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“I only want to help you, Dane. You’re injured.”

“I don’t want your fucking help.” His jaw locked as he glared at Eleazar, no longer able to believe this man was a trustworthy friend. “You all have an agenda. You instill your bullshit rules on the females to keep them obedient to the men, so they trust you to protect them.” He pointed angrily at the cave. “Do you honestly feel like she’ll be safe with him?”

“He’s her mate, Dane.”

“He’s a fucking wolf, Eleazar! A wolf who cut adraugrin half with one swipe of his claw and ripped out his heart with the other!”

“And you should be grateful he did. Cerberus would have killed all of us—including Gracie, who should not have been here! Do not be so naive to think she followed you all this way. Grace has never ventured far from home.Somethingpulled her here. Only a calling could compel an immortal so strongly.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I do. Because I lived it. He will kill you as quickly as he ended Cerberus if you interfere in his destiny. We are alive because of him—because he saved us and because he permits us to live.”

“What if it was Larissa?”

A low growl vibrated from the Bishop’s chest. “You’re upset, so I’ll forgive you this one time for posing questions about my bonded mate, but if you ever suggest such a thing again, my kindness will end and you will meet a side of me you donot want to know. Gracie is going to leave with that shadow-wolf and you are going to let her. This is her calling, Dane. Your obsession with her has no basis for comparison. She has chosen to abide God’s will, and I will not let you stand in the way of her destiny.”

Seething with uncontainable rage, his eyes narrowed. “There is no fucking God.” He shoved past Eleazar with no intention of ever looking back.

Drifting toward the coast, he slipped on a muddy slope and winced as his injured body twisted painfully. He’d rinse the blood away in the frigid sea, then see what see to his own damn injuries. If he needed blood to heal, he’d hunt a fucking rabbit because nothing was getting him back up that hill.

Dabbing the back of his pounding head, disturbed by the warmth, Dane pulled his hand away and scowled at his blood-drenched his fingers. “Damn it.”

Dawn cast a golden glow over the water and birds started to sing. He was in the middle of fucking nowhere with no clue where the nearest hospital was. A gaping wound in his head, a severely bruised larynx, and probably a concussion—yeah, he was screwed.

“Dane.”

He spun, startled to find Lilias and Lazarus approaching. “Go away.”

“We want to help you.” Great empathy filled Lillias’s green eyes.

“I don’t want help.”

“You’re bleeding. Why suffer?”

He scoffed. Like his suffering would stop with the bleeding. “It doesn’t matter.”

Lazarus crouched at the banks and rinsed the blood from his arms. “The shadow-wolf said something interesting up there, something I hadn’t considered.” He glanced over his shoulder then returned his attention to washing out his wounds. “Cerberus was your father. That makes you halfdraugr.”

Ice formed in his veins. They offered help a moment ago, but maybe that was a ruse to get close to him, so they could kill him.

Dane took a step back and then wondered why he was fighting it. Death would be a peaceful change. He was exhausted by more than this day and he welcomed an end to his pain. Any sense of survival abandoned him.

Lilias placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he flinched. “We won’t hurt you, Dane. We’ve vowed our protection, and our word is our bond.”

He didn’t feel relief the way a normal person should. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore.”

“It’s clear she was someone special to you.”

“Was, yes. That’s over now.” His anger with Gracie burrowed deeper than he could follow. He didn’t want to think about her anymore. He wished he never met her. “She’s nothing to me.”

Lazarus rose from the banks. “It’s known thatdraugencan become obsessive about the past. It’s why Cerberus would not let Lilias go. He spent centuries torturing her and rejected the natural order of things. You don’t want a life of torment like that for yourself.”

Was that why he couldn’t move on? Dane assumed it was natural grief, but perhaps it was some sort of genetic defect. First, his obsession began with his mother’s death at the hands of Isaiah. Then, his grandmother’s life mysteriously ended when she left with Jonas. After that, he lost Cybil. Gored by the bull, and transitioned into something heinous. She was there but gone. Lost.

They were all lost. Yet he couldn’t let them go.

And now Grace… It was more than he could take.