Page 135 of Bound By Roses

“Drop the knife and I’ll let you hit me all you want.”

She lets out a guttural scream before letting the blade fall. She probably thinks this gives her a second chance of getting hold of it again, but no one is going to let that happen.

She lands a punch that probably did more damage to her than to me, but she’s beyond feeling physical pain now. If she wants to hit me, I won’t stop her. She throws punch after punch, and the only ones that hurt are from the ring Quinn gave her.

Her mate.

That word has never sounded so bitter, and it has nothing to do with the woman I was once cursed to love or the wolf she gave her heart to.

‘Why?’I growl, though I know only one person can hear me.

‘This was the only way.’

‘You should have let me die. I didn’t want any of this!’

‘You know why I couldn’t.’

My hands tighten into fists at my side. Abby is tiring, so it won’t be long before she gives into her grief and sinks to the ground. I’ll let her hit me as long as she needs and then every day after because I deserve far worse.

This is all wrong, and the thing that makes it worse is that I can’t bring myself to tell them the whole truth. Even if they believe that my memories are back, they won’t accept this.

Even I don’t accept it.

‘I don’t accept it.’I say to Inferna.

‘You already did.’

I feel the truth in her words and it makes me sick. It was the cost of living. When I was passing through the veil, content with death and the sacrifice I’d made, something stopped me. Phantom hands holding me, keeping me from finishing the journey and crossing over into the unknown.

Inferna.

She’d said she could save me. Said she could bring me back and I wouldn’t have to die. She said we could all live.

Inferna.

All it would take is a deal. I just had to free her from her prison.

Inferna.

All I had to do is accept it. Accept what I’d felt the moment those hands latched onto me.

Inferna.

And accept it, I did.

Inferna.

My mate.

EPILOGUE

QUINN

It’s cold. Too cold.

And it’s dark. Far darker than it was only a moment ago, but I don’t know what else I was expecting when I threw myself into the veil.

Nothing, maybe. I shouldn’t even be alive.

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