Page 28

You got blood all in this pretty hair of yours.

So fucking pretty.Love this hair.

He loved my hair.The only thing he did love about me apparently.

My rage shot higher.Well, screw him.I stormed into the bathroom, yanked open the drawer and grabbed out my scissors.He didn’t get that.He didn’t get to love my hair and nothing else.I wouldn’t let him.Grabbing a chunk of it, I cut just below my chin, the sharp blades slicing through the strands easily.Then I kept going, hacking through braids, and the beads I’d threaded through the other side slid off, bouncing on the floor tiles.

I didn’t stop until it was gone, lying in a heap on the bathroom floor.

Dragging in a shaky breath, I released a broken sob as the scissors clattered to the counter.Hot tears streaked down my cheeks.This was it, the last tears I would allow myself to shed for that male.

I survived my family and coven throwing me away, I could survive this.

This was nothing, just a blip.I barely knew him.This thing inside that made me feel lost without him, that made me crave him, that made me feel as if my life was over without him, was a trick.It was a biological ploy.Jagger was like a growth, a foreign body that needed to be excised.He didn’t belong here with me, no matter what the fates tried to tease me with.They’d made a mistake.

I just had to find a way of cutting him out completely.

Then I’d stop feeling this way.Then this pain would stop.

ChapterEight

Jagger

I strode past the pit,hellfire licking up from the edges and heating my skin.

This was home—maybe this was where I needed to be for a while, until things with Sutton cooled off.

A growl slipped free as I hefted the stag higher on my shoulder, and I tried not to spill the bucket of hot water I carried in the other hand, and strode deeper into the tunnels.

Another growl, low in my chest, rolled from me out of nowhere.I couldn’t seem to stop it for some reason.No, that was bullshit.I knew the reason.It was every time I thought about Sutton and the way she’d looked at me before she shut the door in my face, locking me out of her house—which meant I was growling constantly.

I still didn’t know how I’d lost the grip on my control so thoroughly.

Seeing her hurt like that.In danger.My control had started corroding the moment I realized she was in trouble.

My snarl bounced off the stone walls on either side of me.Somehow, I’d sensed her fear that night, I’dknownshe was in serious danger.A hound used scent to track, and the animal part of me wouldn’t let go of Sutton’s, her scent was fucking imbedded deep inside me.

I’d tried to shake off the pull toward her, the sense that she was in trouble, because I didn’t believe it.Why would I feel that?How?But a hound never ignored his instincts, and not following where they led me, where her scent led me, was impossible.They’d taken me straight to Dogwood—to Sutton in that fucking van.

After that, instinct had taken over, had driven me to snatch her from that wolf, put her on the back of my bike, and take her home to tend her wounds.

Seeing her afraid, injured, the beast had demanded I take care of her.The beast and the man were one and the same—we were of the same mind in all things—and that part of me wouldn’t let me forget the taste of her lips, and now—fuck—there was a growl ofmine, constantly in my head.Animal instinct was pulling me toward her, making me feel things that should be impossible, my stomach was tight, and my hands fucking shook and my head was full of confusing and persistent thoughts, and I was afraid I knew why.

I’d barely resisted tearing the heads off those wolves.If Warrick and Rome hadn’t been there, I’m not sure I could’ve stopped myself.Yes, those fuckers deserved it, but it would’ve caused all kinds of problems with Draven and the rest of his pack.I was War’s lieutenant, given that position because I could keep my shit tight when I needed to.It was Draven’s job to reprimand his pack, but as soon as I’d seen Sutton, afraid and bleeding, I hadn’t cared about that, I would have happily started a war.

I thought I had the hunger, the desire for Sutton, under control.I thought that seeing her hurt, licking her wounds, tasting her blood had caused some kind of fucked connection to her, was behind these overprotective feelings I had for her, and that I could easily handle them.I was wrong.

The scent of her blood had roused the beast until that part of me had been shoving against my skin, rolling under my flesh, desperate to take over, to hunt down those who hurt her and put them down.

As soon as I’d run my fingers through all that soft, gorgeous, fucking honey-blond hair stained red, I’d been back in that basement with her.I’d seen her the way I’d found her three months ago, so close to death that she’d almost been lost to all of us.

After that, washing the blood out of her hair, getting rid of the smell, had been all I could think about, and the more I’d touched her, the more I’d smelled her, and the more time I spent with her, the more I lost control—until I was nothing but beast.

Being near her was too dangerous.I couldn’t be in the same city, the same house, and definitely not in the same fucking room.

Which meant this wasn’t just some protective feelings I was dealing with here, this was something else, something that should not be fucking possible.

Fuck.