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He rose, took a step toward me. Held my gaze. “I don’t know,” he said. “When Lissa found me, after I left Wild Lake, she offered me a bargain. She sensed I’d been cursed by the fae, and she wanted to get to the source of it. For herself. So she could find a way back home. She said she’d help me. If I agreed to let her probe my mind and gain access to the source of my curse, she’d bend it for me.”
“What do you mean bend it?”
“She said she knew a way to make me who I was before I was X. To suppress the worst parts of the Ring’s curse. She said she could help me become the man you could love. That I could be worthy of you. And then she did. She…she brought Anson back. She found the thing within me that was still good. Only…there was a catch. When I was Anson, I couldn’t remember X. That’s the thing I need you to believe. We were real, Tempest. Me. Anson. It’s real. I’m him.”
“Your first wish,” I said. “She turned you back into Anson.”
He nodded. I wanted to believe him. To trust him. But he’d betrayed me so many times before. “And my second wish, she saved me from dying after the rogue Alpha attack. She was about to grant me my third wish when you killed her. Do you want to know what that was?”
I couldn’t answer. So he did. “I asked her to take my soul. Use me. Open me up and dig out the fae magic. Use it to find her way back to the fae realm, even though I knew it would kill me. But I knew it would break the soulbinding over you and give you your freedom. I was ready to die if it meant you could be free. Then when you killed her before she had the chance to grant it…I saw. For the first time, I saw who I was just when you did. I’m Anson. X. They’re both parts of me.”
Anson smiled. His scars grew more prominent. He seemed able to shift from Anson to X more easily. Was he telling the truth, or was Anson only a mask he wore?
“I wanted you back,” he said. “I would have done anything to find you. To be with you.”
Anything.
“You gave Jarred to her,” I said. “Was that part of her price? What you got for your three wishes Lissa said she granted you…”
“It’s a sham,” he said. “Three wishes. She said that as a joke. She had the power to grant me anything I asked for.”
“What did you ask for?” I said, letting my claws come out. “Tell me. Admit it.”
“Go home, Tempest,” he said. “Leave me in peace. You’ll still only hear what you want.”
My fury rose. He was back to half-truths. Or outright lies. I wanted to believe he was the victim in this. It would be so much easier if he’d never come into my life at all.
And yet…I still craved his touch. Damn him to hell. I still needed him to solve what had happened here at Wild Lake.
I took a step toward him. A zinging sound split the air. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
A red dot appeared at the center of Anson’s chest. Then blossomed into a gaping hole.
I turned. My father stood behind me, propped up against a tree. He held a smoking gun in his hand. His Dragonsteel bullet had just ripped through Anson’s flesh.
Anson reached for me. Then his legs gave out and he crumpled to the ground.
Chapter Ten
There was blood. A lot of it. The sand beneath Anson turned bright red.
“Go,” he whispered. “He’s done us both a favor.”
I knelt next to Anson, trying to figure out where exactly the bullet had gone in. I quickly found it in the fleshy part of his shoulder.
“Get away from him,” my father’s voice croaked. He pushed himself off the tree and staggered forward. Once again, he aimed the gun, this time at Anson’s head.
“Stop!”
A million emotions raced through me. Alarm for Anson’s wound. Shock and relief at my father’s appearance. He was on his feet. Weak. Bloodless. But he’d regained enough strength to walk from the house all the way down to the lake.
“Step. Away. From. Him,” he shouted. “As your pack leader, I’m giving you a direct order.”
Had he said it to Jarred, to my mother, to any of his beta wolves, they would have felt a zinging pain as my father’s command thundered through them. If they chose to disobey him, it would have been grounds for banishment.
I felt no such pain. No hold. I was subservient to no pack leader. New strength flowed through me. No. Not new. It had always been there. Only now, my father had tested it.
“Hold very still,” I whispered to Anson. “I can see the bullet. If I can dig it out, I don’t think the damage will be permanent. You’ll scar, but you’ll still heal.”
