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He lifted his head and cracked open one eye. “But what?”
“It simply sounded like you were about to provide additional information.”
“But,” he came again with that teasing tone, “I don’t want tonothave sex every time we argue.”
Thunder rumbled through my skull. I caught my head in my hands as I curled into a ball, hiding my nose between my knees. Some vague and muted sound came to my ears, yet I couldn’t perceive them enough to know what I was hearing. Lightning bolted across my vision. The nightmares tumbled through my mind at once, a terrifying slideshow of each and every face I’d witnessed during those awful instances of my past.
“Avi,” I said. “I used to call youAvi.”
Warmth met my lower back. That must have been Xavier’s hand, but the notion of him touching me infuriated me when moments ago it had been my saving breath.
Fear crashed into my core, and I swatted his hand away, scooting toward the trees, attempting to find a place where I could put enough distance between us. No, there was never enough distance when it came to getting away from Xavier England.
“Galanthia,” he spoke, his voice warbled slightly but clear enough, “what’s the matter with you? Are you okay?”
I stood up and brushed the dirt from my thighs. “You bullied me.”
“This morning?” His face contorted with confusion. “I know I said some mean stuff, but—”
“No, when we were in the Ambersky Growlers.”
Yes, that was the name of the pack. I could see the letters now in my mind. Doubt had clouded me for such a long time with Xavier, my intuition swearing up and down that I had plenty of reasons for my disdain. Mindful as I was, I should have trusted my gut. No one had the right to advise the opposite.
“You relentlessly bullied me as a child,” I stated shakily as I gathered my clothes. “You chased me through the fields. You and your precious pack members taunted me for not being able to shift.”
Nausea sent me to my knees. Xavier tried to capture me but stepped back when I threatened him with my open palm.
“Yourfamilydrove me out to the woods where I was left to starve.”
His brows crowded over the bridge of his nose. “Just wait a minute, Lanthie. That’s not true.”
“You don’t get to call me that.”
“We never chased you out of the pack. The elders, they were just trying to encourage you to shift into your wolf form because—”
I laughed bitterly. “Because they couldn’t possibly accept a shifter who wasn’t able to shift, could they?”
“Galanthia, please. I never bullied you. I may have teased you a bit, but that was just because we were kids. Don’t you remember that?”
“I remember being tormented.”
Pain radiated through my side like an electric bolt stabbing my rib cage. While it was difficult to get dressed, I managed to push through the agony, yanking my boots on shortly after my clothes were in their proper places. Additional photographs piled onto the images that rose in my mind.
So many things were coming back at once.Toomany things. Anguish like this could quite literally kill someone with enough force—and I was rapidly approaching my threshold.
“They electrocuted me,” I recalled, to my detriment. “Xavier, they put a shock collar on me. Do you know what else they did?”
He stared at me with a hollow expression. Was any of this getting through, or was he truly this oblivious to his pack’s practices?
“Galanthia, wait—”
My middle finger shortened his plea. “Save it. I’m going home. Don’t follow me—and don’t ever bother me again.”
Distress accompanied me back to my shared cabin. Dazed by the return of my memories, and by that torturous encounter with Xavier, I hardly realized I had gotten home until I crawled into bed with my boots on. Soft sheets caressed me much like a lover.
Much like the way my lover had cradled me in his arms.
Tears barged into view as I stared at the ceiling with my hands folded against my side. Heartbreak such as mine would remain for a long while, and now I could see why my Elderling elders had insisted on erasing my memories.
