Page 96

“It was you.”

Part 3

Betrayed

Chapter

Forty

“What was me?” Eli asks, trying to get up and stumbling with his wrist cuffed to his ankle.

“In the forest.” I step back again. The ground spins beneath me. “In Caldera.” A knife flashes.

His eyes flare with understanding, winning over the confusion he wore a moment ago. He parts his lips, but can’t get anything out—not even a denial.

My eyes burn, but I threaten to gouge them out if a single tear escapes, and they comply. For now.

“H-how?”

That’swhat he manages to say? “Your back.”

He slaps his free hand over the tattoo—two black towers etched on his back—and his face falls, then hardens.

A crushing pain settles in my chest. This is so much worse than him taking me away from the Centress’ torture and keeping me for his own obsessions. He’s the reason I’m separated from Kelter. He’s the reason I’m in Sonnet and not home, searching for my parents…for the mother I never would have found there. He made the false report that I was taken on this side of the border.

He’s it.

I let him grapple with the bleak silence between us, my endless supply of curse words suddenly spent, meaningless.

“Never…” He crouches next to the stump.

I retreat.

“I know you’re…you, but I thought—”I thought there was someone underneath all that pain, that toughened exterior, someone that saw me, yet still wanted me.

“You could have at least told me, explained that you were working your shift at the border, doing what the Centress wanted. It’s not like I thought you actually cared about me,” I lie again. “I know you only keep me around for whatever you think is inside of me. From the first time I saw you—it’s been so obvious. I didn’t want to believe it.” My face crumples, but my tears don’t dare show themselves.

His brown eyes widen. “Believe what?”

“That you really are the bad guy here.” Disgust bubbles under my skin. “And I let you put your hands all over me.”In me.

He hobbles a few steps. “Get over here and uncuff me.”

I walk backward. “Why would I when you like them so much?”

He growls, yanking his cuffed wrist. “You’ll be back in the Centress’ hands in a day. It’s not safe. Come to me.”

I search the clearing for the direction we entered from, orienting myself.

“Never, don’t you run away from me again. There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t fucking find you.” The ferocity in hiswords hits nowhere near as hard as the panic splashed across his face. “I’llalwaystake you home with me.” He drops to his knees, scuffing closer, thighs bare and cock out. “Don’t make this difficult.”

The sweet swears surface, along with a slew of other words I don’t mean to say. “Fuck no. Not even in my nightmares would I let you put this back on me. You weren’t the one inside a damn sack, taken from everything you knew in life, then blamed for it and imprisoned and attacked. And you know what the worst part is? How badly I want you to sweep me up in those stupid strong arms, wipe away the tears that are about to flood my face and tell me how fucking sorry you are. That I’m worth caring about. But that’s not at all who you are, and wanting that, wanting you to be someone you’re not—even for a second—is worse than you not doing any of it.”

He stares up at me, his lightness and those dark eyes trying to pull me back to him.

Not this time.

I turn around and march away, leaving a shirtless man alone in the woods—a stranger.