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He pulled back at last, leaving me to stare up at him, finally a stirring of something that wasn’t horror in my chest.
That was until he crossed to the fireplace and drew a metal rod from it. At the end, which glowed red, was a thin, straight line.
I tensed.
What was he doing?
He settled in front of me and, before I could open my mouth in protest, flipped the iron and pressed it to the same spot on his shoulder where Eric’s bite was on mine.
His expression tensed through the pain, but he didn’t waver.
“No!”
I understood, all of a sudden, why he’d restrained me. I tried to sit up but couldn’t, eyes wide with shock.
“I failed you,” he growled.
“You d-didn’t.”
“You don’t trust my claim, Gem. If you did, today would never have happened.”
“I…” I couldn’t say it, though. That I trusted that he loved me? That he wanted me—even now? Even after everything. “It’s not your fault,” I choked.
He’d never wavered, buthewasn’t the problem—how could he think he was the problem?
I’d been promised I would never have anything, while he’d promised me the world.
It wasn’t that I didn’twantto believe him—I did. I wanted it so badly it had driven me to run at the slightest possibility of having that dream stolen.
“Please…”
He couldn’t… those marks would scar forever.
Dusk gritted his teeth as he pressed it to his skin again. A hiss of hot iron upon flesh rose in the air, but he held it there.
“Stop it!”I cried, managing to struggle into a sitting position, but it was too easy for him to cup my neck and hold me in place as he branded himself again, his aura splitting the air this time as a low growl of pain rolled through his chest.
He went on for what felt like forever, his body shuddering from the agony of it.
Agony he was enduring for me.
How many bites?
Five? Ten? I didn’t want to count.
When he finished, he set the iron back on the fireplace and returned to the bed. His aura lingered, not for physical strength, I realised, but for the tolerance to the wounds he’d put on his body. As an alpha, he had faster wound healing which was increased by the presence of his aura.
I was silent, my heart racing a million miles a minute as my eyes traced the angry red wounds across his body. He drew my chin up as he settled on the bed before me and pressed his lips to mine.
The kiss was shocking, and familiar in that, too.
He had a habit of kissing me when he absolutely shouldn’t. I swallowed, eyes tracing the wounds again, now he was closer. The patches of flesh were warped and angry. So much more painful than mine. But he drew my chin up, so I was swallowed by piercing yellow eyes.
“It’s my job to protect you, Gem. From them, from the world. Even from yourself, if that’s what you need,” he murmured. “Your scars are my scars. My weight, my burden.”
“It sh-shouldn’t be.”
There was a faint smile on his lips.
