Page 36 of Wolf Tamer

“Say how much you like this,” Reid presses to keep up the charade. “Tell us all how badly you want to be punished, Tasha. Because I’m sure we all want to hear it.”

He’s expecting miracles at this point, and yet I somehow find myself saying exactly what he wants me to say. It’s all I can do to keep the tears in check, and trust me when I say, I am not a woman who cries.

Even when my parents died, the tears lasted ten minutes max, and then I pushed them into such a deep part of my mind that they ceased to exist for me. The sadness, when it rises, is easily dealt with. Most days it’s easy to keep it locked in that distant part of me.

Now, swallowing those tears feels next to impossible.

Bullet is in full-fledged guffaws at this point. To such an extent that he’s doubled over with Darcy’s hand on his back like it will somehow help him calm down.

“You wanted this. You brought it on yourself. This is the price you’ve got to pay for disobeying. Right?”Smack. “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you for what you did.”Smack, smack. “This is what witches like you are good for, isn’t it?”

Taking a deep breath, I plant my feet against the onslaught of his assault and know it will be over soon.

“That’s it, Alpha! Give it to her,” someone heckles.

“She deserves it!”

“Kill her next!”

I’m nothing but an object to these people. An object who needs to be taught a lesson and know its place.

In my mind, in my imagination, where none of these wolves can touch me, I paint a better picture. I see an image of my sister and I together with her finally back in my arms and a clear future in front of us. Every painful moment I’ve gone through, everything stitched into the fabric of my being, is worth it because I’ve got Carmen back.

There have been times where those mental images include Reid as well.

But now, with laughter at my back and my bare ass covered in red welts, Reid’s form in my future daydreams flickers before it disappears entirely. A life I’ll never be able to live if things keep going the way they are.

I want those dreams more than I want to draw in my next breath. Instead, I harden myself into something cold. Something incapable of love. The samemeI have to become when I take a job.

I close my eyes and tune out his taunts. I agreed to this. I knew he wasn’t going to hold back, and he’s really laying it on thick for their benefit. Right?

“This is what you get for thinking you can escape me,” he’s saying.

But Reid doesn’t feel that way about me.

He doesn’t…

I’m not sure I can believe it anymore.

He’stooconvincing at the part he has to play, and underneath the thin mask of civility he wears when he’s around me, he’s his father’s son. And I know too much about Edmund to believe his seed to be anything but a monster.

I know what they say about apples and trees, too, although until this point, I grappled with the rumors of Reid and the reality I’ve come to know.

Except I refuse to believe he was made in the same terrifying image; unless I’m completely wrong.

He brings the branch down again, and I wince.

This time, he pauses.

Has he caught my mistake?

He must have because he leans closer to me and lets out a held breath. “Tasha…”

I don’t move, but my eyes are stinging with pending tears. It takes every ounce of strength I have not to show them to any of the wolves. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they’ve hurt me—really hurt me. Not even Reid.

He was doing too good of a job. So good, he’s convinced me of it too.

“Shit…Tasha—” His voice cracks, and I can feel his gaze on me, searching me, and trying to assess the damage. But with these shifters’ advanced hearing, they’re going to know something is going on if Reid breaks the act, and honestly, I don’t think my heart can take the conflicting back and forth from him anymore.

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