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“Can you teach me that?” I ask, always excited to learn new ways to defend myself that don’t involve laser-beaming them out of existence.
“Sure!” Mei answers with a grin.
Rand looks on with a soft smile, clearly proud of Mei’s abilities, and it makes me want to kick her again for not seeing the obvious signs that whatever his feelings were for Sam, they are long gone. That boy is head over heels into her.
My instinct is to be happy for them, but there’s an odd rage building inside me. It’s fierce and unhinged, barely contained by self-restraint. I squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth, fighting this bizarre feeling. When I reach back for Connor, needing him to pull me back from the brink of whatever this is, I notice the muscles on his forearm feel like rock beneath my fingers. This rage isn’t mine. It’s his.
“Mi lobo,” I whisper, turning around and wrapping my arms around his waist. “What’s wrong?”
“He touched you without your permission,” he murmurs, a threatening edge in his low voice.
Recalling Connor’s promise never to hurt anyone whose touch I welcomed, I realize I’m now dealing with the very important loophole within that promise. “He touched my shoulders,” I explain quickly, reaching up to cup his face and bring his gaze to mine instead of focusing on the closed door down the hall, “and earned himself a concussion, likely a permanent scar on his chest, and a need for a bathroom remodel.”
His wolf is close to the surface, the whites of his eyes turning black. “You branded him?”
“In a bad way,” I clarify, trying to keep my mind clear under the flood of his instinct to rip him apart. “Everyone who sees it will know he pissed me off.” When that doesn’t seem to get through to him, I add, “I already chose to spare him. You agreed.”
Connor releases a low growl at the end of a deep breath and pulls me close. “Your will is mine, mi reina.”
“Well, now that that’s all cleared up, how about we get the hell out of this hallway?” Mei suggests loudly with a clap of her hands. “Maybe to someplace where nothing will growl at me just for existing.”
After allowing myself to release the breath I was unintentionally holding, I remind her, “You were the one begging to come onto pack lands.”
“Yeah, because giant freaking tree house,” she exclaims, gesturing with a grandiose swish of her arms as she walks past us. “How could I miss an opportunity to see it?” She sighs with envy. “I want to live in a giant tree house.”
Rand cautiously follows her after showing deference to Connor by lifting his chin and exposing his neck. When he’s close enough to Mei, he asks her something that I can’t hear over the barrage of demolition, but it gets her talking with even more enthusiasm as he subtly leads her away.
“Well, this day has been eventful,” I joke, attempting to lighten the heavy feeling still lingering in the hallway. “To think the day is only half over.” Taking my hand from his face, I step out of his embrace and begin tugging on his arm. “Since I’ve already blasted a hole in this wall, why don’t you show me one of the rooms that we’re actually supposed to tear down?”
Connor hesitates, staring at the closed door that hides his half-brothers from view, before acquiescing to my request. His expression doesn’t soften. “There’s one room I don’t trust to anyone but us.”
I’m unnerved by his ominous tone, but I keep my thoughts to myself as he leads me to a room on the bottom floor at the back of the house. Standing outside of a closed, unassuming wooden door are the rest of the guys armed with sledgehammers. Their expressions are as grim as Connor’s.
“What’s going on?” I ask, a nervous tremble to my voice. “What is this room?”
“The past,” Connor answers cryptically. With one hand still clutching mine, he reaches out with the other to open the door. A sickening sense of dread pours into me, and our emotions are so deeply intertwined, I can’t tell if it’s mine or his.
Kaleb gently reaches over, holding his hand above Connor’s on the doorknob, and says, “You don’t have to go in there. We can tear it down.”
“Or have Callie burn it to the ground,” Donovan mutters, swinging the sledgehammer up onto his shoulder.
The head of Nolan’s sledgehammer is on the ground, and he’s leaning his weight onto the handle. He looks tired, with deep purple smudges building under his eyes. I want to tell him to rest, but there’s a harsh determination in his expression that shows he isn’t stopping until this particular room is destroyed.
“What is this room?” I repeat more firmly, my gaze bouncing between them.
Nolan looks at me with deep sadness. “You had a basement…”
“Connor had this room,” Donovan finishes, glaring at the offending door.
Fear and hatred coil through the mate bond as Connor twists the handle to open the door. Through the opening, I see an all wood room with a single, rust-stained chair sitting in the middle.
Memories that are both mine and not mine flood my thoughts, superimposing on each other to become a screaming nightmare of blood and torment. My body butchered under cruel, unfeeling hands. Connor’s back shredded from lashes of a silver tipped whip. The frustrated complaints dripping from the bastard’s mouth as I endlessly burned. The disgusted sneer of the former alpha as he force-fed his youngest son poison to keep him weak.
There’s a sharp break inside me as horror after horror is carved into our flesh and onto our souls. My darker side takes hold, my rage so fierce it triggers a cool detachment. I’m the goddess of vengeance, of death, and all that has hurt the ones I love will not continue to exist.
Connor hisses in pain as my body grows so cold, sparkling ice frosts my skin and begins to spread underneath my feet. There is a cacophony of shouting and scrambling from the other shifters as a sudden hailstorm pounds against the roof of the alpha house.
“Move away from the door,” I command, my voice filled with an otherworldly hollowness.
