Page 68 of Heart Broken Mate

“You did it, didn’t you?” I asked him.

“Yes. I had to. They needed my help. What good is a philosophical stand if I can’t help my family?”

He’d changed. He’d made use of his ability as a werewolf, something he hadn’t done in over a decade, and I made him break his promise to himself because I put him and his family in danger.

“I am very sorry, Bonne. This is my fault.”

“No, it’s not. It is the situation we’ve found ourselves in, and we must act accordingly. Besides, who was I fooling? I am a werewolf and will always be a werewolf. I better accept that and stop acting like a kid. Now, I have told you what happened. Keep your promise.”

He turned around and opened the door, smiling at Hayley as we stepped into the house. I sniffed once we were inside and would have picked up that scent anywhere in the world. He had been waiting for me, listening to our conversation, and now he stepped out of hiding and stood behind the table where Bonne had decoded the information on the medallion that led us to the lost tribe.

I know I promised Bonne not to fight, but I couldn’t help it. My anger grew from within me. Years of vengeful thought pushed their way to the surface, and they spurred me on. I flew from the position I was in and across the room, right at him. I felt strong, and my anger was the right fuel. I swiped my claws at him, and he moved, trying to escape them, but I was determined. He wasn’t going to run. I turned around just in time before he made his escape and stuck a claw deep into the back of his neck, holding it just in place. I could pull it out along with his spine and kill him. He saw that I knew that, and he kept his peace. His eyes set on me.

He was under my control now, and there was no fighting. I growled, my anger seething. I would be justified to do this.

“I said no fighting, Luke,” Bonne said from across the room. “And look at that. He is bleeding on the floor. You’re going to have to clean that up.”

I simply just growled and kept my eyes on him, looking into those dark and empty cold eyes of his. They called him the Heralder, but to me, he was Fig. The man that made me lose my pack. Forgiveness was far from my heart right now, and right behind it was caring about the blood on Bonne’s floor.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t pull this out?” I asked him.

“What would that achieve?” he asked me.

“You’ll die. I just saved about fifty kids from a life of perpetual servitude, but killing you will be more satisfactory.”

The vileness in my voice surprised even me. But I didn’t care. I let the hate eat me.

“Do it then,” he said. “If it’d make you feel good, kill me. I am, after all, the sole source of all the pain you’ve had to carry in your heart all these years, and none of it is yours.”

“Watch what you say.”

“What?” he growled back at me. “Do you not want to take any fault at all? We wouldn’t have been out there that night if it wasn’t for your insistence. You needed to prove yourself, and your reluctance to stop and think is one of the reasons it happened. Do you not think so, Luke? Are you too much of a saint to consider that? Should we all pander to the piety in you?”

“I am no saint,” I told him. “But you’re the devil. You turned right around and worked for the enemy!”

“And I am here now, aren’t I? You want to bring that enemy down, don’t you? And I am here to help you.”

“Why should we trust you?”

“He helped me save Jade and Nellie, and the family is after him. They have a bounty out for him.”

“Hmm,” I groaned but didn’t take my claws off his neck.

“We need him, Luke,” Bonne said. “We know why you are here. We heard what happened on the dock. The whole community knows what happened at the dock. We need all the help we can get. He is one part of that help.”

I looked at Bonne. He was right, but that didn’t matter much to me now. I wanted to kill him. I wanted him to feel the pain I had been feeling all these years.

“Luke,” Hayley said. It was a gentle call, but it tugged at me. Her voice always gets to me. The others I could ignore, but not her. She was a part of me now. I groaned and looked at her. “Let him go. Let’s think about this. We need everyone we can get. He is powerful; I can smell it on him. We need his power.”

She was right. I couldn’t kill him, and I needed to consider the long game here. Fig had worked with the Tarloux family for a while, and he would know how they function. He would be a great source of intelligence for us.

I pulled my claw out of his neck, but I wasn’t finished with him. I stepped closer to him and cut him in the chest, cutting deep enough so that it would take a long while for the wound to heal.

“Keep him away from me,” I told Bonne. “Or I’ll kill him.”

I walked from him and looked around the house, picking up a napkin by the table to clean my hand. “Where’s Nellie?” I asked.

“Up,” Bonne said. “She’ll be glad to see you. And you, too,” he added, looking at Hayley. “You two go on while Fig and I clean up this mess.”

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