Page 105 of Wolf Caged
His gaze darted between my injuries again, leaping the most between my collarbone and my lip, and darkness branched from his eyes in jagged tendrils as they became more crimson than silver, his expression so fierce that I couldn’t look away. The menace he radiated had my wolf side shrinking back in submission and a touch of fear as he closed the distance between us down to nothing, coming to tower before me.
Shock rolled through me as he tenderly brushed my hand away from my split lip and ran his thumb over it, inspecting the cut, his eyebrows knitting hard as he stared at it. Those shadows bracketing his eyes spread further, and his skin paled towards white, the transformation startling me.
His canines and the incisors closest to them were jagged fangs as he snarled.
“Who did this to you?”
His sister hadn’t told him about what had happened. He didn’t know. Had he come to my room for another reason only to scent my blood and find me looking like I had been run over by a truck?
Maybe he had wanted to see me as badly as I had wanted to see him.
“Answer me,” he gruffly commanded, his voice a low growl that rumbled like thunder, a rising storm that would wipe clean this world, all because someone had hurt me. “Who did this to you? I will see to it they are punished. I will see to it they can never lift a finger to harm you again.”
“Why?” That question tumbled from my lips, my heart stuttering as I stared up at him, strangely unafraid of that wrath and dark hunger for violence that shone in his eyes.
He had never been so dark, so terrifying as his shadow wings shifted and tendrils of night snapped at items in my room, restless with a need to kill. But he didn’t scare me, because I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. This rage in him was born of the fact I had been hurt, and he hadn’t been there to stop it.
And gods, it was delicious.
He paused, seemingly caught off guard by my question. “Why?”
“Why do you care?” I fought to keep my voice steady and confident, afraid he might see how much hinged on his answer, how desperate I was to hear him tell me that what we had shared had meant something to him. So much for no messy emotions. My stupid heart was getting caught up in him, wanting something from him I knew he couldn’t give me and that it wasn’t wise to want. But I couldn’t stop myself from speaking and putting it out there. “Why would you punish this person? Why protect me?”
Kaeleron was all glorious darkness as he crowded me, as he backed me towards the wall. When my back met the cool stone, his hand fell to my neck and his thumb grazed my throat as his fingers claimed my nape.
He snarled, “Because you are mine, Saphira.”
Shock swept through me again, and I had to fight against the urge to find the meaning I wanted to hear in those words. He owned me. He wasn’t speaking of me as a possession in a way aman who desired a woman did—the way a mate would. He was speaking of me as a possession because he owned me.
He was only protecting his interests.
I knocked his hand away from my throat and turned from him, a heavy feeling pressing down on me, one that threatened to break me when Elanaluvyr hadn’t been able to. Tears pricked my eyes and I hated them, hated this world, hated him, feeling like such a fool for thinking Kaeleron might want me the way I wanted him.
Neve had told him ‘to tread this path, you must not tread it alone’. And Kaeleron hadn’t been happy about that. He needed me for a purpose he hadn’t revealed yet, one I was beginning to suspect had nothing to do with my body. My time would be better spent trying to learn from Neve why he had bought me rather than pining after a male who had stated in that dungeon that he was tired of me.
Elanaluvyr was right. Kaeleron was only interested in me because I was new and he owned me and had apparently decided that spending time in my company was fine as long as it ended with him getting what he wanted. I was entertaining. Summoned whenever he was bored. Sooner or later, I was going to end up as nothing more than someone he summoned to fuck when he was tired of his queen. Or whatever my purpose was would be revealed and I would no longer be ‘necessary’.
Did he even intend to let me leave once I had paid off my debt?
I was starting to doubt that too.
Doubt was a bitch.
A real mood-killer.
I headed towards my bed.
Kaeleron caught my wrist and pulled me back to him, not letting me get far. I was too tired and sore, hurting both physically and emotionally to see him right now. I just wantedto curl up on my bed and drift in my pain, and maybe while I brooded, I would figure out why I was here.
“I’m not in the mood for your games today,” I muttered and twisted free of his grip. “Find someone else to entertain you.”
He scowled as I pivoted away from him, handsome face darkening again.
And swept me up into his arms, ripping a gasp from me.
“Put me down.” I pushed at his broad shoulders. His firm shoulders. Gods. I shut down that flicker of heat that licked through my veins. I was not going there again. Desiring Kaeleron had been a mistake. Letting my heat get the better of me had been a mistake. I was going to master both and learn to resist them. “Put me down.”
Kaeleron didn’t pay me any heed.
