Men rush towards me.
“Shit! Someone grab a healing wand!”
“Mrs. Shadow!”
Voices blur as they crowd me, and I bite my cheek to stop from whimperingwhen they block my path forward. A wand is waved up and down me, but it can’t fix what’s truly broken. The claw marks down my breast might be gone and my hand might be usable again, but thepainlingers. The shame.
The memories of how I came aroundAleric’sfingers.
I shake my head as a shirt is offered to me. It doesn’t smell likeCaden, and I don’t want anyone else’s touch on me. Someone’s arm wraps around my shoulders, and I flinchaway, whimpering.
“Sau, it’s me,” a man murmurs, his voice comfortingly familiar, and I turn to him to see it’s Caden’s younger brother. Throwing myself at him, my face hits his chest with a resoundingthump. I close my eyes as he embraces me, hiding me away from the crowd.
“Where’s Caden?” I rasp, digging my fingers into his shirt, only to find its gone. I start to shake as I pull away, hating the contact of another’s skin. He wraps a white shirt around me, and I bite my tongue to stop my protest. No one argues with a reaper.
“Let’s get you inside,” he says as he guides me through the crowd of guards.
“Where’s Caden?” I ask again, panic starting to set in about why he’s not telling me.
Antonio was covered in blood when last I saw him. I try to remember what he looked like when I saw him in the street, but all I can remember is his gold hateful eyes. Most of my attention was on Caden, thinking I was going to see him for the last time.
“Myers...” I beg, my entire body trembling as I imagine my husband headless and torn apart by that fucking wolf. “Where is Caden?”
He glances down at me, and there is so much weight in his eyes. “He’s alive,” he finally says, but that offers little comfort due to the tone in which he says it.
“Is he…okay?” I swallow hard, trying to steel myself for what I’m about to find, so I can be the strong rock he needs me to be, the pillar that every female Shadow is supposed to be for her husband.
Sighing, he stops just outside the door to our house. The door itself is gone, and I search the inside hall for any sign of life. Caden is in there somewhere.
“He saw you, Sau,” he says, and my gaze snaps to his, and I pray he doesn’t mean what I think he does.
But my world is collapsing in on itself, choking me as it squeezes me tight in the grip of its palm. And Iknowwhat he means.
“No,” I cry, the word as broken as I feel. “No.” I shake my head. “No.”
“He was too weak to help you with his telekinesis, but he didn’t want you to suffer alone.” He glances away, but I can’t take my eyes off him, wishing he’s lying. That this is some cruel joke because he secretly hates me for whatever reason.
But there is too much pain on his face. Pain for his brother, who he loves so fucking much.
I pull away from him, still shaking my head. “No.”
My body feels foreign,wrong, and I drag my nails down my arms, gauging thick red lines as his shirt falls off my shoulders. At the sight of my naked breasts, at the memory of the vampire’s mouth on them, I stumble back, clawing at them too. “No!”
“Sau –”
“No!” I scream, shoving his hands away as he tries to grab them.
I don’t want him to stop me. I don’t want him tosaveme. Caden never should have kept me alive in my coma. He shouldn’t have helped me reattach my tongue. He should’ve let me die. I’m just adiseasethat needs to be cured.
My legs give out from under meas I scream, but he catches me in his arms. Dragging me into the house, he tries to calm me down. A good wife never makes a scene.
But I’m not a good wife, am I?
I’m a horrible, sick, twisted person who came while she was being raped.Twice.
A sob rips from me as I try to claw at any part of me I can reach.
Myers’ hands close around both of mine, and he shoves me face-first against a wall, trapping me with his body justto pin me still. “Don’t –” He grunts as he’s flung off me, andhis body hits something with a hardcrack.