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CYRUS
With Bishop’sunconscious form over my shoulder, I stormed away from Audrey as fast as I could before I did something stupid like grab her, drag her up to my bedroom, and lock her inside so I always knew where she was and she was never in danger again. I’d never been so furious and so terrified in my life.
She’d fallen into the arena and Knox, little more than a feral wolf at that point, had charged her.
My heart had completely stopped and I was certain he was going to kill her.
If he’d been completely feral and he’d killed her, he wouldn’t have died or gone insane because of their broken mating bond.
How the hell had she even found us? She had to have followed Bishop after he’d shown her to her new rooms… which didn’t explain why she’d waited until the morning to jump in or didn’t come running when Knox was trying to kill us or react when Bishop’s last attempt to use his twin bond with Knox had knocked him out.
Sisters! Knox had been going crazy all night, slipping further and further into feralness, and had attacked us as if he hadn’t recognized us. We’d been trying to pin him down long enough for Bishop to calm him and use their twin bond to bring him back like he’d done the last time, but Knox was more ferocious than I’d ever seen him.
Deacon had almost lost an arm and I’d almost had my stomach ripped open. We’d been unable to shift to heal ourselves, since Knox would have seen that as an act of aggression, and none of us wanted to leave the others alone in the arena to go outside. That and I wasn’t sure if shifting would fully heal us. It certainly wouldn’t have left us with enough strength to battle Knox.
Then Audrey had shown up, naive and vulnerable like she always was. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t hurt her, that she’d been exactly what he’d needed to regain his humanity. She. Could. Have. Died.
I didn’t know how to get that through to her. I hadn’t meant to yell at her, not like I had with my power raging out of control.
Deacon had even warned me to calm down — thankfully through a telepathic link because embarrassing me in front of her would have completely set my wolf off — but I couldn’t calm down.
If she’d just stayed where she was supposed to, she wouldn’t have been in danger. I needed her to understand that, understand that seeing her in danger, seeing her die would turnmeferal.
But she hadn’t heard what I was trying to tell her. She’d shut down, shrinking in on herself, staring at the floor, and trembling, which only made me angrier. Angry that her immediate response was to become fully submissive. I knew she had more fight in her than that, I’d seen glimpses of it during our journey to the death god’s temple.
Except whatever fight she’d been born with had been trained out of her. The shivering, small woman who’d just cowered in front of me was what her previous alpha had made her.
And now she thought I was the same as that monster.
I bit back a howl but wasn’t strong enough to fully contain the wave of power rolling off me. I needed to get away from her, from everyone, and calm the fuck down.
I didn’t want her to look at me like she was terrified ever again.
And yet… maybe it was for the best. If she hated me, there couldn’t be anything between us.
Because therecouldn’tbe anything between us.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
The memory of pushing into her tight, slick heat and holding her small soft body was burned into my brain.
I wanted more than a fevered desperation that she didn’t fully remember. I wanted the smiles and heated looks she’d given Bishop after her first time with him. I wanted to protect her, lift her up, and show her she could do anything.
I wanted her.
But the pack might not see what I saw. They’d see a shifter who couldn’t shift and I wasn’t going to risk putting her through that. Mating Knox and Bishop would be what was best for her, and I needed to forget all about her.
Hell, she didn’t even remember having sex with me. I suspected what she did remember she thought was just a fevered dream, which was why she kept glancing at me, looking confused and blushing, and a part of me prayed she’d always believe it was just a dream.
It was the coward’s way out and I hated being a coward, but she’d cried for days while partially sedated and still blushed when she looked at all three of us. Knowing we’d all seen her naked and begging and that we’d all slept with her would mortify her. Just knowing we could smell her arousal and that she was going into heat had embarrassed her. I wanted to save her that pain.
And yet, I’d just traumatized her by yelling at her.
Bishop couldn’t wake up fast enough. He was the only one who could patch up my complete fuck up, because it wasn’t just me she was afraid of. I’d seen her shrink away from Deacon as well and suspected she was going to be that way with everyone until they proved to her she was safe.
Fuck.
I reached the top of the narrow stairs carved into the heart of the mountain that connected the Residence with the arena and opened the heavy wooden door. It opened into a hall in the storage area of the castle near the kitchens, and I took one of the many back staircases up to Bishop’s suite.
