Page 49 of Ruthlessly Mated
Tailor and Conroy keep trying to talk to me, but I won’t talk to them. I am too angry, and I am too ashamed. Much later in the evening, Damon comes and settles next to me. He is not blameless in this, but he is also less triggering than they are. He doesn’t overwhelm me with words.
“A long time ago, I was in captivity,” he says.
I turn my head so sharply I almost snap my neck off. “You can talk!”
“I don’t like to,” he says, his tone deep and rough with a lack of practice. “But you need me to, so I’m going to try.”
I burst into tears. He’s so fucking sweet. He’s the most beautiful, gorgeous, sensitive man I have ever met and I can see that every one of these words is painful for him. But he’s giving them to me, because he thinks I need them, and he’d do anything for me.
His voice is accented, telling me he hails from the eastern states. I’ve never been out there, but I’ve heard about some of thelegends. Vampires come from the east, from countries where tall mountains and deep woods are littered with old fortresses inhabited by various monsters, mostly vampiric in nature. He says he was in captivity. I do not need him to elaborate. I know that there is a tradition for vampires to hold wolves and to make them slaves. I know this because I myself…
“Don’t talk,” I tell him. “I love hearing your voice, but I don’t want your pain, and I know this hurts you.”
“Sometimes we do what hurts for those we love,” he says. “I love you.”
My tears, which I had sniffed back, return to prick my eyes.
“I love you too,” I whimper, my voice sounding even more wobbly and ill-practiced than his.
“Will you tell me why you don’t like to take your wolf form?”
He’s offering me his voice in the hope I’ll give him my deepest held secret.
“I look silly,” I say.
“What do you mean?” He cocks his head to the side, surprised at what I said.
“You all look so majestic. I don’t. I look silly.”
He frowns at me, not sure what to say.
“Are you going to keep talking? If I shift? Or is this a once in a lifetime thing? I mean, I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable, but I really like talking to you. You have a nice voice.”
“I’ll talk to you,” he says, holding my hands. “And you don’t have to shift for me just because I’ve talked to you. I’ve been wanting to since we met, but it’s been… a struggle.”
“When did you last talk?”
“I was fifteen when I was taken. That is when I stopped talking.”
“Who held you captive?” I frown. I hate that he went through hard times. From the very beginning, Damon and I have shared a very particular kind of bond. We’ve understood one another in the silence. He’s felt like home to me.
That is why I want a name. My business is vengeance, and there is no reason he should not be included in it.
“I was sold around,” he says. “There’s parts of the country where shifters aren’t really people. Somewhere between dogs and servants. It wasn’t illegal to buy and sell a shifter servant.”
I listen to him in a kind of reverent silence.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “You deserved better than that. You’ll never be a servant again.”
“I was sold to Conroy in the end,” he says. “He bought me at an underground auction and made me an equal partner in the port. He’s a good man.”
I don’t argue that out loud, but I think Conroy is an overbearing monster, even if he did do something nice for Damon at some point.
Damon nudges me. “I know you’re angry at him. You two are too much like each other, but he is a good man, and he wants to help you.”
“I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about you.”
“Tailor came later,” he says. “For quite a few years it was Conroy and I at the port. Tailor showed up wounded. Close to death. He’d lost a fight with an aristocrat from Eclipse City and was planning on dying by the ocean. But we decided not to let that happen. That’s how the three of us ended up together. And now you make four. You’re the best thing to happen to any of us.”
