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“Can you…” I couldn’t form the words. I didn’t want to be alone, but I didn’t want anyone to stay with me either. I didn’t want anyone to see me in that state.
Shaw stared at me for a few long seconds, as if he couldn’t understand, which made sense since I hadn’t actually asked him for anything. I hesitated, then turned and headed toward the woods. Maybe if I were out in nature, even as a man, it would be easier for me.
I’d be closer to freedom. Even when I went into my own head.
“Let me come with you,” Shaw said suddenly, and from the look on his face, I could have sworn we were both surprised. “Let me watch over you while you’re in your own head.”
“Okay,” I said, one little word that didn’t do much to express all the feelings pressing against my chest and bubbling under my skin. My emotions felt sometimes as if they were too big for my body and I would explode.
I lay down in the grass, with the sun shining on my face. The smell of the soil, the softness of the ground under my body, the rock that pressed in under my right calf, were all things that would ground me.
I imagined the room. The way it was dark until the doors creaked open, until boots came down the wooden stairs. The way sunlight became inextricably bound up with pain.
I imagined seeing myself through Nathan’s eyes. A teenage boy, broad-shouldered but raw-boned, withering away like plants kept from the sun. I tried to imagine the joy of kicking someone over and over who was chained and defenseless until they were shuddering. I tried to imagine my own face, begging.
My stomach turned. The sense of hatred and loathing that choked me wasn’t Nathan’s imagined emotions, but the way I felt for the boy I’d been. The way I still felt, for the man I was.
“It’s all right. You’re here, with us.” Shaw’s voice was warm and comforting, and the illusion faded, just enough to be bearable. “With your family, for whatever comfortthatbrings.”
Just enough for me to get a better grip on who I was.
Not pathetic. Not weak. Just… a little broken.
As I turned my back on the figure on the ground, laughing at them and trudged up into the light. I let the storm doors slam shut behind me. I blinked in the light, the way I had when they dragged me up that last time.
Before the whole world shattered into bloody pieces.
“You’re on pack territory, I’m right beside you, and you’re safe.” Shaw’s hand brushed my back tentatively, then wrapped around my shoulder. His grip was firm now, comforting. “You’ll always be safe with us.”
It was hard to believe him. But I clung to it anyway.
Just as the resounding thud of the storm door slamming shut on the cellar faded into nothing, something compelled me to turn back and open the doors again.
My booted feet descended heavily into the basement, clomping down each step.
There was no one chained down here.
Then I fell, landing heavily on my knees besides the stained threadbare mattress.
I caught a glimpse of the bloodstained hands in front of me. Wide hands, the knuckles broken open. This was Nathan, not fifteen years ago or ten years ago butnow.
Well, not now, exactly, but recently.
He was alive.
He had made it back to the Longroad pack. And he was calculating, that terrible dangerous mind of his whirring along. Nathan never experienced self doubt. The past that mattered so much to me didn’t matter at all really to him. Just one thought burned in his mind.
Amelia.
Well, maybe the fucker and I had one thing in common.
We both only cared about her. He would burn the world down to possess her, and I would burn it down to protect her.
“Liam, tell me that you’re breathing,” Shaw sounded worried. “You went so quiet…”
Nathan was afraid that while he was weak, recovering from his terrible wounds, someone would challenge him for alpha. He wanted to grow strong again. So he was hiding under his own house. But he couldn’t survive there forever, I thought. He’d have to run as a wolf to eat if he was strong enough, or he would have to get help…
The vision must have changed while I was deep in my own head. Because I heard the familiar creak of the doors opening, and I bolted up, fear spiking in my heart.
