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He promptly shakes his head. “No, like Philip said, I don’t have the killer instinct. And while my father would prefer I get rid of them permanently, Shade, Rune, and I just herd them into the mountains. Some come back, but most of them don’t.”
He lays a hand on my cheek. “Lake, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I need to know what happened … who attacked you.” His blue eyes cloud over.
“I don’t think I can talk about that,” I whisper hoarsely. “I don’t talk about it with anyone, except Legend. But that’s only because he saved me. And I rarely even talk to him about it.”
“Legend saved you?” he asks, and I nod. “Then I owe him the world.”
“Well, you can’t really give him the world,” I crack a pathetic joke as tears flood my eyes. “It’s not really yours to give.” A sob wrenches from my chest.
He encloses me in his arms and yanks me against his chest so my ear is resting above his heart. “Shh … It’s going to be okay.” He smooths his hand along the back of my head. “I won’t let anything ever happen to you again. And I’m going to make sure the werewolves who hurt you pay.”
“How can you?” Tears stream down my cheeks. “They’re in the Common Realm. Or, at least they were.”
“Then I’ll track them down in the Common Realm.”
“How? You can’t get in there unless you’re banished.”
“Let me worry about that. I just need you to tell me what they look like. Did they have any characteristics that stood out? Did you maybe see their pack mark?”
Images blur through my mind, potent and agonizing, knocking the air from my lungs.
“I don’t know,” I choke out. “I don’t want to think about it.” I push him away and collapse to the floor. “I don’t want to think about what they look like or smell like or what their hands felt like when they touched me …” I gasp for air, yanking at my hair. “I can’t think about it. I just can’t.” I continue to babble as I veer into a panic attack, yammering on and on about my pain.
While I don’t flat-out state all the gory details, I’m fairly certain Jules gets the gist of how I was raped that day, my stomach clawed open, and part of my soul ripped away. I’m sure I’m freaking him out. I mean, his alterum dimidium animae finally returns to him, but instead of the badass wolf he connected to, he gets a broken, tainted, ruined, barely existing werewolf.
My vision spots with darkness as I claw at the floor, my head swimming with lightheadedness.
I am utterly broken.
Ruined.
I hate the werewolves who did this to me.
But do I hate all wolves now?
I’m not sure of anything anymore.
I don’t want to be like this.
“Lake, calm down.” Jules kneels beside me and wraps his arms around me. “You need to breathe, sweetheart. You’re not breathing.”
As I inhale several shaky breaths, the spots in my vision gradually fade.
“I’m sorry,” I croak out, humiliation burning my cheeks.
He angles my chin up toward him. His eyes flame violet, revealing he still cares about me. How he can after witnessing my meltdown, I haven’t a clue.
“Don’t you ever fucking apologize for what happened,” he says. “None of it was your fault. It was theirs, and they’re going to pay for what they did to you.”
“What if you can’t find them?” I whisper. “What if they find me first?”
“They won’t,” he swears. “I’m never going to let anything bad ever happen to you again.”
How I wish his words were true.
“You can’t always control what happens to me.”
“No, I can’t,” he agrees. “But you can.”
