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Aiden tried to heave up and failed. He was as weak as a pup.
“And let me tell you this,” the man continued. “I don’t care what she thinks she owes you or what she thinks you’ve done for her. You don’t touch her.”
“Wouldn’t that be up to her?”
“I’ve heard you’re some fancy big-ass writer, so let me put this in terms you can understand. Anyone who holds a woman against her will to benefit themselves in any tiny way is the bad guy in the story. That’s you.”
“I didn’t…”
“Tell it to the spiders.” The man stood up. “We’ll see how you enjoy being locked up.”
He flicked the light off and slammed the door. Something heavy was wedged against it. Aiden was pretty sure his wolf could free him, but the animal was strangely silent.
You alive?he probed.
The wolf was asleep or dead. He wasn’t sure he cared which. Goldie was all right. She was home. She was safe.
The shifter’s dramatic light switch flip was ruined because it was on Aiden’s side of the door; he could just flip it on again, but he didn’t.
He drifted in and out of sleep as he relived that moment when both wolves had pounced on him, and he’d known he wasn’t getting up again. He’d been dying, if not from blood loss, then from the poison. He’d prepared to die knowing that he failed her, and he loved her, and he never told her.
As the hours stretched on, he was less and less sure if he ever would.
The man was right. Aiden had done nothing but take from her. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t the one who kidnapped her. He had kept her. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t the one who locked her in. He’d let them do it and hadn’t ripped down the wards himself. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t the one who had knocked her over with a damn horse trailer. The one who did had been coming after him when it happened.
He was always one step away from horrible harm to her.
He almost laughed. He was always one step away from horrible harm to everyone he loved.It wasn’t me, your honor. It was my uncle, my cousin, my wolf.
His wolf didn’t try to defend itself. It had to be sleeping. It couldn’t be dead, right? He’d be dead if his wolf was, right?
You get steak. Tasty rabbit. Her.
Nothing.
Some part of him protested he was good for her. She could control his wolf.
If he could have, he would have whacked himself upside the head. That was yet another way she was good forhim.
His mind drifted. The pain had dimmed, but it was still there under a layer of magical slime. What was in it? How had no one known about it before? He spared a moment of thanks for this miracle. They lost so many children to accidents and fights. What would it be like to know that every last cut would not be fatal?
Yetanotherway that she was good for him.
How had he screwed things up this badly?
His mind drifted into nightmares of teeth and blood, all tinged a strange Oz green.
“Hey!”
He peeled open his eyes, and it didn’t make a difference. It was pitch black. “Hello?”
“Shhh.”
“Goldie?” he blinked, and a tiny ball of witch light illuminated the closet. She crouched near the door.
He looked down at himself to see that someone had wiped off the goo. The scrapes were still there, but they looked to be weeks old, almost healed. How long had he been out?
She crouched over his legs and closed the door.
