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My foot catches on something and I stumble. Before I go down, new hands grip the top of my arms, catching me before they set me back on my feet.
I take in the steely gray eyes locked on me, the blood covering every inch of his face.
And that’s when the terror strikes.
I shrink back from the shifter.
His eyes turn blank and his hands fall away.
“Kade. Maybe…” The voice at my side punctures a little more of the numbness filling my body.
Kade turns on his heel and stalks away without a word.
“Saige?” Aden squeezes my arm as if to get me moving again.
I’ve taken a step before I remember something else that I can’t believe I forgot.
Nathan.
My eyes probe every corner of the ruined bar, but the only people in it are me and Aden. A little more of my terror subsides and I turn to face Aden for the first time, my eyes searching his, hunting out that wolf in him that I must have missed before.
As if he knows what I’m looking for, he shakes his head. “I’m not a shifter.”
All this time, he’s known about shifters.
A flash of memory hits. Suddenly, I’m back outside the grocery store with Aden’s pain-filled eyes locked on my throat.
“You knew, didn’t you? About what the bites mean. Is that why you made sure I never met the hounds?”
Maybe later I can think about how they were able to hide the wolf in their eyes when someone took their photograph. I’ve stared at it long enough I would have seen it. I would have known.
“You were afraid.”
No wonder I was the only one who never saw the hounds. He told them to stay away from me. And with my three-hour shifts, they would never have to hide for long.
“They would never hurt you,” he says when I don’t respond.
My laugh is a bitter sound that makes a home for itself in this ruined place. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
“Saige, they won’t—”
“They will.” My voice emerges louder than I’d intended. “I know them,” I whisper as the memories I fight to hold back invade my mind. “I know all the things they would do to me.”
Maybe they’ll tie me up and whip me the way Felix liked to, or chain me to a wall the way Rylan would. Maybe they’ll have a party with their friends and make me crawl naked around them with a tray of snacks on my back.
Like a dog.
Maybe they’ll even make me bark.
Again.
Or worse things I try never to think about. Ever.
Something cuts into my knees and I can’t drag enough air into my lungs.
My face is wet. Am I bleeding? Or is this something else?
An arm slips around my shoulders, another under my knees, and it still feels like it’s happening to someone else.
