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Mrs. Burnbaum is so nice, so gentle.
She takes me home and cleans me up and sits with me until Mom gets home.
Then they talk in hushed, urgent tones in Mom’s room for a long time, while Mitch and I sit pretending to play with blocks.
But really, he’s just avoiding looking at me, and I’m trying not to start screaming again.
I can’t talk at all.
I’m afraid if I open my mouth I’ll start wailing and never stop.
Finally, the moms come back into the living room and Mitch and his mom leave. Then Mama turns to me with the saddest eyes.
I can tell she’s been crying, and I know it’s my fault. I also know I would usually feel awful about making her sad, but right now I can’t feel anything but…full. I’m chock-full of the screams I’m holding in, so stuffed there’s no room for anything else.
But Mama seems to understand.
She’s very quiet and goes slow as she explains to me what happened.
She explains about a pack gift just a very few Alpha wolves have—the ability to bring people back from the dead. She says it’s a sacred gift, and one usually used very rarely and respectfully, but that the man who grabbed me had used his in a dark, ugly way, because he received pleasure from hurting kids.
“He was a monster, baby,” she whispers through fresh tears as she smooths my hair away from my face. “And I’m so sorry you had to learn there are people like that, and so sorry he did what he did to you.”
She pulls in a breath, her lips pressing together for a beat before she adds in a shakier voice, “But I’m so grateful he left you alive. The world needs good people like you, Willow, and I need you and I love you so much and I promise I will fight like hell to make sure no one hurts you again, baby. I swear on all the stars.” She sniffs and swipes at her eyes. “And I’m going to do my best to help you forget this, too, okay? If you can promise if you remember anything about this to keep it a secret, just between us?”
I nod desperately, eagerly.
All I want is to forget.
And after several months of working with my mom every night, letting her use her own secret pack gift, one so tightly under wraps allegedly not even my father knew what she could do, Mama gave me the gift of forgetting.
Until the night Maxim Thorn ripped it away.
Chapter Two
Maxim
You’re fucking monstrous.
Damn you to hell.
As Willow comes out of her memory gasping for breath, with tears streaming down her face and terror in her eyes, fresh from reliving some past horror, I hate myself. I don’t know what she just remembered, but I could feel the effect it had on her, the way it made her heart race like a trapped animal and her soul writhe.
I never see the memories I summon with my pack gift, but I feel them—and hers were…terrifying. This memory will haunt me long after tonight.
But not nearly as much as it haunts her.
My throat tightens until it feels like I’m choking on self-loathing, but still, I insist to myself that I shouldn’t regret what I’ve done.
This is how she learns that I am her Alpha, that my word is law, and that obedience is her only option if she wants to remain under my protection.
“Wh-what was that?” She blinks, sending fresh tears down her cheeks that she can’t even wipe away.
I have her wrists bound behind her and my little wolf on her knees in my study. I’m interrogating her in my apartment, in a dim room lit only by the fire behind me.
Because the dark part of me only comes out to play in the shadows.
“When I ask a question, I expect it to be answered,” I growl, soft and low.
