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It’s like we’re having two separate conversations. Is she deliberately being obtuse to fuck with me, or does she truly not understand what I’m asking? I choose to go with the second thought. “What about the mating bond, dammit?”
She gulps. “What about it?” Her body convulses under mine, fear in her eyes.
“You told them, didn’t you? That the bond was broken?”
I don’t like the way she hesitates. “No,” she whispers into the darkness. “I didn’t say anything about it.”
“You’re lying,” I snarl, pulling her closer, ready to buckle from the now painful erection rubbing against her. I force my awareness of it as far back as I can because there are more important things to attend to.
“I’m not, I swear. I didn’t say anything about that. I don’t even understand what happened. And they didn’t mention it, so I figured…”
If only I knew for sure whether she’s telling the truth. It seems unthinkable, and that’s the entire problem in a nutshell. How could she not know what happened down there? How could she not understand the enormity of it? If she did, she would definitely have told her father and the alpha.
But if she didn’t understand, she wouldn’t have known any better.
This means believing they kept her in the dark. “Nobody ever told you?”
“Told me what?”
Either she’s a gifted actress, or she’s telling the truth. My wolf is too confused and distracted by the desire to taste her nectar, claim her lush little body, to see through her words. “They didn’t prepare you in any way for what would happen to you one day?”
“They didn’t think I would ever shift,” she admits. “I didn’t, either. I thought something was broken in me.”
“Still, you should have been prepared, just in case.”
“Prepared how? Prepared for what?”
“The mating bond, for fuck’s sake. You can’t be this stupid.” I turn her around, now gripping the back of her neck while holding the knife against her ribs once again. Our bodies are nearly flush, and I feel her heart more clearly than ever, pounding against my chest now.
“I’m telling you, this is all new to me.” Is it my imagination, or are tears shimmering in her eyes?
It isn’t my imagination because, the next thing I know, she’s leaning against me, her forehead touching my chest. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what’s going on. Nobody ever told me anything—you saw it yourself, the way they treated me. They were going to kill me tonight. Is it such a big surprise they didn’t teach me anything about the mating bond?”
“Stop this,” I growl. I’m still holding on to her, but she’s practically crumbling against me. How pathetic is this? She’s so starved for comfort and understanding that she would do something as stupid as look to me to get it. She doesn’t know me, doesn’t know how dangerous of a man I am.
“You don’t understand,” she whimpers. “Nobody has ever accepted me. Nobody has ever taken me seriously, and now all these things are happening, and I don’t know what to do, and there’s nobody to explain it to me. And now you want to kill me all because you think I did something I didn’t. I didn’t even know there was anything to tell him, I swear!”
I push her away, my lip curling with distaste. “How can you tell me you didn’t feel what was between the two of you? Even I felt it. You mean your wolf didn’t react at all?” All I can do is shake my head. “You’re full of shit.”
She steps up to me. Her eyes glistening with the tears I see in their depths.
Then, she winces.
It’s the pressure in my chest I notice first. That’s how I know I made a mistake. Because somewhere in there, while she was whimpering and complaining, she took the knife from me and it’s now sticking out of my chest, sunk in up to the handle. She only missed my heart by a fraction of an inch.
And she’s gone, out the door, her feet pounding down the hall while blood spreads over my chest, soaking through my shirt.
Son of a fucking bitch. I knew she was fucking lying.
11
LILI
Stupid. So fucking stupid. How could I be so stupid? Why did I do that? Did it feel good? Sure, but was it the stupidest thing I could have done? Absolutely.
I should have cut off his head. At least that would have bought me a few more minutes of life.
And now I’m running, actually more like flying, down the stairs and out the door. I have to get away, but I don’t know where to go. At least I know the area better than he does, which gives me a slight advantage. Unfortunately, he’s not the only thing I have to worry about. Once his pack finds out I attacked him, that’s it. It’s over. I just started a war.
