Page 13 of Roaring Flames

I don’t want Isabella to turn into a monster.

This world isn’t safe for her.I’mnot safe for her.

What the fuck was Christian thinking telling her the truth?

Idiot.

Maybe he thought he was helping me out. Or maybe his years in the forest fucked with his head.

Either way, he put me in a predicament I’m not sure how to get out of.

Hurt her.

Send her away.

You don’t need her.

You don’t want her.

I clear my throat and push back my shoulders. I tell myself I don’t have a choice. Christian brought Isabella into this mess; I’m the one getting her out of it. I repeat that until I’m blue in the face, but I don’t believe a word of it.

It’s not selflessness driving my actions, but something inherently darker, almost sinister.

“I never intended on telling you the truth,” I tell her blandly, ignoring her sharp intake of breath. “Because I never intended on mating with you. Still don’t, if I’m being completely honest.”

Hurt flickers across her face, there and gone before I can even fully register it. Her lips compress in a straight line, but she doesn’t tell me to stop talking. She doesn’t cry and beg and pleadfor me to change my mind. She just stares at me with hard blue eyes, a multitude of emotions swarming in their depths.

“AJ…” Christian steps forward, but I hold my hand up to stop my older brother.

“This has nothing to do with you,” I say to him, not bothering to pull my attention off of Isabella.

“He’s right,” Isabella says dryly, still keeping her gaze on me. “It has to do with us. Though… There is no us, is there?”

A lump manifests in my throat. Swallowing it down proves to be impossible. “No.”

“Because you’re…what? Are you rejecting me or something? Is that a thing?”

I will my heart to harden and frost over. It’s the only way I’ll get through this conversation in one piece. Later, when I’m alone, the organ will shatter, but I’ll be the only one who will face the consequences. The only one who will feel the pain of my insides slicing me to ribbons. The only one who will bleed out.

“We don’t want you, Isabella.” I keep my voice cold and my expression neutral.

Even still, she flinches as if I screamed those words at her. I wonder if she picked up on the plurality of my statement. I know I shouldn’t make this decision for my brothers, but they’re so blinded by her charms that they can’t see how dangerous this pairing truly is. For her and for us.

“I don’t know how much you know?—”

“I know enough,” she snaps.

“But you’re human.” I allow my upper lip to curl away from my teeth derisively. “And we’re not.”

“Ashton!” Christian’s voice is sharper than I ever remember hearing it before. Even when he used to scream at Dad over something stupid… He never got this angry. My older brother’s expression is practically thunderous as he glares at me, his hands fisted by his sides. “What thefuckare you doing?”

“This”—I hold up Isabella’s arm so her mating mark catches in the light—“is a mistake.”

“A mistake,” Isabella repeats numbly.

“My pack has already chosen a mate.” God, I just can’t help myself, can I? I need to stab the knife even deeper into her back. Need to make her bleed the way I am. The way my brothers will when they discover what I’ve just done. “We’ll be mated to Desiree after graduation. We chose her.”

I hate myself.

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