AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I reached for Amelia’s hand, and she tried to yank away.
But I caught her, just as it felt as if the stone opened up beneath us. The two of us free-fell for a moment before landing hard on the ground, deep inside her dreams.
It was just the two of us, sitting in the darkness, and she gasped as she looked down at our joined hands, then yanked away from me.
“What’s happening?”
She sounded so frantic that all I wanted to do was comfort her. I steeled myself. “Take me to the night Brennan was killed.”
She shook her head, closing her eyes as if she was trying to keep from thinking of it. Her lips peeled back in pain and her mind shook around us, the ground heaving beneath my feet. I reached for her arm to steady her as her eyes flew open.
“Amelia, don’t fight it. I can tell you from experience, it’s only worse if you fight it.”
“Who did that to you?” she whispered. “No one should take your memories away from you.”
The sympathy in her eyes, even when she was furious, almost overwhelmed me. “I’m not taking them away from you.”
“I don’t want you to see. They’re my memories.”
“What don’t you want me to see? What are you ashamed of?” My heart sank, then spurred into fury. She must have hurt Brennan.
Her chin lifted. “We’re not always afraid of what we did, Shaw. Sometimes we’re ashamed of what other people did to us.”
But there was no hiding from the past. Not here..
The darkness was melting away, and the motel where she and Brennan had hidden was in front of us. In the almost-empty parking lot sat a pickup truck with two motorcycles in the back. I recognized his sleek black bike, the one he’d always been tinkering with when we were teens before his life was overtaken by being alpha.
Just seeing the place brought up a mess of memories. I could almost smell the scent of that empty hotel room. There had been the scent of Brennan, of his fear and pain, of piss and blood splattered across the wall. There’d been a bullet hole embedded in the side of the wall. I still had the slug they’d put through my brother’s brain. I’d demolished the wall with my bare hands to dig it out.
I was going to bury it with Nathan.
Maybe then, I’d finally be able to move on, because it felt as if Brennan was haunting me.
“Come on.” I held out my hand to her, determined to get her into that room no matter if I had to carry her. I had to know the truth. She wasn’t acting like she was innocent.
She threw me a look that was full of disgust, then stalked ahead of me. She pushed open the motel room door, which swung easily. It revealed a room with a dark green carpet and old oak furniture. Brennan had liked the finer things in life, but this place must’ve let him pay in cash. After all, he’d been hiding from two packs.
When the two of us walked into the motel room, Amelia let out a gasp of pain. The two of us were ghosts here.
Brennan and Amelia—the Amelia of the past—were already here, and the room felt more alive than our real life.
Brennan had her pinned against the wall, the two of them naked. His lips were all over her throat, his hands roaming her body. He was inside her, the two of them moving together, and he looked at her with love in his eyes. She looked right back at him the same way.
Then the doors burst open.
Amelia hugged her arms over her chest, backing up toward the wall, as the scene played out all over again.
Brennan and Amelia fought back as a dozen Longroad pack filled the room, followed by Nathan Longroad strutting in behind. Brennan threw himself into them, throwing punches and breaking arms. He started to shift, and one of them shot him. He staggered back, blood blossoming across his shirt, his shift momentarily lost in the shock, and four of them jumped on top of him to bring him down.
Meanwhile Amelia scrambled for Brennan's gun in the nightstand, but one of the Longroad men reached her just as she raised it. The gun went off harmlessly into the wall as he wrestled it away from her. She slammed her head into his face, and his nose exploded, blood flying everywhere. He stumbled back, cursing, and she went for the gun again. But Nathan Longroad grabbed her around the waist and hauled her back, kicking and screaming.
Nathan's hands gripped her naked breasts roughly until she cried out as he forced her against his body. Then he pushed her away from him and she fell onto her knees on the carpet.
"Get her dressed."
Four of them had finally beaten Brennan into submission--for the moment--as they held him against the wall. His face was bleeding, his hair wild around his face, his chest heaving with emotion as he watched Amelia.
"Let her go," Brennan said. "It's not her fault."
