Page 53 of The Broken Wolf's Redemption

“I’m sorry for the things that have happened to you. How your mate was killed. That life can be so cruel.”

The tear in his chest turned into a chasm. He was being split apart. He put up a hand to make sure it wasn’t real. He’d felt plenty of pain, plenty of anger, despair, and guilt over Lila, twice over. He could feel. It was just that he wasn’t used to feeling this. Whatever it was. Overload, probably.

“Grief makes people do things they wouldn’t normally do. We’re all just trying to survive, and I see that the way you chose to go about obtaining me was basically a self-preservation instinct. You could have done worse, I suppose. You could have written anything into that contract, knowing I would have had no other choice. You never forced me to give all of myself. What you wanted you could have gotten from watching porn or going to some club. In the long run, it was more innocent than it could have been. You stopped me and admitted the truth before…” She didn’t finish. Her face flushed. “This isn’t a pass. I’m going to say this once and once only. I never want to see you again. You’re trying to control situations that can’t be mastered. You’re confused. The past couple of years have been hell for you, and you haven’t healed.” She watched him carefully, her eyes searing.

“I never should have wanted you,” he muttered. “Never.”

“It would have been easier for both of us if you hadn’t.” The flicker of pain on her face made him curl his hands into fists so hard that his nails scored his palms.

“What can I do to make it right? I’ll pay for your client I just scared away. I overheard you talking with Becka about the building needing roof repairs, and that was months ago. I could pay for them. I could give you cash, and you could do with it whatever you will. Payment for the time I stole from you. For the opportunity cost of doing something else when you were with me.”

That crisply delivered speech only made her face fall. This woman was incapable of unkindness. She could be angry and still graceful. She could forgive because she was ruled by her heart and her heart was full of compassion and the rare beauty of true kindness.

“I don’t want money, but thank you for the offer. I accept your apology and I’ll move on with my life. This happened and there’s no pretending it didn’t for either of us. I’ll take it as an opportunity to learn and grow. I hope you can do that as well. I hope that you’ve heard what I said and that you can consider how you can make positive changes in Waverly’s life. I know you’re here for her, because you love her tremendously, but that you’re also here for me too, and I appreciate how hard it was for you to figure that out and show up here.”

When Seren took her machine and started to dismantle it, the power cords first and then the cartridge, and carefully set everything aside to be cleaned and sterilized, he knew it was over.

“If you don’t want to get hypnotized, which by the way is real, you should leave. Becka will make you do some incredibly humiliating things. She knows everything related to this shop and the contract, and she’s not happy.”

“You’re not happy either,” he blurted. He wasn’t used to feeling desperate, but he did now. Desperate for a few more minutes of her time. To get her to change her mind. To be able to put feelings he didn’t understand into words and to utter them and have her hear them. “You haven’t been happy in all the time I’ve known you.”

She gave him a watered-down smile. “Happiness is hard for more people than just you. I have my own demons, but I’m working on it. I truly hope you can do the same. You could have a good life, if you wanted it. For Waverly, I think you could learn how. Ask for help. Call your family. Reconsider everything you know. It’s not too late. You’re not as damned as you think.”

As usual, that light burned in her eyes. She saw past his villainy and treachery to the goodness she wanted him to believe in. He felt like he’d just been slammed into the ground by a stampede of elephants. He exhaled too loudly and for just a brief second, he was embarrassed at the sound it made. He hadn’t come to be proud or to hide, he’d come to be vulnerable and exposed. He couldn’t do that properly, not even for Waverly.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. He was a curse who left a trail of misery and storm clouds in his wake wherever he went.

“You have lots of life to live yet.” She was so far from finished with him. This was his penance that he’d stand here and take it before he left and never saw her again on pain of her vampire friend.

He could handle the vampire.

What he couldn’t handle was destroying Seren’s life any further.

She deserved so much more than he could ever give her or could ever hope to atone for. She deserved the world, not a shitty little slice of it carved off and cursed with his odorous presence.

He hoped someone would come along and give her happiness. Give her everything. Treat her like she was—

I don’t fucking hope that. Let’s see him fucking try. I’ll find him and annihilate him.

Nice. Classic. You had a shot. Let her have her life back. You’ll only hurt her.

No. You’ll destroy her like you destroy everything you touch.

“You’ve been building the pieces of a good life around yourself so that anyone who looks thinks you’re doing okay and that you’ve moved on, but you should really live. That’s token advice, but it’s good advice.” Seren’s hands shook, and she clamped down harder on the tattoo machine.

“What about you?” he challenged. “You didn’t seem truly happy before.”

She shrugged, but he imagined that under the gloves, her knuckles whitened. She held onto the machine like a lifeline. Or a deathline, because he was probably very close to being stabbed with it. She’d already ejected the cartridges, but she could probably make it happen with the remainder.

“I never pretended to have it all together. I love this place. I’ve put a lot of my time and heart into it. I love tattooing. It’s not what my family wanted for me, but it’s what I wanted. I took a chance on it and no, I’m not one hundred percent happy, but I also don’t need to depend on another person to try to fill that role. I don’t need to hand my heart to someone who is only going to…” She trailed off and looked away.

His heart palpitated so hard it physically hurt.

He’d find her ex. Find him and kill him. He’d make it hurt the way he’d clearly done something to hurt her.

Her attention snapped back on him like he’d said it out loud. “Leave it alone. Don’t be crazy enough to do anything to anyone who doesn’t deserve it. We had a difference of opinion over children. He wanted them. I wanted them. I couldn’t have them. He found someone who could and moved on from the hurt of it before we’d officially ended. It was an asshole thing to do, and my parents don’t even know that he did it. They think I wanted the divorce. I mean, I did, they just don’t understand why. Was it even about kids? I don’t think so. It hadn’t felt right for a while. Relationships are just like that, I guess. Marriage is one hundred percent the cause of divorce.” She laughed and it was surprisingly genuine.

“Why?” he asked bluntly. They seemed beyond things like polite niceties. He’d never had any manners to begin with.

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