Chapter 11
SAPHIRA
Coldness stole through me as I reached for my dagger with my left hand and I practically hissed like a viper as I drew it and brought it down hard, stabbing it deep into Morden’s forearm.
He howled and I wrenched free of him, yanking my dagger out of his flesh and gripping it in two hands before me.
“This is a fucking exchange, isn’t it?” I roared at him, fire flashing through my blood as my soul screamed in agony, as something in me broke—floodgates that let darkness pour through me, that had my entire body quaking with the rage I could barely contain as he slapped his hand down over his bleeding arm and still refused to look at me.
“Me for Danica. You lied to me. You fucking lied to me.”
This was why he had been trying to drive Kaeleron away.
So I would be the only thing standing between him and saving his sister, and he had figured that overpowering me wouldn’t be a problem, but Kaeleron would be.
He was fucking wrong.
Blood dripped from his arm as he gripped it, trying to stanch the flow, and he finally looked at me, the regret in his grey gaze making me feel nothing. No trace of pity.
“I’m sorry.” He lunged for me again, face crumpling as guilt joined the regret, as pain flashed across his eyes.
I evaded him, slashing at his hand with my dagger as I leaped backwards, managing to place some distance between us.
He reached for me again, but it was a half-hearted attempt to capture me.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to… but I have to do this. ”
“You have to do this?” I swept my right hand out, cutting across his fingers as he tried to grab me again, my heart thundering as hurt and anger and disappointment twined with overwhelming grief, with the feeling that I had just lost someone dear to me.
I laughed in his face, a little hysterical.
“You had to lie to me? You had to betray me like this, after everything we’ve been through together? After everything Lucas put me through?”
I shook my head, tears burning my eyes as I backed away from him.
“What Lucas put you through is the reason I have to do it!” His shoulders sagged and tears filled his own eyes as his dark eyebrows furrowed and his voice failed him.
“Danica. Can’t you see this is the only way to save her from the auction block?
If I don’t bring you to Lucas, he’ll sell her.
He’ll sell her, Saphi. Danica… Danica might not be so fortunate. The male who buys her—”
His jaw flexed as he clamped his mouth shut and shook his head.
I blinked, tears I hated spilling down my cheeks, tears that made me feel weak as my past washed over me like a thunderous wave, threatening to break me all over again.
I saw that cage. Shook with the fear I had felt there.
Felt those bars closing in on me. Those lustful gazes of the males who had wanted to buy me… to do terrible things to me.
“You’re really going to do this to me?” I whispered, voice wobbling as I blinked again, clearing my vision. “Condemn me to some horrible fate in her place? My friendship means nothing to you? I mean nothing to you?”
My heart howled in agony.
He swallowed.
“Don’t say that! Gods… Saphi… you mean so much to me. Do you think this is easy? That this isn’t eating me alive? I don’t want to do this… and I’m sorry. But what you told me…” The look in his eyes backed up what he had said. “I don’t have a choice.”
Part of me could understand that.
I would betray someone I cared about if it meant saving someone I loved.
“I’m sorry too.” I adjusted my grip on my dagger and drew down a steadying breath as I shifted my feet into a fighting stance, my wolf side restlessly pacing within me, snarling at me to let it out.
I wasn’t skilled enough to defeat Morden in that form, so I held it at bay and clutched my blade instead, mind running through everything I had learned during my training.
“But I’m not going with you. I’m not going to let you do this. ”
“Please. We can figure something out. We can switch plans… contact the Ryland Pack like you want. Rally a fucking army. I need to save her, Saphi. She’s…
she’s just a kid.” He bared his teeth as he loosed a frustrated growl and scrubbed his forehead.
“This wasn’t the plan. I didn’t know what he did to you.
I was going to tell you everything… and then you told me what he did and…
and… He’s going to sell her. That fucker is going to sell her.
I don’t want to do this. I can’t. I can’t.
But… it’s Dani. You know what will happen to her…
what she’ll go through… you’ve experienced it.
You know what the guy who buys her will do—”
I cut him off with a growl of my own, fury boiling in my veins. “Kaeleron never laid a finger on me without my permission. He’s not a monster!”
A brittle scoff burst from his lips. “He is a monster. You just can’t see it. He hurt you, Saphi.”
