Page 34 of The Brute and the Blade

Not even the male who made me his in every way that matters. The male who marked me, body and breath and soul.

Thane clears his throat, a soft, awkward sound that drags me back to the present, to the path...and the life that waits at the end of it. The life...

That I no longer know how to fit, how to fill...with this new, raw self, forged in the fires of forbidden passion.

"Shall we, then?" he asks gently, gesturing down the winding, moss-grown track that leads to the village, to the war. "Shall we go back, little sister? Back to the fight, and whatever waits on the other side of it?"

I take a deep, shuddering breath, squaring my shoulders against the weight of it. Against the pull that wrenches at my core with every step, every second...

That carries me further from him. From the heat and the hunger, the wild, unquenchable want...

That was the realest thing I've ever felt. The truest truth I've ever known...even as it ripped me apart, rent me asunder, sundering sense from sanity and right from raw...

Lily, his voice whispers in my memory, my marrow. Lily, my heart, my home...come back to me. Come back, before it's too late, before I shatter without you...

I can't, I whisper back, a broken, bleeding cry in the barren chambers of my heart. I can't, Grok. Not now. Not ever. Because I don't know how to be that girl for you, that gasping, greedy creature drunk on sensation, on surrender...

I don't know how to be yours anymore...even as every beat of my battered heart, every breath in my burning lungs, screams that I'll never be anything but yours, now and forever…

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, my love...my mate.

And with that silent grief shivering through me, I fall into step beside my brother, my blood, and let him lead me down the path, into the past.

Into a world, a war, that will never feel like home again...now that I know the taste, the touch, of something truer. Something real, forged in the fires of feral passion and the wild, untameable wanting of a monster's kiss, a brute’s desire.

Forgive me, I keen, to him, to myself. Forgive me, Grok...and forget me. Free me...from the chains of your conquest, your craving.

For I will never, never...be free of you.

Of that, if nothing else...I am certain. A grim truth, carved into my core like a brand.

Lily Thornwood...is dead. Shattered and remade, reborn in the arms of her enemy.

In the arms...of her mate. Her king, her captor.

I will never be the same again.

14

Lily

We emerge from the forest into the bustling heart of Thornhall village, and for a moment, I'm struck dumb by the sheer familiarity of it all. The thatched roofs and whitewashed walls, the winding dirt paths and ancient trees. The smithy's ringing anvil, the bakers' shops redolent with the scent of fresh bread.

It's all exactly as I remember, exactly as I left it...and yet, somehow, it feels different. Foreign. Like a painting I once loved, now viewed through a distorted lens.

Or maybe, that sly voice whispers, it's not the village that's changed. Maybe it's you. Maybe you've seen too much, done too much, to ever truly come home again...

I shove the thought down as Thane leads me towards the great hall where the elders and war council await my report. I feel the weight of eyes on me as we pass, curious and cautious, wary and wondering.

The Red Blade, they murmur. She's back. But where has she been all these months? What secrets does she carry from her time in the monster's den, the beast's foul bed?

I flinch at the suspicion, even as a part of me rails at the unfairness of it. I am no traitor. I am Thornhall to the marrow of my bones. Everything I endured at Grok's hands was for them. For the cause, to bring an end to ogre tyranny.

Liar, that hateful voice hisses. You didn't suffer in Grok's arms, in his bed. You reveled. You came alive, in ways you never dreamed...

And now you would betray him, abandon him.

I swallow hard, tasting shame and self-loathing. No, I didn't betray him. I saved him from his own worst impulses.

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