Page 43 of The Warrior's Captive

Like he’d been doing it his whole life.

She couldn’t stand anymore. She let her legs give way as she crumpled into the chair by the window.

“Do you know why you’re here?” She looked out the window, like a coward. She didn’t have his strength or his will. She’d break down. She’d give in. She’d beg for a solution when there wasn’t one, except the one she’d already contrived in her head. “I mean, how you got back here?”

He set the glass down hard, which drew her attention. She was careful not to meet his eyes again. She couldn’t look anywhere at him. If she did, she’d never be able to resist the pull of her body to his, his darkness calling out for her light and her light more than willing to make a sacrifice of itself to spark as a beacon to his thorny, boulder-strewn path. He needed her still. He was still hurting even if he’d never show it. He still turned her into a liquid inferno.

He was and would always be the only man she’d ever want.

“I…” He wasn’t one to waste words. He never was.

She finally looked and saw the way his body tensed. He was struggling to put everything together, including the days he’d been out. Before that, though, he must have been incandescent with pain and that must have blotted out everything else.

He scraped a hand over his beard before she could warn him. He didn’t wince when his fingers brushed over the horrible cut on his cheek. He kept his back carefully away from the headboard or even the pillows. He leaned forward enough that nothing made contact. He lowered his hand and brought it to his chest, tracing the letters he’d bear in his flesh as a scarred reminder of a crime that wasn’t his.

“It’s all because of me, it’s all my fault,” she moaned. She covered her face to hide her tears. They were hot and slippery against her palm. “You almost died because of me.”

He tried to push himself out of bed. Tried to get to her. She dropped her hands and yelped out a warning as she fumbled to the edge of the bed. She fell on her knees, fingers digging into the blankets. “Please don’t do that. You need to rest.”

The way he looked at her made her want to throw herself the rest of the distance. She wanted to tumble into his arms. She wanted to rain down tears all over him, a healing rain in hopes that something beautiful could bloom out of all the darkness and decay that had been his life.

“I don’t remember anything other than being taken down in the cave. Agnor, my alpha, he came in and my… he said that I was coming back here.”

“And nothing else? You know nothing more?”

“No.” It looked like he wanted to. He didn’t like being out of control. He didn’t like not knowing that hours of his life, full days, had vanished from him.

It was the worst deception she’d ever made, and she’d hate herself for it. She already did. But he’d confirmed her worst fears. His alpha had sanctioned this, he might have sent him back. But it was clear that he’d intended for him to die on the long journey to Wyoming.

Her heart was a tattered, worn-out thing and this was her taking it out and plunging endless knives through it until there wasn’t anything left. But, for him, she’d tear it out and make a sacrifice of it over and over again. This was all her fault, and only she could make it right and keep him safe.

She took a chance and looked him dead in the eyes. She couldn’t flinch. If he sensed once that she was lying, it would all be over. “I begged my brother to get you back as part of a continued peace. I didn’t trust that your pack wouldn’t harm you. He told your alpha that an eye for an eye soon leaves a lot of sightless eyes and wasted life. Your brother took my brother’s mate, even if they hadn’t done the official ceremony. Your alpha understood why Rome did it and why we protected him and will continue to protect him. Kieran ordered a blood oath of peace going forward if you were returned. That was his demand. Just that he return you, so you could answer for what you’d done by taking me.”

She stopped for breath, but she held those icy, unblinking eyes the entire time.

That was what Kieran had told his alpha, there had been no mention of her pregnancy, just that she had been defiled. Kieran had sworn that no harm would come to Castor, but their pack law demanded that he admit to his crimes. It seemed the safest way to get him away from his pack—and considering he arrived half dead, Briar May dreaded what would have happened if Kieran had told them of the pregnancy. His pack was barbaric and lived by some archaic warrior code.

Would they have demanded her baby?

She took another steadying breath. Everything hinged on her delivery of this. Everything.

“We can’t be mates, Castor. Never. You aren’t safe here. You aren’t safe anywhere in the world, especially not with me by your side. I don’t trust them to keep their word. Maybe this alpha will, but what of the next one? I see now, after days of watching you fight for your life, seeing how you were brutalized by your own pack, that I can’t take you as a mate. I have to reject you, even though my whole being is sick at the thought of it. I am beyond broken by this, but you’ll be free. We’ll tell your alpha that you died from your injuries. Burn and bury your clothes to leave just enough of a scent. You can leave, and this time, no one will be coming after you. You can finally know peace.”

“No!” He turned and inhaled sharply. His wounds might not be weeping blood anymore, but the pain was still very real.

It took everything she had not to surge forward and see to him. “Please, just lie still,” she begged. “You could hurt yourself all over again.”

He ignored his own body. He looked like he’d get up right then and shake sense into her. “That’s too high a price to pay.”

“Nothing is too much for me to pay for you.”

He cracked wide open without moving a muscle. Without a single expression. She didn’t even know how she knew it was happening, but she knew that he no longer felt nothing. The scales had tipped inside himself, and he was coming down on a side where everything rushed in at once.

“I won’t leave you again,” he promised. It sounded more like a dark oath than a threat. “I won’t be parted from you one more time. We can—”

“What?” She cut him off. “Fight?” She couldn’t let him say anything more. Not when it was everything she wanted to hear, and she knew her bravery and resolution only went so far. “Fight until we’re dead and the people who love and care about us are hurt? I can’t leave. They’ll know we’re lying if I go. It would be so obvious.”

“Your brother would lie for us. He could say that you needed to get away from here, that you needed to heal. Your mate is gone. Dead. You’ve gone away to find solace.” He didn’t sound like he was buying into anything. He was just plying her with options.

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