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The red cliffs. When I finally reached them now, I shifted back into my human form and walked up to the edge, gasping, drawing in one desperate breath after the other. I could make it all end. I could stop this feeling, this awful, unbearable fucking torment inside me. No more nightmares, no more blood and screams and horror. No more guilt that I couldn’t stop him, no matter how hard I fought.

All I had to do was take another step, just one more, and the four-hundred-foot drop would take it all away. I stared down the cliff face to the rocks at the bottom so sharp they’d tear flesh from bone, reducing a body to pulp.

My fox clawed at the ground, trying to make me step back, before he filled my head with a pair of bright green eyes, like he always did, right before I took the final step. She needs us, my usually tight-lipped fox growled through my mind.

She didn’t, but it stopped me every time. This unexpected kernel of hope filled me, like a starburst breaking through the darkest night.

He didn’t let up, showing me Jasmine and the way she’d looked that day striding across the cemetery, the way she’d crouched down in front of us. “They want me to tell you, they don’t blame you.”

The way she’d taken my fox’s face in her hands when I’d tried to retreat and trapped us in place with that unwavering gentle gaze, holding us captive as she’d delivered her message. “Your guilt is keeping them here, Ren. They can’t move on. They can’t be at peace until you try to find it as well.”

I stumbled back from the cliff’s edge with a roar.

It was impossible, what she asked of me. How did you move past that? I couldn’t, and I couldn’t jump, not today, so I did the only thing that helped.

You’re too weak and pathetic to even kill yourself, Edward’s voice echoed through my skull.

I ignored the voice that my own fucked-up mind fed me. Edward’s voice. Willow had exorcized him, casting him from me, almost three years ago. He was gone, but my mind didn’t give a fuck. I strode to the rotting tree a few yards away, pulled out the blade I’d hidden inside it, and held the tip to my flesh. “Chest to rib.” I gritted my teeth as I cut through barely healed scar tissue. “Midsection to hip.” Another slice. “Right thigh.”

The panic began to ease as the scent of my blood filled the air, as I said aloud and reenacted each precise slice. It was how he started each torture session, those cuts, in that order. My hands and this knife had carved them into innocent strangers. But now, it silenced their screams in my head for a little while. “Collarbone to shoulder.” Blood dripped from the cuts to the forest floor. And when I made the final slice, “bicep to forearm,” I could finally breathe again.

I dropped the knife and stumbled back, leaning against a boulder, its rough surface cool against my overheated flesh. I was a shifter, I healed fast, but my skin still scarred, and I deserved to wear every one of them. When I caught my breath, I scooped up the knife and tossed it back in the hole under the tree. Suddenly feeling fucking exhausted, I shifted back and ran for home, stopping by a creek when I got close to wash off the blood.

When I finally walked back into my apartment, it was seven in the morning. I frowned at Bree still asleep in my bed, then quickly dressed, shutting a drawer harder than I needed to, and she jolted awake. I’d told her to leave last night after the shit she said to Jasmine, but she’d obviously let herself back in when I was asleep.

“Hey…where’d you go?” Her gaze roamed over me. “I woke and you weren’t here.”

I pulled on my boots, lacing them up. “Thought I told you to leave last night.”

She smiled. “You didn’t mean it, so I came back. Why don’t you come back to bed?”

“I don’t say shit I don’t mean.”

She sat up. “Did you run off to be with that fucking witch?” she said with a lot of growl in her voice and shoved back the covers.

Jasmine had been coming back from that field last night, after doing fuck knows what. It was dark and she’d been unprotected. My stomach twisted remembering what she’d said before I walked out and stopped Bree from going after her. You’re one of many, wolf, and not even in his top five.

Jasmine was the only one who’d called me out on my shit, who didn’t walk around me on eggshells. Yeah, and now she just avoids you completely.

Not surprising after the shit I’d pulled. I knew exactly what she thought of me, how she saw me, and I fucking hated it.

I shoved my phone in my back pocket. “She’s got a name, and where I go and what I do is none of your business.” Why the fuck was Breanne still here? She knew what this was. She’d made it crystal clear she wanted nothing more from me than sex, and sleepovers weren’t part of the deal, and sneaking back into my place was seriously fucked up. I shoved my fingers through my hair. “We got a problem here?”

She made a show of sliding on her panties, a sly smile on her lips.

I scanned her body, searching inside myself for something, any emotion at all, but found nothing. My cock didn’t even stir. After my visit to the cliffs, I was back to the way I needed to be—cold, numb, detached. I’d had to find a way to shut everything down, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I’d still be living wild, my fox in control, letting animal instinct override everything else—or I’d be dead.

Numb worked most of the time, thank fuck, or there’d be no getting through the day.

And when it stopped working, I fucked and I fought to shove back the demons in my head, the self-loathing, to drown out that fucking monster’s voice that was so clear sometimes I thought he was still there, and when that didn’t work anymore, I went back to the cliffs. A fucked-up cycle that, for now, kept me breathing.

Only the females and the alcohol hadn’t really been working, anymore, had they? Not like they used to.

“No problem,” she said, her smile dropping, replaced by a scowl. “I just don’t want you coming back to me, if you’ve been fucking that wit…Jasmine.” She smiled, flashing her fangs. “I don’t do sloppy seconds.”

I didn’t like hearing her say Jasmine’s name.

“Again, what I do and where I go is none of your business. You need to leave.” I strode out and down toward the mortuary door at the end of the hall. No, if I was honest, the sex, getting wasted, it hadn’t really been working for a long time. But I’d kept it up because the truth was far too fucking terrifying.