Page 10 of Cruelly Bitten

My fist hit Luka again as tears clouded my vision.

Why are you doing this? Why do you have to be a martyr? Why, Cam? Fucking tell me why!I shouted at the closed door in my mind, my limbs shaking from the onslaught of my fury. My fear. My… my desperation for this not to be true.

“Why?” I whispered. “Why?”

“Because he didn’t want to paint a target on your back, Izzy. It’s best that Lilith and everyone else think you’re dead,” Luka told me, making me pause.

“What?” I blinked up at him, but his young face blurred before my eyes. “Dead?”

He frowned down at me. Or I assumed it was a frown, anyway. I couldn’t really see, my world seeming to spin around me in a whirl of dizzying lights.

“Dead?” I repeated.

“You don’t know?” Luka asked, sounding about as shocked and confused as I felt.

“I…” My knees wobbled. “I don’t…”

He caught my hip as I started to sway. “I thought Cam told you the plan. But you don’t know.” He sounded mystified. “I… Izzy…”

“Cam just staged your death to get captured by Lilith,” another voice informed me.

Female.

Alpha lycan.

Mira.

“He knows she won’t kill him,” she continued. “His blood is too powerful for her to waste. But he’s hoping to talk to her. And he needs you to remain here where you’re safe while he works.”

I blinked over at the blonde female. I didn’t know her well, but Luka had chosen her as his mate. So she’d been welcomed into the inner circle.

And she was the only one giving me the answers I needed now.

Answers I didn’t want to hear.

Answers I required nonetheless.

“He cut me off mentally,” I told her on a rasp of sound. “I can’t feel him.”

“To protect you,” she reiterated.

To protect me,I repeated to myself.To keep me safe.Like I was some fragile toy he had to guard, not an equal. Not hismate.

Deep down, I understood. He couldn’t focus properly if all his attention went into guarding me. But that knowledge didn’t make it sting any less.

I shoved away from a still-silent Luka, aware that my legs weren’t steady. However, I had to stand on my own. To prove that I was strong enough to handle this.

I’m a survivor,I thought.Of all people, Cam knows that.

Yet he’d kept me in the dark.

He’d… he’d faked my death and now…

“She might kill him,” I said, my voice barely audible. “She’s crazy enough to kill him.”

And what then?

What happened to us?