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The familiar cockiness dissolved as he took her honesty and responded in kind. “I like you, too, Ava.” He took another bite, stewing on his next question before asking it. “May I ask why you were so opposed to my presence at first?”
The quietness of his query and the gentle way he looked at her gave her pause. Remmus truly wanted to understand. Between them, a pulse of concern bloomed like a rose within her, both his fear at her answer and his inability to protect her his only driving emotions.
His heartfelt plea drove her to answer with honesty. “Something happened to me when I was human, before Aidan turned me.”
She set her utensils down, her stomach doing summersaults as her hunger vanished. Hands fisting on the slinky material of her dress beneath the table, she fought the urge to cry as the memories assaulted her.
“I was always outside when I was little, playing in the wildflowers and foraging berries for my mother. She was a lovely woman, and I remember her fondly, but my parents were leaders in my village, so I was often on my own. I ended up meeting the wrong person and foolishly trusting them, and in the end, it cost my parents their lives. They were brutally murdered in front of me.” She shivered. “I was on my own until Aidan found me.”
Reaching across the table, Remmus’ fingers interlocked with hers. “I’m so sorry, Ava. I didn’t know.”
“Having you at the den, and me being assigned to be your partner—it was intentional. For years, I’d have panic attacks whenever I’d see a Raeth. Aidan and Riaz realized that I needed to desensitize myself.”
“Why put yourself through that? What do Raeths have to do with it?”
“Every time I let fear control me, it chipped a little further away at my parents’ memory. The people who killed them were Raeths.” Her fingers tightened around his. “Clanless Raeths slaughtered my entire village, right in front of me, as I hid beneath a pile of blankets. The friend I’d made, an older boy named Ciru, was the one who betrayed me. He was one of them. One of you.”
Remmus’ hand froze around hers, and for a moment, only silence floated between them. An audible swallow sounded from across the table.
“Your friend, the one who betrayed you, do you blame him for what happened?”
“He stood there, casually watching as my parents were murdered, as my cousin begged him to save her life.” Angry tears welled, scrawling down her cheeks. “Ciru was the reason everyone died. The reason I search for clanless Raeths is because I’m looking for him and his parents. I’ll never stop until I find them.”
A psychic door slammed shut on Remmus’ emotions, but Ava took it as a gift—him trying to shield her from the turmoil he was experiencing at her pain.
“What would you do if you discovered them?”
Her mate’s voice was a bare whisper now, and when Ava looked up, a mask was firmly secured over his features once more, but this one was coarse. Harsh. Dangerous somehow.
“I’d take revenge,” came her cold and unfeeling voice. “I’d snuff out their lives like they’d snuffed out my parents’.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ava. Ava. Ava—Ava—Ava.
Avelina.
Across from him sat the woman Remmus had once sworn to find, protect, and love enough to make up for what had happened to them both. He knew the color of her hair and the startling clarity of her eyes. He knew her laughter and her smile.
He had found his fated mate in the werewolf he’d come to know as Ava, but their past ran so much deeper than she knew.
Because Remmus was Ciru.
Eight hundred years ago, he had watched his parents ruthlessly murder a village while they laughed and encouraged him to do the same. He had been paralyzed by his mother’s power, propped against a hitching post, mute and motionless, as the people who raised him claimed the lives of everyone Ava loved.
He’d watched.
When they teleported him away, he’d feared he would never see her again. With his parents dead, he’d been free to find her, but no matter how many times he attempted to teleport to her psychic signature, he could never locate her. The shock of her parents’ deaths—and his betrayal—had forever altered it. Trauma had a way of changing someone.
After a century, he’d given up trying to find her through other means. She had been a human, and he’d assumed she’d passed away of old age. When Dominick had called his mate Avelina, he’d momentarily stopped breathing. To hear her story now simply confirmed it.
The psychic signature she’d had as a child was indeed vastly different to the one she now carried. It was the reason he hadn’t recognized her earlier.
Across the table from him, Ava’s inner turmoil continued to assault him. The hateful edge of it corded through their bond, blinding him, as her despair began to build.
His fingers were still locked around hers, offering her comfort for something he had done to her. He was the sinner to her saint. The pain in her past was there because of him. All at once, remorse filled him: sorrowful, suffocating, and blinding.
Remorse.
