Page 70 of Ignited

Chicken, she told herself. You’ve faced down sorcerers in their lairs.

But none of that was as scary as this.

Still a tiger, she picked her way through the tumble of boulders concealing the cave entrance. There was a corridor with a sharp left turn, so she couldn’t see the interior, but she could smell metal and gun oil and old, faint scents of wolf. And one fresh one—Boomer.

She could feel him in there, his dark emotions bouncing around inside him until he felt like he would explode.

Silently, she padded down the hallway, around the corner, and into the cave.

Chapter 29

For the last twenty minutes, Boomer had been arranging and rearranging the explosives and ammo stored in the cave.

It was an emergency supply cache, one of several dotted around the outskirts of the territory in case the Ridge was attacked. Food, water, clothes, guns, ammo, explosives, even a signal beacon in case any pack member was stranded here and needed help.

But now he felt like an explosion, and he was trying to decide the optimum configuration to blow this place sky-high.

He didn’t know if he was really going to do it. But that dark place he always tried to keep at bay had reached up from the depths and taken over his whole insides. He couldn’t see anything bright or good. No future. Not even any past, except for the really, really bad stuff.

He was going to lose Karisma, and his brother, and everything he’d done in his life was going to be for nothing. He would end up alone, like he deserved.

When he felt like this, the only thing that seemed to fix it was blowing something up. Total destruction—that he was in control of.

And this was the worst he’d ever felt. The biggest the darkness had ever been. So it needed the biggest explosion, to make it go away.

Then he scented the hot wild scent of Karisma’s tiger, heard her soft footfalls. In spite of himself, he turned around.

In the dim light of the electric lantern, she looked like a ghost tiger—the Ghost Tiger of the Rockies. He’d found her at last, and discovered that it was too late. They were both fucked up beyond repair, and even though she was his mate, she would never be his.

Because Thanatos was wrong. Claiming her might be good for the old troll, but it would it would hurt Karisma by trapping her in this dark place with him. He always hurt the people he loved, in the end. Or they hurt him.

“Why don’t they tell you?” he asked her, as she stood there staring at him with those heartbreakingly beautiful eyes. His voice started out conversational, but he could hear it tightening with emotion. “All those people at the Ridge, going on about how great it is, finding your true mate. Why don’t they tell you it’s so hard? And it hurts so much?”

He was yelling at her now. “Why did it have to be you? All of them got mates who adore them, who they can make happy. It just fucking figures that I got the one whose worst nightmare being is bound to another person. That’s some kind of fucked-up fate.”

She stepped forward, making a little mrrow sound. Almost like she was trying to comfort him.

He couldn’t make himself stop yelling. He didn’t want to be comforted. “I’m sick of this shit. I’m sick of never being good enough. Do you have any idea what it was like for us, growing up?”

He threw down a box of ammo. “My dad hated us, me and my brother, because of what we are. He was human, and my mom fell for him—don’t ask me why. He beat the crap out of her, after he found out she was a shifter. And out of us, when he found out we were too. Freaks, he called us. He killed her, did you know that? He said she left us, in the middle of the night, but we knew. She would never have left us with him.”

The tiger walked up to him, rubbing her head against him. He lost his balance and sat down hard on a plastic tub of rations. She did it again, thrusting her head against his chest, and he found himself holding onto her like she was a life preserver.

Somehow, it was easier to talk to her when she was a tiger. To let loose all the darkness that had hidden inside him all this time. Because he couldn’t see her pity, her disgust. Maybe she didn’t even understand.

“Then Bro went into the military. I begged him not to go, to take me away somewhere, but he said he had to get money and a place to live first. It was the only job he could get.”

Boomer shook his head. “But it didn’t work out like that. Once Bro was gone, my dad beat me every chance he got, and I took it, because I healed so quick I told myself it didn’t matter. I didn’t want to hurt him back.” His voice started to shake. “I wanted him to love me. Only, he didn’t. And one day my wolf had enough.”

He went back in his mind, reliving it as the words tumbled out of his mouth. That night. His dad, drunk as fuck and high on speed, coming after him with a gun.

The first shot, the way it felt when the bullet buried itself in his shoulder. He knew his dad had been aiming for his heart, but his hands weren’t steady enough.

And that was it. His wolf rose up in him. Not all the way—but enough to make him fight back. He told Karisma about launching himself at his father. Taking another bullet. And then just red fucking rage—all the rage that had been building up in him all those years.

They didn’t have many close neighbors—only one that might have been close enough to hear the shots, and he must not have been home, because the cops didn’t come. Not then.

It was his brother who found him.