“He pushed me away because he’s at war. He did it to protect me!
He needed me somewhere safe… away from that war.
The fact that he’s here now… he shouldn’t be here.
That’s why he goes back to the Shadow Court every night.
He’s there, fighting to protect it… and then he comes here…
to help me fight my battle too. When he’s tired from his own fight.
When his court needs him. He comes here instead of getting the rest he needs, because he wants to help me.
Is that the act of a monster?” I paced away from him, tracking him with my senses so he couldn’t get the jump on me again, reaching the largest of the trees that encircled our camp before I looked back at him.
Darkness swirled in my veins and clouded my mind, flashing images of attacking Morden across my eyes.
He deserved my wrath. I glared at him. “I know Kael. Better than I know you apparently. If anyone is a monster here, it’s you.
I can’t believe you were going to hand me over to Lucas and condemn me to whatever horror that…
that bastard… wants to inflict on me now. ”
Morden flinched and the guilt and regret shining in his eyes deepened as he clutched his bleeding arm, remaining where he was, at a distance from me.
“You know what? Leave. I’ll make my own way to my pack. Without you.”
He staggered back a step, his eyes widening.
I turned my back on him, unable to bear looking at him anymore when my heart was aching so fiercely, and my wolf side wanted his blood on my tongue.
He didn’t move.
Rage got the better of me and I ran at him and began shoving him in his chest. He didn’t fight me as I pushed him backwards, as shoving turned to battering him with my fists as tears spilled down my cheeks, hot against my night-chilled skin.
He took it all, every drop of my hurt, my rage as I battered him, as I struck and shoved and screamed at him until my voice was hoarse.
“Leave.” I pushed him one last time, his boots hitting the water of the creek, and then I turned my back on him, every cell in my body howling in pain, in grief, tearing at the fragile remnants of my strength.
I trudged back to the camp.
Morden trailed behind me.
When I reached the fire, I turned on him. “Afraid of losing me because you still intend to hand me over to my sworn enemy?”
He snapped, “I’m afraid of losing you period!”
“Funny way of showing it,” I spat and stalked to the other side of the fire. “Get out of my sight.”
“I can’t do that. I can’t do that, Saphi.”
“You don’t get to call me that!” I whirled on him as that inky darkness that lurked within me exploded to the surface.
All the pain. All the anger. All the grief.
It all swirled into a writhing, vicious thing within me.
It pierced my skin like sharp needles, puncturing my fracturing heart, toxic tips spreading shadows through my mind.
Pulling up fragments of my past.
All the times I had smiled and shared a laugh with this male.
All the times we had sat peacefully under the stars.
Or worked together around the pack.
Or just lazed by the fireplace in Chase’s cabin, listening to my cousin and the others talking.
Tears blurred my vision as the rage, the hurt, set fire to my blood, turning it molten, and I swiped them away, hating them as my hands shook and my breaths shortened.
As I stared at the face of my friend turned enemy.
Betrayed again.
Only this time I wasn’t going to let it weaken and break me.
I was going to get mad.
I launched at him, catching him off guard, crashing into his chest and knocking him backwards. He tried to grab me and I slashed at him with my blade, coming close to slicing up his arm, forcing him to pull it back to avoid being cut again. Putting him off balance.
He landed on his back with a grunt and I slammed into him, knees hitting him hard in the stomach, pushing the last of his breath from him. On a feral snarl, I slammed my fist into his cheek. Once. Twice. The darkness roaring in my veins driving me to spill his blood. He deserved it.
Grey eyes slid to meet mine.
Too familiar.
I hated him.
I hated him for looking at me like that, as he had as a young wolf, standing on my porch with his father, his gaze so empty I had wondered if he was a hollow shell rather than a living being.
I wasn’t the monster here.
I pressed the tip of my dagger to his chest, feeling like one as I snarled, “I’ll cut out your black fucking heart unless you tell me everything!”
My chest heaved with my short breaths, my hands shaking as I glared down at him, as I no longer recognised the male beneath me.
And maybe I didn’t recognise myself either.
The fire crackled and popped, breaking the tense silence.
Morden didn’t move.
“He has everyone.”
Three words that fell like blades to pierce my heart one by one.
I was sure I had heard him wrong, that he hadn’t just said what he had.