Chapter 69
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Knox
Wariness flashed over her delicate features. “Why?”
“I want to make sure your hand has healed.”
She glanced at her palm. “It’s perfectly fine.”
“I’d still like to see for myself.”
“Why?” she asked more sharply.
“Because I gave you a command, and you will obey it.”
Her lips thinned into a flat line as her eyes narrowed. I grinned when fire lit her striking eyes.
“I expect you to stop being an arrogant, overbearing cocksucker; it looks like neither of us will ever get our way.”
I chuckled as my fingers flexed into the bedding. “Just by looking at you, I can tell you’d like to suck my cock. You may not want to desire me, but you do.”
Shock widened her eyes as she stepped back. “I’d prefer to bite it off.”
“Is that a challenge?”
She knew better than to challenge a shifter, especially an alpha, but she resented having to back down.
My stubborn little thorn.
“No, it’s a promise,” she stated.
“Is it now?”
When I rose, Briar stepped toward the hallway. The open door half obscured her.
“Shifters love a chase,” I reminded her before she could run.
I would gladly hunt her down; the possibility excited the beast so much it salivated. Rage simmered in her eyes when Briar resumed her previous position, and a glowing spell formed in her palm.
I glanced nonchalantly at the spell she’d created; I’d been hit with one before and could withstand it, but she wouldn’t unleash it on me. She wanted to, I had no doubt, but she’d never purposely harm me.
I’d hurt her over and over again; she wouldn’t do the same. We were very different in that way.
When I prowled out of my bedroom and into the sitting room with its red leather couches, gold table, and bookshelves filled with tomes, she backed toward the door. She lifted her hand, and the green spell danced across her fingers.
I’d never seen a spell that color from a caster before; they were normally black or a deep, violent shade of purple, but Briar wasn’t like the others. Unfortunately, it had taken me far too much time to fully accept that.
It was her connection to nature, her love of all things living, that made the spell a pretty shade of emerald. When we were younger, her spells were white in color; that must have changed after her Needing, when she gained more power.
“Stay back,” she cautioned.
“Would you really hurt me, Briar?”
“Why wouldn’t I? You already think I’m a monster.”
“Opinions can change.”
“You do realize it’s my fault you were in the harem, right?”
“How is that?” I asked as I stopped in front of her.
“My mother must have found out I was sneaking away. She saw me leaving, or someone else did, and that was why she had a gorman follow me into No Man’s Land. That was how she learned about our plan to leave the kingdoms.”
When I rested my hand on the doorway beside her head, her breasts rose as she took a deep breath and her heart sped up. She didn’t back away, and when her fingers fisted, the spell she’d created vanished.
“That is how she learned our plan,” I agreed. “But we both knew the risks we were taking to see each other, and I missed the gorman arrival too… back then and now.”
“Did you even know about gorman until recently?”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, I did. It should have occurred to me sooner what she’d done.”
“Even if it had occurred to you sooner, she still would have captured me. She already knew everything.”
“Maybe so, but I’m still the monster who got you locked away.”
I quirked an eyebrow at her. “But you’re my monster.”
“I’m not your anything.”
A small ringlet of hair had fallen free to straggle around her shoulders. Grasping it, I twirled it around my finger while I marveled at its silken texture and crisp, eucalyptus scent.
“You are my mate,” I told her.
“No, I’m not. You’ve made it clear you’ll never claim me as such again, and I agree.”
My finger tightened on her hair. I had said that, but things had changed, and she wouldn’t deny what was meant to be.
I’d never be the same, I’d always be broken, and I wasn’t the man she deserved, but I didn’t give a fuck anymore. All I cared about was taking what was mine.
Tugging gently on her hair, I tried to pull her toward me, but her feet remained firmly planted. “You are my mate.”
Her chin rose. “No, I’m not. I don’t know what animal you were supposed to be, but it wasn’t the beast you are now. That animal claimed me, not the beast. I’m no one’s mate.”
My fangs extended as the beast became a hurricane within me. Its snarl rumbled through my chest and up my throat. Wariness flashed across Briar’s features before she covered it.
“I did a lot of thinking while I was out there spreading your potion,” I told her.
She twisted her head to try pulling her hair free, but I refused to relinquish it. With a huff, she gave up trying to break away. “I hope all that thinking didn’t hurt you.”
“You’re funny, mea eveto,” I murmured.
“Don’t call me that.”
“And why not?” I asked with a deceptively calm tone, considering the turmoil within me.
“Because I’m not your mea eveto. I’m your mea perfidious eveto, remember?”
“I remember.” Instead of tugging her closer, I caressed her cheek with the finger I’d entwined her hair around. “I remember everything about you.”
“No, you chose to forget everything about me when you chose to believe the lies my mother told about me.”
The cool indifference of her words broke as sorrow filled her voice. I’d meant to shatter her hardened exterior, but I didn’t want this.
“You don’t know what it was like in the harem,” I told her.
She tried to slap my hand away from her cheek, but I flattened my palm against her skin. Her hit did as much damage as a gnat fighting a basilisk. When she failed to dislodge me, her hands fisted at her sides.
“I know that!” she cried. “I can imagine what you went through and understand the horror, torment, and degradation you all endured, but I can never know. You’ve made that very clear.”
“That’s right,” I growled as I stepped closer.
“You’ll never understand the desperation we felt to retain our true selves while trying to remember the good times.
You have no idea how long I clung to the memories of sunshine on my face, the smell of the forest, the way the leaves sound when the wind blows, or the taste of you.
“I’ll make sure you never learn what it’s like to have the memories of good things slip away because your entire existence is nothing but degradation. Or how awful it feels when you start wanting to forget those things because it’s too painful to remember and all hope of breaking free fades.
“You can’t understand what it’s like to have women you loathe crawling all over you while telling you the worst things you could ever imagine. And not just the women, but the men also abusing you in the most degrading ways possible.
“You’ll never understand what it’s like to have your body respond to them, even if it was as the beast. How humiliating that was.”
Her mouth parted as her eyes widened. “You couldn’t help that.”
I held her gaze as I twirled her hair around my finger before unwinding it again. “Maybe not. Maybe I couldn’t control the beast, but I could have controlled the worst of it, and I didn’t.”
“What was the worst of it?”
I stared at the beautiful color of her hair as memories threatened to overwhelm me. “As hope fades, the whispers of betrayal continue to fill your ears.” When I stepped closer, she didn’t move away but tipped her head back. “And those whispers only serve to confirm what you’ve started to believe.”
“What’s that?”
“That there is nothing good left in this world.”
Her mouth parted on a small “Oh” of sadness.
“Your mother wasn’t the only one who told me about your betrayal; so many other casters did too.
And somewhere along the way, in that insufferable place, the insidious whispers of your betrayal became the truth.
It was easier to let it all go and let the hate consume me because I liked the way it made me feel.
That hate and my determination to make you pay gave me a purpose again. ”
She closed her eyes before opening them again. When she did, sadness radiated from their beautiful depths. “That hate still consumes you.”
I couldn’t deny it. “Yes.”