Page 198 of Wolf Caged
I slowly rose to my feet, gaining the male’s attention, my shadows spreading down the steps of the dais like a creeping black mist. “I would caution you to watch your tongue, wolf.”
I shifted my gaze from the male to Saphira.
“Come, little lamb.”
She obediently backed away from the wolf, and shock rippled across his face, morphing to anger as he looked from her to me.
“You’d let her family die?” he barked.
No. I would not.
Because I was not a monster.
She turned to face me, tears shining in her reddened eyes, together with conflict and pain I could recognise, one I had felt once, long ago.
I went to her, lifted my right hand and brushed those tears away, skimming my thumb lightly along her lashes to capture them. She had almost died. I had failed to protect her. With war brewing in the Wastes, my world was about to get too violent for her, and keeping her with me would only result in her death.
And she had her own battle to face, one I could not keep her from.
She needed to protect her people. She needed to save her parents.
That desire was something I could understand, and I could not keep her with me knowing her family might die because I had failed to act and do what was right.
I lowered my head and pressed a kiss to her lips, savouring her scent and her taste, putting it to memory as I gathered my courage and built walls around my heart, layer upon layer of them that blocked out her light.
And then I released her and stepped back.
Because the thought of watching her die was more painful than the thought of her living without me, safe and free.
I sensed my sister’s eyes on me and looked off to my left at her where she stood near the side entrance, concern in her gaze as she watched me with Saphira.
“You are needed in the war room,” Jenavyr said.
I nodded, a heavy feeling settling inside me, one that seeped through the cracks in the shields I had constructed. “I will be right there.”
Her tone was soft, and questioning. “And Saphira?”
I looked at the bastard wolf who looked as if he wanted to wrench Saphira from me and then at her, at her beautiful tear-streaked face and the pain in her eyes, and those lips I wanted to kiss just one more time, trying to crush the voice within me that screamed at me to keep her here, to keep her with me, that my vengeance was not done.
That Saphira was a tool I needed, a weapon in my arsenal that would give me my revenge.
I would find another way.
“I am done using her.”
Chapter 54
SAPHIRA
Istared at Kaeleron as his words rang in my ears, pierced my soul and leaked poison into it.
He was done using me?
My mind raced, images of how he had been since I had awoken layering on top of each other. His icy tone. His distance. But then he had kissed me.
And even that had hollowed out something inside me, leaving me feeling bereft and cold.
I looked at him, reeling and trying to make sense of everything, torn in so many directions by my thoughts that I felt dizzy. The fragile, frustratingly weak part of me that still nursed the wound Lucas had inflicted on me rose to the fore, stripping my strength from me. Sowing doubts in my heart. He was done using me? I stared into his striking silver eyes, trying to see if any of it had been real.
