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Rafe had dared to take two of their own, then dared to touch her.
A wonder that he wasn’t dead.
He stood there, his legs wedged to hold his weight up against the wall, taking her scrutiny.
What should send bile up her throat, did not.
The anger at him for what he had done to Eva, to Torrie, to her, boiling deep in her gut.
She stepped closer to him, her gaze running along his skin, and she shifted to the right, finding an open, shallow cut into the flesh of his bicep.
She reached out, her forefinger tracing along the cut, and then she pressed onto the wound, her gaze going back to his face.
The pain instant, she could see it flashing in his eyes. But he refused to react, his stare locked on her, taking the pain she was imparting without screaming.
She twisted her finger digging deeper into the wound.
The slightest wince, and his head tilted down slightly, but his brown eyes refused to move away, piercing her. “Do anything you want to me, Vic. I’ll take it. I deserve it.”
She dug in farther. “What you did to me.”
He nodded, not breaking eye contact. “Yes.”
“You told me you wouldn’t let anyone hurt me.”
“I did.” His words caught and he had to clear his throat. “I kept that vow.”
She blinked, her gaze narrowing. “You hurt me.”
“It had to be me. There was no other way and I couldn’t let anyone else touch you.”
The pain from that moment when his blade sank into her flashed in her mind, spiking her anger and she twisted her finger into his flesh. “That thought process is so wrong—so incredibly misguided.”
“Falsted was going to feed you to the jackals.”
Her finger stilled as bile hit the back of her throat at the thought of those frothing cutthroats.
It took a breath before she could choke out her next words. “Butyouhurt me.”
His eyes closed to her, his head shaking. “I know—it was what needed to happen to save you. To save your aunts.” His eyes opened to her. “I hated it. You don’t know how every second of putting you through that killed me—shredded me through and through.”
She could see the sudden pain etched into his face at the memory. More pain than the physical torture she was currently inflicting on him.
So much pain, it stole her breath away.
Her insides churned, the two sides of the fine line between hating him for all he had wrought upon her and her family and the simple fact that she loved warring against each other.
Her finger slid out of the wound, unable to exact any more damage. She didn’t have the heart for it.
His eyes closed, his breath exhaled. After a long moment, he opened his eyes to her. “You are done? That is it? I can take so much more—I deserve so much more, Vic. Hurt me. Make me suffer.”
She nodded. “You do deserve it. But I cannot do anymore.”
“Wh—why not?”
She shifted closer to him, not touching him, just breathing in his air. Air she thought never to have as her own again. “Because I love you. And I hate that I love you, but I do. But you wanted to rip my family apart. Rip my family away from me. And I’m not stupid. I know in front of Falsted you did what you did to save me. But in that moment, when you were sending such pain through me, I didn’t think I would survive—not because of the pain—but because you were ripping yourself away from me.By choice.”
His stare settled on her, going hard for a long moment before slipping into cold callousness. “You need to leave here, Victoria. Leave and be done with me—there is no future here. Not with me.”
