Page 52 of Savage Hunter

Fear spills through me and coats my nerve ending ends, my raging heart and all my emotions with burning acid. It soaks into my chest and corrodes my heart until I have a hard time breathing. I scramble out of his arms, scoot across the floor. I grab the first thing my hand lands on, whirl and take aim.

If anyone were to stumble in and find me a five-foot woman ready to take on a man who towers over me at six and a half feet, they might laugh.

Familiar dark eyes lock on me.

“You betrayed me.” I can’t see him through my tears. I scrub at them without dropping my sights on his heart. He takes a step and I move my finger to the trigger of the nail gun.

“Take another step closer and I will end you. You don’t know who I am anymore. I am not the love sick puppy looking for her crush to pop her cherry. I’m tougher now. I will kill you where you stand, Wolfe Carter.”

Wolfe thankfully gets the message. Or at least he doesn’t test my bravado. I don’t really know if I could end him, but I am mad enough I don’t want him to test me. Not today.

This part of the house doesn’t have a finished roof and the moonlight catches on his dark eyes. He looks like the demon he is. Hot tears fall down my cheeks and despite wanting to rage at myself for letting him see my weak, I keep my focus where it matters most. Shooting the man I love in the heart if he tries to come near me again.

“Harmonia. You don’t want to hurt me anymore than I want to hurt you.”

What a bunch of smoke.

“Did you find the guy out front?”

“Brutus.” Wolfe’s tone holds a hint of surprise. “Yeah, I found him. Good job.”

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking I won’t shoot you, too.”

Dark brows pull together over an expression filled with…hurt? Grief? No, I’m seeing things wrong. It’s the shadows playing tricks on my eyes.

“Did he hurt you? Why do you sound like you…”

“Why do you think? He found me just like you planned.”

“Harmonia.” God, what I would give to see the lies glimmer in his eyes right now. There’s a warning in his tone and I blow right through it.

“Stop lying, Wolfe. There’s only one way hefoundme and that was through you. Was that the call you made? While everyone else was worried about Rage back at the infirmary, you stepped out so you could betray me. Betray us all. For what?”

I hear Wolfe suck in a harsh breath. “Are you listening to your own words, baby? You’re caught up in the past and not seeing straight. How could I ever betray you? How could you think that? What did Brutus say to you that makes you think I of all people have betrayed you? Have you forgotten what I gave up for you?”

He sounds shocked and horrified at such a thought. But I’ve been duped before.

I raise my chin and let the steel bar in my spine solidify with bone. “Why not you? Everyone from my past used me and then betrayed me.” My words shake with the same quiver of fear working through me. “So why not you, Wolfe? If my mother could do it, why can’t you?”

“I bled for you.”

“I saw the pain you suffered to fight off my mother’s guards. But I didn’t see everything. What happened after they took me is obvious, though. She turned you.”

I wipe at the hot stream of tears running down my cheeks and put a nail in the floor at his feet when he thinks I can see him shuffling my way. “I said don’t come any closer. The next nail is for your cold, dead heart.”

He raises his hands. “I’ll tell you why not me. I nearly bled out killing every fucking guard your mother could throw at me. I never stopped looking for you. That’s why I’m here. Why I am part of the Savages. They had information on the Society. Information I could use to find you.”

“Bullshit.” I shake my head, not believing a lying word coming from his treacherous lips. “No, there’s no way you survived that night without her mercy.”

He steps closer, and I pull the trigger. But nothing comes out. Shit! I pull the trigger again and again until he jerks the empty nail gun out of my hand and it clatters heavily to the floor.

He has both sides of my face in his hands. “I’m here because I massacred an army to find you. To protect you. But I failed. I should have stayed and killed the bitch of a mother who hurt you first but I was so desperate to get to you. Days and months on end I hunted, slayed and hunted some more. I did things no man should ever do, but I did them willingly all for a grain of information anyone could give me about a woman with sunshine for hair and a heart of gold.” He kisses the end of my nose. “Lips of an angel and a soul so pure there is no way she isn’t destined to be God’s favorite in Heaven.”

As he talks, I can feel the heat of his gaze hoover on my lips.

He touches his lips to mine with a reverence that sparks doubt inside me. When he pulls back the light of the moon reveals a wildness to his eyes that has me wondering if I could be wrong.

The voice in my head says I’m forgetting something important. My harsh judgment falters and teeters near the edge of the ravine I am close to tumbling in if I can not control my boiling anger. Did my mother keep his sister as a pawn? What if she did? Is that why he is doing her dirty work?

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