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Mate.
My wolf said it again, but this time it stuck.
Hunter was my mate.
My fated mate, and that meant safety and security.
It meant I was home.
“You found me on the banks of the river because I’d jumped,” I admitted to him in a low tone. My pussy still clenched from the aftershocks of our mating, but if I didn’t do this now, I would lose the gumption. “I’d jumped because if I hadn’t, the High Council of my pack would have murdered me like they did the girls in those pictures. I only had one option left, and I would have rather died at my own hand than at theirs.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Silence met my sudden confession. His amber eyes closed, and he took a deep, calming breath. His body shifted away from mine, and I felt the loss of his heat immediately. He kneeled beside me, picking me up in his arms, and stood. He still hadn’t said a word, and the ongoing silence was eating at me. Hunter carried me toward a large pine tree that sat nestled farther up the bank, clinging to the edge of the forest but still set apart. That was where he sat, tucking me into his lap.
I folded my arms against my bare chest. The night air whipped around my body, causing me to shiver and tuck myself in closer to his warmth. Now that the adrenaline had faded, I was crashing.
“Tell me, sweet girl,” he finally crooned as he caressed the side of my arm gently, his other hand wrapped protectively around my midsection. I breathed in, holding it for a moment before letting it out again. Then I told him my story. Everything. Mostly everything. I’d purposely left out the part about how Damien had raped me repeatedly since I was sixteen. How he’d taunted me and put me on display for his friends. There was no reason for him to know any of that.
Then I told him about being chosen. Fear and shame gripped my heart in a vise as I began to recount that fateful night.
“The Choosing happens every ten years,” I sniffed, “on a full moon. One woman is chosen per council member or council member’s heir. A boy from school chose me. I remember sitting in the dressing room, watching as all the other ladies gushed about being chosen, but all I felt was dread. A cold shiver that washed up my spine.”
“Is that when you got the brand?” he asked, running a finger over the scarred flesh. I nodded.
“Yes,” I whispered. “All the chosen were branded the day of the ceremony.”
His brow furrowed. “Do you know why?”
I shook my head. “At first, I thought it was for some kind of identification purpose. So others knew who we were. But when they—” A sob burst through my lips. “When they…”
No, I couldn’t tell him. If he found out…
“They raped you,” he hissed lowly, his face darkening. “Raped all of you, didn’t they?”
Another sob, followed by another. I nodded through the onslaught of tears, not wanting to put a voice to those ugly words. In my mind, it became nothing more than a memory. Words had power, and when said aloud, they could topple dynasties. Telling him I was raped, brutalized, and nearly murdered would shatter the little control I had left.
Hunter held me tight to his chest, whispering soothing words in my ear as he caressed my skin with a gentleness that belied his savage looks.
“They cut their throats.” I choked on another sob. “It was all a game to them. They laughed at their pain and fucked them until they bled out. All to gain their youth. To live longer. Those girls were nothing but lambs for the slaughter, and no one in the pack batted an eye at it.”
My confession was met with silence, but not without reaction. His chest heaved, his heart thudding like a jackhammer beneath me. The fingers that had been gently caressing my arm were clenching and unclenching at a manic pace.
The hand that had been resting on my thigh gripped me tighter. Hunter rearranged me on his lap so that I was straddling his waist, facing him. He grabbed my right wrist, guiding it to a spot of intricate tattoos that rested just beneath his collarbone. In my lust-filled haze, I hadn’t taken notice of the artwork that covered most of his skin. In one scene, a great white wolf lay chained to the floor. Its hair was matted, its amber eyes solemn and hopeless. It was a desperate scene that flowed into the next. This one depicted the wolf breaking free from its chains, shaking off the dirt from its fur. It rose, its amber eyes full of hatred and revenge. The last scene was full of blood and darkness. A wolf exacting revenge.
“What are you…”Oh.My fingertips grazed scarred flesh. It was in the same spot as mine and in the same…how had he gotten this? “How did you get this?” The brand, I’d been told, was reserved for the chosen. Why would he be branded as a chosen? I ran my hand over the puckered flesh again, feeling out the pattern to confirm that it was, indeed, like mine. He’d hidden it from sight, covered it with the story of his rebirth. Was he as ashamed of his scars as I was of mine? Is that why he bit me right over my own brand? So that I wouldn’t see it and be reminded of the shame I’d felt? The humiliation? Even if he hadn’t known my story at the time, he could understand how it felt to writhe beneath the hot brand while being held down. In some ways, it was more demoralizing than anything that happened before it…or after.
With my hand still pressed against his brand, he sighed. “I was bred to be a weapon. Born to be a hunter. To kill shiftersand those who were perceived as threats to the Collective.” I knew the moment his amber eyes scanned my face that he was looking for recognition. He wouldn’t find any. I’d never heard of the Collective. “My mother was a human incubator. A breeder. Paid handsomely to fuck shifters and bear their young. Ironic, really. The Collective’s entire reason for creating us was to wipe out those who were just like us. Shifters with human DNA. Half-breeds.”
“Why?”
“Bigotry. Purity.” Hunter shrugged. “There are any number of reasons why they would want to rid the world of half-breeds.”
That didn’t make any sense. Why would a half-breed be a threat? Bigotry and purity could be reasons, but they were shallow ones. There had to be something else driving the want behind eradicating half-breed shifters, which would be a near impossible task. There were more than seven billion people on the planet, and at least half that population were shifters and half-breeds. There was no way to eradicate that much of a population, even if only a quarter of that three and a half billion shifter population were half-breeds.
What I wanted to understand was why a shifter, trained to be an assassin, carried the same brand that had been placed upon me for being chosen. What was the connection?
“In the café, was that the first time you had fully shifted?” Hunter asked curiously. I shook my head, dropping my eyes to where our pelvises met. I could feel him, hot and hard, beneath me, but he didn’t act on it. At the moment, I wished he would, just so he’d move on from his current line of questioning.
