Chapter 34 #2
He released my hand, not surprised that I’d refused him.
“Sorry,” he muttered, closing his eyes for a second.
I covered my mouth when sobs made their way out. My heart fractured further the more he talked with Rudolph’s voice.
“Yvaine, please don’t cry.” His voice cracked. He looked like a defeated man, a bit of fang peeking from his mouth. “We can—”
“Stay away!” I screamed, hugging myself and staggering back.
His shoulders dropped, and he said nothing. He just stood there staring at me, hands that had caused so much violence hanging at his sides. At least he didn’t come closer.
Clearly, I’d been deranged if I’d believed I didn’t need to trust what people said about him.
The Terminator, the scammer, the one who always cheats.
“This is a nightmare.” The look of pain and guilt that crossed those beautiful, perfectly sculpted features made me cringe. “It has to be.”
I turned and covered my mouth. I wanted to take a gigantic pair of scissors, the size of Edward Scissorhands’s, and cut off my own head. Disconnect heart from brain so I could think clearly, without the havoc of my feelings.
But that wasn’t how life worked. Emotions needed to be faced.
I just didn’t think I could survive this particular emotional invasion.
Sparks skittered over my elbows. That unwelcome relief from the mating bond washed through me, and I slapped his hands away.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me.” I inched backwards and…took the next exit. The easy, cowardly way out.
“Lachlan!” I shouted through our private mind-link.
“What’s wrong?” His immediate response was filled with concern.
“Please come and get me. I-I can’t—”
When my brother’s scent approached like a fireball, Logan stiffened, looking at me like he couldn’t believe I’d just called my twin.
“What happened?” my brother snapped. His gaze bounced between me and my mate.
Ignoring Lachlan, I marched over to Logan, pausing only to pick an item up off the ground and stopping when I was right in front of him. He just stood there, the panic in his eyes partially replaced by a softness that almost made me regret my next move.
I swung my arm up and slammed a blue umbrella onto his head.
Twice in a row.
It was like hitting a rock with a pillow, but it made me feel better.
Then I yanked the necklace off my neck and threw it at his chest. It bounced off his bare pec and fell, joining the pieces of my heart down there in the mud.
Logan bent and picked it up. Hurt flashed across his face, tugging at my heartstrings.
“Yvaine, stay. We need to talk.”
The roughness of his tone felt like nails scratching against the chalkboard that was my brain.
Shaking my head, I walked over to my brother. If he’d had laser beams for eyes, Logan would’ve been a pile of ashes for the wind to play with.
“Please.” Stephen, that voice. My knees gave out.
Lachlan’s jaw throbbed, his molars grinding.
“What the fuck did you do to my sister, Masturbator?” he growled fiercely. Tension crackled in the air.
My tears were enough to awaken the beast.
Scarlet fur sprouted over his bare skin, his shorts exploding into flying pieces of fabric as a giant wolf took his place. Logan, also being an Alpha, didn’t—couldn’t—refuse the challenge and growled back. He didn’t shift, but his posture stiffened, that of a predator ready to lash out.
“Back off,” he hissed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
The way his white fangs gleamed suggested otherwise.
Wolf Lachlan lunged.
Logan crouched and parted his arms, ready.
Yet his gaze remained on me, uncaring for the rest.
“Stop!” I jumped between them, between the two people I loved most, my arms outstretched.
The truth was that Logan had already taken a big chunk of my heart, and it was lost to me forever. Now, it belonged to him.
“Lachy, he’s my mate,” I sobbed, my eyes on the ground.
The animalistic growling stopped instantly.
“What did I just hear?”
I was startled.
It wasn’t my brother but my father trudging over.
“Isabella! You finally made me deaf! No healthy eardrum could have heard what I just heard!”
The big, brooding man, Logan’s father, followed after my dad, his heavy boots taking out their anger out on the matted grass with every step. He looked from me to his son with a furrowed brow, lips flattening into a white line.
“Yvaine, is this true?” Dad looked as if I’d struck him with a truth he didn’t want to hear.
My lower lip trembled. “Sorry I didn’t tell you.”
My father’s fury faltered, maybe noticing my tears and my current condition.
“Logan, is this girl your mate?” the other man asked in a clipped tone.
There was a growing group of spectators.
Logan swallowed, drawing my eyes to the motion of his throat. The necklace was still clutched in his thick-veined fist.
“She is, Dad.”
A sharp torrent of words followed, an avalanche of insults with a pinch of threats.
“This has to be a mistake!”
“I won’t let my daughter be contaminated with DD germs!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, it isn’t up to us.”
“It isn’t, but my daughter’s smart.”
I didn’t realize I’d dropped until I noticed arms around me, catching me.
I was lifted off the ground, and instinctively, I burrowed deep into his neck, seeking comfort that would never be available to me.
How could it be, when the one person created to comfort you was also the one who had created the biggest discomfort of all?
“Put my mate down, Islander,” Logan snarled, stepping forward.
“Fuck off, Masturbator!”
Something flashed through his eyes. “She’s mine!”
I was. But I was about to rectify that.
“Leave. Me. Alone,” I said through gritted teeth.
Logan stiffened.
“I, Yvaine MacKenzie, reject you, Logan Dra—”
And then it happened.
Logan sank to his knees, right there in the dirt before me.
Wide-eyed. Sickly pale. Gaping up at me.
I had sent down the Dark Diamonds’ captain, the one who had never fallen during a game—or in life, for that matter. For anyone.
I tracked the twin trails of tears all the way down from those gray eyes until they fell from his chin.
“Don’t,” he cried out.
I paused.
“Please, don’t do it, Bunny Doc.”
So I didn’t.
I just couldn’t.
My silly heart had put a block over my mouth.
“Let’s leave,” Lachlan muttered, one arm under my knees, the other steady around my back.
Logan allowed himself to be pulled back by his shoulders and waist, but he kept his eyes on Lachlan and me, the connection between us fizzling out like a dying ember.
“Lachlan, take me home, please.”
A part of me, the bestial animal, was already suffering the torment of being without my mate.
Without my Rudolph.