Page 84 of Hounded: Ashes to Ashes

I heaved a breath and laid my head on his arm. “What’s wrong?”

Since I was turned the same direction he was, I could see what had drawn his notice. Sully and the hounds were gathered in front of a game booth. The girls and Gunnar watched while Whitney threw darts at a wall of balloons. It wasn’t a roller coaster, but at least the old fella was having fun.

“I don’t trust them with you,” Loren said.

I sighed again. “I know.”

And I was hoping tonight would change that. We had time. Once he saw Gunnar as the absolute golden retriever he was and realized that Dottie and Abigail were as awed by the world as kids on Christmas morning, he would loosen up. Trust may have been a tall order, but I would settle for tolerance.

I glanced toward the ground as it grew more and more distant. At the balloon game booth, Whitney won a stuffed animal prize he handed over to Sully. I couldn’t discern their expressions from here, but the sight made me smile.

“Nero didn’t cut out my tongue.”

Loren’s statement came from nowhere, and I sat up straight and peered at him with my brows furrowed.

“Then who did?” I asked.

“I did.”

I shrank back, trying to picture him sticking a knife in his mouth and cutting… spitting so much blood…

“Why?” I asked.

He didn’t look proud of the fact. If anything, he was disgusted. His lips moved like he was rolling his tongue around, reminding himself his tongue was there.

“The witch was going to make me talk,” he said slowly. “Tell her where to find you. It was all I could think to do.”

My hand crept onto his leg again. I scuffed my nails at the denim of his pants, watching the hot pink polish flash in the carnival lights and wondering how desperate he must have been to maim himself without being sure the damage could be undone.

As if he could hear the questions bombarding my brain, Loren swiveled toward me and fixed his gaze on mine. “I’d do anything for you, Doll. I’d die for you,” he said, and the conviction in his voice made me shudder. “That’s why I don’t trust them. I can’t.”

Because they wouldn’t die for me?

I didn’t want anyone to die, certainly not for my sake. Leave the death and rebirth to me; I had it down to a fine art and, with the success of Sully’s sweater thread memory charm, the idea of my next incarnation wasn’t so daunting. The forgetting was the worst part. The sense of ignorance, of being incomplete, ate at me. I could deal with a self-made funeral pyre and turning twenty-six for the tenth or twelfth time as long as I remembered all the lives and love I’d had before. The love I had now.

I pressed my hand against Loren’s thigh, leaning in until I could almost kiss him.

“Baby?”

His eyes met mine, warm and slightly worried. But there was devotion, too. A kind of adoration that resonated in my bones. It had been there from the moment we kissed atop his ex-lover’s grave, when he said he wasn’t lonely anymore. Because we were together. Because he had me.

“I love you.” I told him. “I love everything about you, and I can’t bear to think I made you doubt that.” Reaching up, I cradled the side of his face in my hand as I spoke. “I’ve been with you forever, and I wanna be with you for the rest of forever. Only you.”

I rubbed my thumb over his cheekbone, and he rested his head in my palm, relaxing into my touch.

We sat close, but the distance between us remained. The things he kept to himself and a question I’d had since I got him back from Nero.

“Why don’t you wear your ring anymore?” I aimed a meaningful glance at his left hand. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t lose it.”

He tensed, then pulled away to mumble, “It was in my truck.”

“But not on your finger.”

The proposal—our engagement—was a blissful memory. I thought I nailed it with breakfast in bed and flowers, and I’d managed to make it a surprise, a big accomplishment since I was shitty at keeping secrets. I’d wanted to marry Loren more than anything. I’d wanted to say vows and pledge all my lives to him. Only him. I still did. But the ring was gone.

Looking back, I saw that those would-be vows vanished with that version of me. When I was reborn, Loren wasn’t wearing his ring, and he’d never put it on since. He never even mentioned it. Almost like he regretted saying yes, or he’d seen his chance to take it back and did.

“It didn’t feel right,” he said at last. “The man who asked me that was gone, and?—”

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