Mine to Possess

“This is your way of talking to me? By taking off?” He told himself to shut it, to not snarl at her. This was the first conversation they had had in two decades. But it felt as if they had spoken yesterday, it was so natural, so effortless. Except for her fear. “Were you going to stop the car anytime soon?”

She swallowed. “I was planning to talk to you at the bar.”

The leopard had had enough. Moving with the preternatural speed of his kind, he was an inch from her before she could draw in the breath to scream. “You’re supposed to be dead.” He let her see the rage inside of him, rage that had had twenty long years to ferment. Ferment and spread until it infused every vein in his body. “They lied to me.”

“Yes, I know…I knew.”

He froze in sheer disbelief. “You what?” All this time while he’d been tracking a ghost, he’d been absolutely certain that he had been lied to, and without Talin’s knowledge. It had destroyed him that she was out there thinking he’d broken his promise to return to her. Never once had he considered that she might have been a willing participant.

Eyes the color of storm clouds met his. “I asked them to tell you I was killed in a car crash.”

The knife twisted so deep, it carved a hole in his soul. “Why?”

“You wouldn’t let me be, Clay,” she whispered, torment a vicious beast in those big gray eyes ringed by a thin band of amber. “I was with a good family, trying to live a normal life”-her lips twisted-“or as normal as I knew how to live. But I couldn’t relax. I could feel you hunting me the second you left juvie. Twelve years old and I didn’t dare close my eyes in case you found me in my dreams!”

The leopard who lived inside of him bared its teeth in a growl. “You were mine to protect!”

“No!” She fisted her hands, rejection writ in every tense line of her body. “I was never yours!”

Beast and man both staggered under the vicious blow of her repudiation. Most people thought he was too much like the ice-cold Psy, that he didn’t feel. At that moment, he wished that were the truth. The last time he’d hurt this badly-as if his soul was being lacerated by a thousand stinging whips-had been the day he’d gotten out of juvenile hall. His first act had been to call Social Services.

“I’m sorry, Clay. Talin died three months ago.”

“What?” His mind a blank, his future dreams wiped out by a wall of black. “No.”

“It was a car crash.”

“No!”

It had driven him to his knees, torn him to pieces from the inside out. But the depth of that hurt, the cutting, tearing pain, was nothing to this rejection. Yet in spite of the blood she’d drawn, he still wanted to-no, needed to-touch her. However, when he raised a hand, she flinched.

She couldn’t have done anything designed to cause more harm to his protective animal heart. He fought the pain as he always did-by shutting away the softness and letting the rage out to roam. These days, he rarely stopped being angry. But today, the hurt refused to die. It clawed through him, threatening to make him bleed.

“I never hurt you,” he grit out between clenched teeth.

“I can’t forget the blood, Clay.” Her voice shook. “I can’t forget.”

Neither could he. “I saw your death certificate.” After the first shock had passed, he’d known it for a lie. But…“I need to know that you’re real, that you’re alive.”

This time, when he raised his hand to her cheek, she didn’t flinch. But neither did she lean into his touch as she’d always done as a child. Her skin was delicate, honey-colored. Freckles danced across the bridge of her nose and along her cheekbones. “You haven’t been staying out of the sun.”

She gave him a startled look followed by a shy smile that hit him like a kick to the gut. “Never was much good at that.”

At least she hadn’t changed in that respect. But so much about her had changed. His Tally had come running into his arms every day for five of the happiest years of his life, looking to him as her protector and friend. Now, she pushed at his hand until he dropped it, the silent reiteration of her rejection searing a cold burn across his soul. It made his voice harsh when he said, “If you hate me so much, why did you find me?” Why couldn’t she have left him his memories-of a girl who had seen in him only goodness?

Those memories were all he’d had left in his fight to stay in the light. He had always carried darkness inside his heart but now it beckoned every waking minute, whispering silvery promises of the peace to be found in not feeling, not hurting. Even the powerful bonds of Pack were no longer strong enough to hold him, not when the lure of violence beat at him night and day, hour after hour, second after excruciating second.

Talin’s eyes widened. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you.”