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Lux held my gaze, a touch of defiance flickering there as she bent forward to lower her jeans to the floor and kicked them free, barefoot. She’d lost her shoes, and I didn’t know when that had happened. When she straightened, her feathers had disappeared, leaving the swell of her perfect breasts bare. Tight, blush-pink nipples stood out from her flushed chest. I held her gaze a moment longer, then traced over the flat, smooth plane of her belly and lower.
The smooth skin stopped there.
Below her bikini line, large ridges of irregular scar tissue created pulls where her skin looked like it had been ripped apart by claws around the level of her bikini line. Tanned skin transformed to white scarring that slit her body horizontally, hip to hip. Not the work of a surgeon—more the handiwork of a backyard monster.
An urge to rip the world apart for her rose in my throat.
I dampened it down with force. There would be time to deal with that later. I swallowed, reaching out. “Lux—”
“I know. I’m hideous. I’ve been told enough times.” Her crooked smile hid none of her pain—of the rejection she expected from me.
“Tell me what happened?” I cupped her face in my hands, staring into her eyes.
“So you can throw me away after you find out how dirty, how unclean I am?” She spat the words at me, her reaction an automatic defense based on a past trauma.
“You’re a crossbreed. Worked that one out. Not that I personally give a fuck. I think there’s some wallaby in my line somewhere. Used to get teased as a kid over being too small.” Her eyes flared as she took in my frame, looking at it with new respect. “Clearly filled that out. High school was fun for those little assholes.”
“Did you bully them?” Lux whispered the accusation, then pressed her hands over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine.” I tucked her hair behind her ear. “I made a point of running the campus each afternoon. You know, for fitness reasons. And to find them in their favorite spots, kicking the shit out of smaller prey.” My mouth flattened, skin pulling tight at the memory. “They moved on fast. Cost a handful of broken bones, maybe.”
Lux’s gaze traced over the bruises that bloomed beneath my skin. “I’m no better than they are.”
“Of course you are.” I caught her chin between my fingers, tilting her head a little further back, though the movement strained tender muscles. “Tell me what happened to you.” I let the request hang between us, neither a command nor a requirement, and gave her time.
Lux’s eyes filled with tears. A flush spread from her cheeks, heading south. I kept my gaze on her face, though I let my fingers trace over her scar. No matter what she thought, I believed every mark proved the courage of the woman who bore them. I needed to convince her of that.
“I dated. Once. Just … once. It was enough. He was sweet, an emu shifter from up north. His father … wasn’t. Sweet, that is. When I introduced his parents to my mother, she spoke about my father—an ostrich who had been forced to race years before. When I was born, an old debt haunted him and he raced again. Ostriches can be suicidal. He thought that running into a drunken crowd and attacking them was a better way to prevent me from having to follow his path, to offer my mother and I a future. She is—was … very proud.”
“And your boyfriend’s father wasn’t impressed.” I eyed the almost invisible white ink that lined her forearms, new meaning coming to me in a harsh slap of reality. I fought back the urge to touch her covered scars. She wouldn’t appreciate the reminder, not right now.
“No.” Lux shook her head, her gaze dropping to the floor.
I tapped her bottom lip, shoving my arousal away as it dipped beneath my thumb, her soft flesh giving way to my touch with ease.
Later, youinsensitive asshole.
“You said was, about your mother.”
“He killed her.” Her gaze flew back to mine, solitude forming in their fathomless depths. “He—they came, him and his friends and my boyfriend…” She cleared her throat. “They all came. I thought he would protect me, save me. But no one will ever save me but myself. It’s why I run. Because I can.” Loneliness morphed into determination across her stunning face.
I offered her a small smile. “I love running with you, Little Bird.” Myfingers followed the tears that tracked her cheeks.
“They threw her into a car while Clay mauled me in the backseat. His father’s friend watched.” She paused while I swore.
“How old was he?”
“Seventeen.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen.” Her smile turned watery. “They … there was a lot of blood. He told me not to watch. I thought he was still being kind, while my heart split into a million pieces at the loss of my remaining parent who died because she was proud of a husband, a father who sacrificed himself for us. For me.” Her smile turned bitter, inward, while the rage she didn’t display built inside me instead. “I didn’t realize he told me not to watch because they were going to do the same thing to me. They cut me open and seared my ovaries with bright irons, ruining all the reproductive bits. Protecting their community from an unclean bird who might threaten their species with my filth. I lived. She didn’t. A total fluke, and nothing to do with fate or any of that bullshit. A shifter doctor found me and spent months warding off infection while he stitched what remained of me back together. Fun times.”
Ice ran through my veins as she powered on. I relaxed tight fingers, unwilling to hurt her but pushing through the need to find the pricks and end them all.Thiswas the sort of bullshit Rafe and I actively exterminated from our community.
And they’d traced her to her workplace, clearly willing to do it again and again.
“It has to stop.”
