears freely streaming down my cheeks at this point. “What happened?”
“Poison, taken right before the funeral. She couldn’t bear to live in such an evil world anymore. The only blessing was that she took my bastard of a father with her through their bond.”