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I examine the door for a weak point and start unscrewing the hinges by hand, using the sharp claws of my wolf. They come out slowly, but surely, and I don’t look back.
Not even when the younger version of me starts tugging the back of my shirt and the leg of my jeans.
“Silas, we need to know. Those letters are proof he didn’t abandon us.”
Apollo, he sounds so fucking desperate. I remember being that kid, I remember feeling that way.
But this little kid isn’t me, and I’ll never leave this room if I don’t force myself to ignore him.
“Silas! Silas! Please, she’s coming. I don’t want her to lie to me anymore. Silas!”
Sorry, kid, I have a future. I’m not giving that up to feed a demon.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Adrian
Itdoesn’tmatterhowmany times I tell myself what I’m seeing isn’t real, that the forest and Rachel and her psycho ex are all an illusion, a swell of panic rushes over me every single time I see my mate in need. I can’t stand the thought of leaving her to die. I can’t force myself to stop rushing to her aid.
A few dozen high adrenaline, bloody and panicked cycles in, I start to realize I’m trapped in a loop.
I’m going to have to do something different to get out of here.
Dread accompanies the panic on the next cycle.
I save my mate again, and it starts over.
Fuck. I can’t just let her die.
Even if this isn’t real, it feels real.
I force myself to keep my eyes closed after I’ve marked her.
It isn’t easy. They automatically blink open straight away. I close them again to concentrate.
I’m used to relying on instinct, but it isn’t serving me well in this situation. It’s making me run in circles on the spot, while Apollo only knows what’s happening to the rest of my pack.
Rachel isn’t going to die if I walk away from this nightmarish memory.
This is just an image from the past.
The real Rachel is in this house somewhere, and she’s in real trouble.
I need to stop reacting and walk away.
When I open my eyes, I’m ready to get the hell out of this forest. I shift back into my human form and get to my feet. I see Rachel run by again, desperate and exhausted. So close to death that I can taste it in the air. That fucking warlock chases her, looking pleased with himself.
I put my hands over my ears as I walk past them, moving quickly and keeping my gaze straight ahead. I have to walk away from this, like I had to lose the guilt that reared up every time I would think about what happened to her that night.
I agonized over it for so damn long. Told myself we should have been faster. We could have gotten there in time to save her properly if we’d been faster. She never should have had to take my mark to survive. She should have had a choice, and we would have honored it. We would have known she was meant for us, even if she didn’t become a hybrid shifter. She still would have ended up as our mate.
I wish she could have had the choice.
My father denied my mother her choice, biting her to turn her, and I always hated him a little for that. She’d said she was happy, but she made it clear so many times that it wasn’t what she wanted. I can’t help wondering if she would have been happier if he could have let it be.
I don’t ever want Rachel to resent me, to look at me the way my mom sometimes looked at my dad, as if she couldn’t stand him.
I thought I was over the guilt from marking her. I’m not. It’s still there. I just buried it deeper.
