Page 213 of Cruelly Bitten

Cam and Cane could almost pass as twins.

It was no wonder I’d fallen for that act the other day. But I should have noticed the accent. Or at least realized that soft lilt had meant something.

Only, I’d been too caught up in Cam’s behavior that I’d accepted my fate. I’d believed the charade. Because everything he’d done had suggested he would replace me with a new toy and leave me to die.

Had you been inside my mind, you would know how untrue that is,Cam whispered softly.I would apologize for not taking the wall down sooner, but I didn’t know. I thought it existed as a way to keep you out of my thoughts. And I’m starting to wonder if that had been true, just for reasons I’d originally misinterpreted.

My lips threatened to curl down, but I forced them to remain flat. The last thing I wanted to do was betray my emotions to Cane.

What do you mean?I asked Cam.

I originally assumed I locked you out as a result of a superiority complex. But now it seems I did it to protect you, and I strongly suspect the incident with Lilith wasn’t the first time.

Confusion tugged at my mouth, the instinct to frown hitting me again and forcing me to look out the tinted window beside me. Cane likely saw it, defeating the purpose of trying to hide it, but I couldn’t help my reaction.

I’d been so focused on Cane that I hadn’t been as tuned in with Cam’s thoughts. That changed in an instant, his mind immediately providing me with what I’d missed—Cam had been searching my memories for what I knew about Cane’s behavior and comments after Aurelia’s betrayal.

The conclusion he’d recently come to was that either I didn’t have the full story, or Darius was lying to him.

Cam very much suspected the former.

I think my previous self blocked certain things from you,Cam muttered.Likely in my effort to coddle you and preserveyour fragile state. That last sentence was uttered with a sardonic twist, one that said the very concept of it irked him.

If you did, I wasn’t aware of it.I swallowed.Do you think it happened often?

Because that would be… troubling.

Cam and I were already walking an emotional tightrope. If he thought for a second that his old version didn’t truly trust me or love me, it might change our entire dynamic.

Further, the very concept of Cam keeping secrets from me went against everything I’d thought existed between us.

My guess is I didn’t block things long-term, so much as short-term, he replied. I likely assumed that if you didn’t know the memory was there, you wouldn’t go looking.

Which I wouldn’t have done anyway because I would have trusted you to tell me everything,I admitted. Perhaps that made me naïve, but Cam had owned my mind, body, and soul. I had never possessed a reason to question him.

Something I clearly took advantage of in this situation.That note of irritation lingered in his tone again.Your memories of Cane paint him as brokenhearted and angered by Aurelia’s betrayal. I warned that his already waning humanity was hanging on by a thread due to Aurelia’s attempt on his life.

Yes.That was what I recalled from the situation.I never really saw him after it happened. You said he wanted to be alone. And he was already resting in his coffin when we arrived for the sleeping ritual. He never even opened his eyes.

Hmm, well it seems I lied. According to Darius, my brother had been obsessed with the concept of vampires and lycans ruling the world. Apparently, it started with him wanting to guarantee the extermination of all slayers, but the concept grew into a desire to enslave the human race.

I stared out the window and focused on my breathing while trying to calm my heart. It wasn’t working. I knew Cane couldhear me. But I refused to glance his way and simply let him guess at my mounting anxiety.

Because what Cam was saying now implied—or perhaps evenconfirmed—that his brother was indeed behind all of this. And Lilith had merely been the face of his operation.

Darius says I told my brother the idea was flawed because the lycans would never agree to it. Many of the wolf clans had found ways to quietly coexist with humans. They had no reason to provoke change.

I swallowed again.That’s true. Many of them had working arrangements in small human settlements. They provided protection in exchange for secrecy.

That was essentially how Majestic Clan still operated today, except the humans residing there had been assigned to the territory rather than born there.

Overall, the lycans had still been very much an unknown in the world, as they’d chosen their human settlements carefully.

But that had all changed when the wrong humans discovered their existence. All because a lycan had stolen a mortal woman.

And then the human governments had tried to find a way to weaponize the shifter race.

Which had led to the revolution and our world today.