Page 40 of The Dark Rising
I sigh and run my hands down my face, unable to sleep but wanting to stay awake anyway to watch her, to make sure she’s okay. To have her in my sight after going so long without seeing her. I was shocked when we came across her near the Aragnis pack, but what shocked me more were her words ever since then in the dining room. I never expected her truth to be what she told us. Never thought, never imagined.
I’ve been seething in anger since she collapsed and I caught her, wrapped her in my power and brought her to my room. All that she had endured as a child, all that she has lost… It’s safe to say we all fucked up.
Ifucked up.
Just thinking about the whip in my hand, the way her body tensed, preparing for another hit, the way her back bowed, and flinched, and shook after each strike makes me want to tear a hole in the wall and rage across the lands.
And then rage upon myself.
It’s no one’s fault but my own. As the Alpha of the Elites, I didn’t believe her, I didn’t want to listen to her, not after that fucking memory crystal. My grief over my mother and baby sister being murdered by rogures clouded my judgment, and with that, I couldn’t see the truth.Hertruth.
I now believe her. Her words, what she did to survive,howshe fucking survived. No one can fake the emotions pouring off of her, no matter how skilled in manipulating they are. I felt every single fucking one of them in my bones.
The anger doesn’t settle knowing I’ve been some sort of fucking puppet to the Highers’s whims, and have been lied to for years. I knew they weren’t the best for Vrohkaria, with the taxes they declare and the way they haven’t let anyone into the castle for sanctuary since the rogures. I just didn’t imagine how deep their atrocities ran.
Rhea whimpers in her sleep, and my head snaps up to her face. Her pretty features are twisted in something like pain. I rise from my spot in the chair, silently rounding the bed and sitting beside her, careful not to disturb her. The dark circles beneath her eyes tell me all I need to know about her sleepless nights. Hardly any according to Anna when I asked how she had been. She eventually told me, begrudgingly, how things are. I know she’s not eating either, not taking care of herself, and can I blame her? But I’ll make sure she eats, make sure she sleeps and make sure that I will help her. Whether she likes it or not. She may hate me, and I’m angry at her for so many things that seem pointless, but you cannot be released from what we are, and that will be to my advantage.
She may think of me as her enemy, and in some ways, we still are, and I know I have no right to be anything to her, but she is stuck with me until it is impossible.
I’m selfish, undeserving in this, but there is no other option, I won’t allow it.
My brows draw together at the thought, but instead of shoving it away, I accept it a little this time.
A whine leaves her, moving something painful within me. She mumbles words I can’t quite hear, so I move a little closer. “Lesia flowers.” I reach forward, touching a gentle finger to her cheek and soothe her with my touch. Drax comes to the surface, and I can feel her wolf underneath, greeting each other, comforting. She relaxes instantly, sighing into the pillow and burrowing deeper into it. Into my scent. I can’t help but feel a sense of pride at that. I run my fingers over her loose hair, drawing it back from her face and feeling the silky strands run through my fingers, before I do it all over again.
A moan, so soft I barely hear it coming from her, and my hand stills, my gaze on her face to see if I woke her, but her pretty, ice-blue eyes stay hidden. So I continue, moving my hand from her hair and down to her neck, feeling her pulse, steady and relaxed under my fingers. I wonder if she realizes that I have done this many times before in Eridian. I would wait until she was asleep in her room and sneak in, unable to stay away, and I would sit on the bed like I am now, and just touch her. The need to do so was undeniable, just like it is now. She was none the wiser of my obsession with her. Maybe now it’s time to change that.
Rhea didn’t know that I would leave a few hours before sunrise to make sure my scent didn’t linger, making my way to my own room and hearing her wake before I would go downstairs. I was furious at first that I could just walk in and she wouldn’t wake up, what if someone tried to attack her? But now I know it’s because deep down, I wasn’t a threat to her, or at least, I shouldn’t have been.
We were both wrong in that assumption after what I did.
A quiet knock sounds at the door, and I scowl at it, daring anyone to disturb her from her much-needed rest. With one last look at Rhea, I stand and storm silently toward it. Opening it up, Josh stands on the other side, hand raised like he’s going to knock again, but I slap it aside and growl quietly. When he begins to open his mouth to speak, I shove him back with a hand on his chest, none too gently, and he hits the opposite wall. The little shit should be grateful his head is still on his shoulders.
I close the door quietly behind me and walk further down the hall, entering a sitting room, knowing he’s following like a kicked puppy. I grab a wooden cup from the table at the back of the room and fill it to the brim with mead, not offering one to him.
He can get fucked.
I move toward the fire and sit down in one of the chairs there, my legs spread out in front of me as I take a drink, tasting its sweetness sliding down my throat as I relax back into the cushion and close my eyes.
I hear Josh take a seat across from me, feel his nervousness, and it pisses me off more.
“What the fuck do you want?” He’s either stupid or brave coming to me, alone like this. Especially when I want his head hung from my Keep walls. Rhea is the only thing keeping him breathing.
My little wolf has a hold on me whetherIlike it or not.
“Is she okay?” he asks.
“She will be.”
“I don’t blame you for hitting me, shit, for choking the life out of me,” he eventually says after a long pause.
“I don’t really care what you think,” I grunt, but satisfaction swirls inside of me at seeing his bruised face.
“I don’t doubt you do, just, what is she to you?” I peel my eyes open at his question, arching a brow.
She hasn’t told him.
“That’s none of your concern.” He has no right to ask me this, and I have no intention of telling him. Not even my own brothers know, though they suspect.
