Page 20 of The Alpha's Arranged Bride

“I’m going back,” he said flatly. “Soon. I’m going back and I’ll die fighting them as I should have done. It’s only right.”

Her hand shot out and pressed down hard on his mouth. A deep cut on his lip opened up, flooding his mouth with salt and metal. “No. No, Agnar Phaethon, you’re not leaving. You sent us away and that act spared our lives. You were spared as well. I won’t let you waste this breath still in your body. You’ll heal here if I have to tie you to a bed and make you do it. Vengeance and violence, all they breed is death and pain. It’s endless. Up here, we don’t live by the sword, and we don’t die by it. I’m not going to let you go and I’m not giving up on you. You’re my mate, and I’m still going to stand by your side no matter what happens, and we’ll get through this together.”

How could he make her understand this wasn’t a matter of wounded pride? It wasn’t his ego that suffered? That there was no coming back from what he’d endured. He was an alpha who had, through his actions for years, sentenced almost his entire pack to death and extinction.

The only thing he craved now was an end to that knowledge.

He’d been wrong about not having a heart. He did. He had one. He had to, because he felt all the pain in the world. He had to have a soul too, because the blood of his packmates stained it.

“There is no together,” he barked. “I have no body. I have no heart. No soul. I am a ghost. There is nothing to hold onto.”

She took his face in her hands, and he almost wanted to curl his cheek into the warmth. Almost. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep and find out that none of this was real.

“I don’t care. You’re not a ghost. You’re not nothing. You’re mine and I’m yours and I’m holding onto you right now. I’m not going to let go. Ever.”

“I’ll contaminate my sons. I’m cursed. Everything I have turns to ash. My real family. My wife. My pack. My lands. My position.”

She was wild. She looked like she was going to raise her hand off his cheek and slap him. Hard. Repeatedly. She thought he was in shock. He wasn’t. This wasn’t a physical reaction. She tipped his chin up instead and made him look at her out of his one good eye. Even that image grew blurred. She was no longer crying. She looked furious and deadly in her own right. An angel sent blazing down from some other world to do battle for him.

There was something wrong with her. She was no saint. Prairie Rose was just a woman. Shifter, yes, but flesh and blood. Any woman in her right mind would find him repulsive. A normal woman would wash her hands of him and gladly. Why was she looking at him like it mattered more to her than anything in the world that she save him? It wasn’t love. She couldn’t claim that madness. When Castor first proposed his plan of peace between them to bind them through marriage, he’d heard she volunteered. Why? Why wasn’t she fucking sorry that she’d ever said yes, that she’d ever set eyes on him? She’d gone through the sacred ceremony with him in her woods, on her lands, but she had every right to break that oath and reject him.

“I’m worse than nothing. I’ve been transformed into a monster. A beast. I’m no longer wolf or man. I’m just a thing who longs to shed blood. Who is ravenous with it. My own. Alexander’s. It doesn’t even matter anymore.”

“Stop it.” She crushed her lips to his without warning. She kissed him wildly, like an animal would. She matched his ferocity with something he didn’t know she had in her. He didn’t move or respond, and she pulled back, chest heaving. Fear flashed in her eyes, but she was afraid of herself. Of what he’d unlocked in her. “Don’t say you have nothing to live for. Your sons are not nothing and they need you. I am not nothing and I need you.”

Fuck, it was too much. He laughed straight into her face. She blinked in confusion and even though he’d numbed himself inside to anything but death and the violence that would see him there, he felt a fissure open up and ache. Prairie Rose was too kind and good to hurt. That’s why he needed to leave. He was destroying her goodness already.

“I need you,” she repeated stubbornly, with venom. “I need you and you need to heal. Give me six months, Agnar. Six months here with our pack. If you still want to leave at the end of that time, then I’ll let you go. I’ll reject you. I’ll swear that oath to keep your sons and raise them. You can go and seek whatever glorious death you think you need to find. But, in these six months, I will fight for you. I’ll show you that life can be good. That you are capable of so much more than you could ever imagine. You’ll be safe. You’ll be warm. You’ll be cared for. Blake and Levi love you. They would never blame you for what happened. No one would. My family will grow to love you like you’re one of theirs and from this day forward, I will love you as well. I won’t hold back. I’ll give you everything. You think someone like me isn’t equipped to do battle, but I’ll prove to you that I am. In six months’ time, you won’t want to leave, I can promise you that. In six months, you will be my mate in every way, and in every way a part of this pack.”

He’d been wrong about being at the peak of the mountain, at the top of how much pain a man could feel, and a body could take. He thought everything else had to be a slow and painful descent down from that pinnacle, but there was still more to find. Still higher to climb. Still more shards that could dig their way under his skin, shrapnel to explode and tear at his chest.

“No.”

“You aren’t hearing me.”

“I’m hearing you. Don’t you think I know the reason you agreed to take me as a mate was to escape here? To get away from the boring, bland, plain existence that was driving you insane? You came to me expecting me to be your last hope. To give you children and a family and the life you were too scared to claim here. You were raised with this fantasy that you could save someone, but there isn’t going to be a redemption arc for me. You think you’ll uncover some kind of prince beneath the beast, but all I am is what you see. A broken man who has been destroyed and who has nothing left to give but destruction. I will leach the good out of you until there’s nothing left of you if I stay. I’ll do the same to my children. That’s why I have to go.”

She wasn’t hearing him. She was going to push through whatever pain she felt and whatever insults he tried to cut her with to get her the hell away from him. He needed her to give him up. This tenacity that she displayed was frightening. It was unsettling. He wasn’t worthy now and she’d never find anything in him that was. Those days were gone, those parts of him stripped away.

At last, he finally understood what bottom felt like. He wasn’t lying to her about being broken and fearful that all those jagged, sharp edges would cut into her and anyone else who came into contact with them.

“You want to give yourself to me, everything you have, but there’s nothing left to reciprocate. You will get nothing in return.”

She still didn’t back away. She remained willfully blind, yet looking at him directly, challenging him, and if he had anything left, he’d show her exactly why it was such a bad idea to look a wounded wolf in the eye. As it was, his chest was an empty cage where he’d been strung up and left for the ages and the elements, his bones bleached to a stark white.

“You won’t hurt me,” she protested. “You won’t hurt the boys. You’ll find yourself again and you’ll heal. I promise.” She gently touched his wrists, encircling them in her small palms, lifting his broken hands up to the light. “Starting with these.”

Chapter 10

Prairie Rose

“We promised we weren’t going to say anything or interfere, but we’re worried about you. You aren’t sleeping, are you?”

“Are you?’ Prairie Rose shot back at her sister. They walked single file through the woods since the snow had drifted between the trees and was waist-deep in spots.

There’d been more snow that winter than any she could ever remember, and it was far from over. Anyone who thought March was the start of spring hadn’t experienced a Wyoming winter.

Briar May grinned from behind her, rubbing at her dark ringed eyes with her mittens. “No, but I have a baby, so at least I have an excuse.”

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