Page 28 of Unforgivable

Lyri

Well, today has been a strange one. Not really. It hasn't been any different from the last few weeks. Rhet is out on the ranch somewhere. The pups went to school. Thjis is grumpy and busy... being grumpy. Ezra... Ezra told me he loves me.

I've been in bed most of the day, my hip throbbing. The snow started falling in the early evening, and my pain spiked. I guess I'm one of those old wolves who feels the weather in their bones now.

"Thjis, do you want this? This... relationship?" I ask in a hushed whisper. I'm not sure what to call it, 'relationship' is good enough, I guess.

I hear the rustle of cloth as he settles down onto the cot.

"Sorry," I whisper after a minute.

"I'm just thinking, Lyri. I want to tell you about my past. So you... so you understand." He's quiet for another minute. When he begins speaking again, it's in a heavy voice, gritty with emotion. "I was only sixteen when I met my mate for the first time."

I hold my breath. Thjis has a mate? I know that Rhet's mate died, and Ezra is a fated MateLess, but I never thought about Thjis's mate. I had heard that he was rejected, but I couldn't have known if that was true.

"She was older, a couple of years, and... involved with another male already. He was... a powerful male, the second son of an alpha from another pack. Her pack. She... she rejected me."

"Oh, Goddess," I breathe out.

"Don't!" he says sharply. Agony, self-loathing, and bitterness roll together in that one word. I fall silent, almost holding my breath in anticipation when he starts to speak again. "I went through everything that you would think, and maybe some things you wouldn't. My life went to shit for a while. Then I started to take out my anger, my wolf's anger, in training. I became one of the youngest Warriors in the pack. I was a beast of a male." He takes a deep breath that I echo. "Her male cut her loose when he found his truemate. It was four years later. I was twenty. She came back to me."

My heart sinks. I know where this is going.

"I laughed in her face, called her a slut, a rankwhore who was never going to be in the place she thought she belonged in. I told her that her precious male never meant to stay with her. She was just an easy hole for him until his mate came along. She left in tears, and I was so smug, so fucking arrogant."

"What happened?" I ask him when he stops talking.

"She killed herself, Lyri. Two weeks after I... then she was gone and it was too late. I-I fucking hate talking about it," he adds unnecessarily.

I slide to the edge of the bed. Achingly slowly, I swing my feet over the edge of the mattress until my toes brush fibers of the soft rug.

"Lyri?" Thjis asks hoarsely. His voice is thick with tears that I know he's trying to hide from me.

I force my body to stand, stumbling the few feet to where Thjis is lying down. I'm across the room before the searing pain in my hips can register in my brain.

"Lyri!" he cries out, anguished. I ignore the pain, letting my body collapse onto him, his strong arms catching me to his chest. "What are you thinking?!"

"Thjis!" I whine at the pain scorching my body.

"Fuck, you crazy witch," he snaps. "Shit, you're probably doing more damage, baby." For the second time that night, he picks me up and carries me to the bed. "Stay here, female," he growls in my ear.

"Only if you lie down with me," I bargain. I capture his hand, not letting go when he tugs.

He pauses, but those dark eyes reveal more than he thinks. Those harsh looks can be explained away by the story he just told me. He always looks so mean, but his touch is amazingly soft. I wish, for the first time, that I could remember more than flashes of him through the fog of fear and pain from that night. I want to know if he was gentle then, too, even in the midst of brutality, or if he was a monster like some of the males I can remember.

"Come to bed, Thjis. The cot is silly, anyway."

He lifts the blankets again and grudgingly slides in next to me, tucking me to his chest.

"It's not your fault, Thjis."

He's quiet, burying his face in my hair. This strong male is broken more than even I am. At least my ex-mate is still alive. I don't have to feel guilty about anything that happens to Daan from here on out. Our lives will never intersect again. No female can still want a male who allows her to be destroyed. Males are supposed to protect their females as much as we are supposed to nurture them. Even my wolf is a broken shell of herself. She doesn't understand why or how he could reject us so tragically, but she understands that he did. I don't have to convince the instinctive part of me to avoid that male. She knows he devastated us.

I stroke Thjis' arm, offering what little comfort I can. Tension radiates from him, and I know that all he wants to do is escape from this room, escape from me, and drown himself in anger and self-flagellation.

"You know, I used to think you lived on a cave you stole from a bear and slept on a bed of baby's bones."

"What?" he asked, sounding horrified.

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