Page 61 of Ruthlessly Mated
I can’t believe this. Everything just keeps going badly. Then it gets a little fractionally better, and then it gets worse. It feels like we are being fucked with by the universe, as if we’re not allowed to be happy, or safe, or ever have anything good.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I shout the question to the universe.
I am so furious. Damon has been harmed. He might die. And it’s all my fault. I don’t care if Tailor would be angry at me for thinking that, it seems that way to me.
“Kita! Get in here!” Conroy puts his head out the door and shouts at me. “I don’t want you out of my sight.”
I go inside. There’s a faint smell of surgical things coming from the rear of the house. Blood, too. That must be where she’s treating Damon.
Tailor and Conroy are pacing in the front room, which has chairs so you don’t have to pace, and a coffee table so you have something to pace around if you want to pace.
I go in and stand by the front door, arms folded over my chest. I keep my mouth shut, because I want to scream at the top of my lungs. I want to blame them, but really I blame myself.
Tailor comes over and puts what I know he thinks is a comforting hand on my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not going to be okay!” I reply, more loudly than I probably should. Shout, really. “Nothing has been okay from the beginning and I don’t care what you do to me, it’s all my fault. It’s all my fucking fault.”
Tailor narrows his eyes at me. “I will deal with you later,” he says. “But you’re in trouble. Yes, there was an attack, but unlessyou planted the bastards behind the rubble, then it wasn’t your fault.”
“I…”
I am gripped by the back of the neck as I raise my voice again.
“Go outside and calm down,” Conroy growls the words in my ear. “There won’t be any yelling to distract the doctor while she tries to save Damon’s life.”
“Come in here, go out there,” I gripe under my breath, but I go outside.
I actually go way, way outside.
I walk out from the physician’s house and I go toward the hills, furious at myself, and furious at them. They should have taken better care of him. I should have taken better care of him. They should never have decided to mate me. It was stupid. They could have let me go when they found out that I was smuggling through their stupid smuggler’s port.
There is blood all over my hands. Damon’s blood.
I love him.
I’m probably not supposed to have a favorite, but he is mine. He is kind, and he gave me the gift of his voice, even though he could barely manage it. He’s done nothing but love me and now he’s bleeding out in a back country town. He doesn’t deserve it. I deserve it.
Tears are flowing from my eyes as the memory of being with him in the back of the car keeps replaying in my head. I was trying to hold him together. I was willing him to stay alive. I was hopingfor every breath he took. I was dying along with him, bleeding out just like him, but in some intangible way.
I’ve never wanted to take my animal form voluntarily before, but there’s a moment in which I can’t stand being in my skin at all.
I shift into my wolf form. I fucking hate it. I am still small and weak, and it still is an animal humiliation, but it absolves me of having to think what I think and want what I want.
I’ve come to a conclusion. A conclusion that will hurt me more than I’ve ever been hurt before. I need to get away from my mates. It’s the only way to save them. Every time I am involved, they get hurt.
I am going to disappear completely.
It is afternoon when I start running, and I do not stop as night falls.
I am aware of the setting of the sun, and of the increase in danger as the darkness creeps over the land. Vampires are rising. My enemy is coming back to nocturnal life.
I keep running. It feels like there’s nothing other than running. I am not thinking. I am not doing anything besides putting a great deal of space between me and the men I am responsible for hurting.
My hunger grows with every new pace, until suddenly a rabbit runs out from some bushes. Either it didn’t hear me coming, or it was flushed out by my furious pace.
Regardless of the reasoning, fate or fickle mistake, it pretty much throws itself into my jaws. It would be rude not to eat it. It would be out of character and against my nature, so I crush the life out of the little beast and fuel my flight with it. I do it withgreat hunger and absolutely no mercy. I have close to no feeling at all, thank god. Feelings hurt. Having none is perfect.
But still, I think about how unfortunate that little creature was as I start running again. It thought it was doing the right thing. The natural thing. It thought if it ran it would be safe, but there was no safety for it to be found. Only my mouth, the end of all things bunny.
