Page 14

brIX

I’d never said the words aloud. Ender understood because he’d been the one to find us strewn across the kitchen floor like the trash Red River thought we were. He was the only one who knew everything I’d lost. But Wren needed to know, too.

“They tortured us for sport. My parents. My sister. We watched as they killed our father first. Then our mother. But they played with my sister and me. Sick. Twisted. And I couldn’t protect her.”

Tears spilled out of Wren’s turquoise eyes, tracking down her cheeks. Pain for me. For my family.

“All they wanted was money, territory. And they didn’t give a damn who they had to end to get it. No honor. Never challenged our alpha. Instead, they snuck in during the dead of night when they knew half our enforcers were away on a training mission.”

Wren gripped my fingers so tightly that I lost all blood flow. But it didn’t matter. I had to get it out.

“I lay on that kitchen floor for over twenty-four hours before Ender came and got me out. Called for help. He saw all the destruction. The death. It’s why he’s so angry now.”

“Because of what my father did,” Wren whispered.

“Your father. Not you.” I saw now what I hadn’t been able to in the shock of the moment when we found out where Wren had come from.

She struggled to swallow, to get words out. “He’s a monster.”

And she’d had to live with him for half her life.

“He doesn’t care about anyone but himself,” she spat. “Only making himself feel bigger, better than everyone around him. Forcing the submission of everyone in his orbit. It’s never out of respect. Only fear.”

“Even you.” It wasn’t a question because I’d seen Wren’s body. Saw all the ways she’d been broken. Maybe she was just like me.

A sadness swept into Wren’s expression. And more than that—defeat. “He always seems to win. Gets exactly what he wants.”

Fiery tendrils of anger surged along every vein and nerve ending. “He didn’t. Not with you. Not with me. We’re still alive. Breathing. Free of his clutches.”

Those sad eyes lifted to mine. “Are we?”

There was such pain in those two words. Her vulnerable truth.

“I’ve been running every moment since I escaped.” Wren roughly tugged a hand through her tangle of dark-brown hair. “Every time I thought I could be safe, he blew my refuge sky-high. He still haunts my nightmares. And I’m still afraid of the dark.”

“Little Warrior?—”

“I’m tired.” Wren cut me off as her shoulders slumped. “I’m so damn tired.”

I moved in, just the tiniest bit closer. “So maybe it’s time to stop running.”

“It’s the only way I know how to stay alive.”

Fucking hell.

Bastian Boudreaux had torn my world apart, but I didn’t have to live looking over my shoulder, worried he’d come for me again. That bastard had likely forgotten I even existed. The moves my brothers and I made against him were covert. He had no way of tracing them back to us.

But Wren? She lived in fear every single day. It only made me admire her more. She’d fought through hell and made it out. She’d taught herself to fight, even though it wasn’t part of her submissive nature. She’d been so damn smart to evade his capture.

“How did you get out?” The question tumbled out without my permission. I didn’t have any right to the answer, but that didn’t change the fact that I wanted to know.

Wren looked at the stream swirling around her feet. For a moment, I thought she wouldn’t answer me. “There was a party. My father had just come back from a raid. Those were always the times he was the happiest .” She spat the final word like a curse.

“He liked to take that happiness out on me.” Wren’s sea-blue eyes swirled in an array of tones, darkening and lightening as memories took hold. “He had me brought to him in front of the whole pack. Said I needed to be strong like him. That he’d make me that way.”

A sick feeling rooted itself in my gut, but I could do nothing to stop it. Just like I could do nothing to change what had happened to Wren in the past.

“Bastian had me tied to a post and whipped me until the pain took me under. I woke up face down in the mud. Someone had cut me down at some point, but their party had continued, no one thinking about little ole me.”

Images of the scars on Wren’s back flashed in my mind as rage swept through me. Anger was familiar to me. It was the one thing I let myself feel on occasion. But the sorrow that accompanied it now? That felt completely foreign. And the power of it nearly dragged me into a shift.

“Everyone was drunk or passed out,” Wren went on. “Hooking up or fast asleep. I knew it was then or never. The beatings were getting worse, and I had no doubt that he’d eventually kill me.”

Fur rippled over my arms as I battled to hold my wolf back. He wanted to shift and hunt the one who’d harmed his mate. And I wanted that, too.

“I managed to shift, which helped with the healing. I’d memorized the enforcers’ positions and was able to sneak past one whose girlfriend was meeting up with him while he was on duty.

I ran and ran until I passed out. When I woke, I ran some more.

I made it from Louisiana to Virginia before I shifted back to my human form. ”

Wren let out a long breath. “Stole some clothes from the trunk of someone’s car. Cut my hair. Hid my scent like my mom taught me. Bastian didn’t know I could do that. Those shields were the only things that saved me.”

I couldn’t hold back anymore. I moved into Wren’s space and let the scent of wolf, rain, and wildflowers swirl around me. “I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I will spend the rest of my life making sure you’re safe.”

“Brix—”

“My only purpose. That and making sure you’re happy.”

It was Wren who moved then. Her hand slid along my jaw and into my hair, her thumb stroking the knife inked by my eye. And then her lips met mine.

Her tongue stroked in, and I couldn’t help the growl that slipped free as I pulled her to me, my dick hardening to the point of pain at the mere taste of her. Everything that was Wren flooded my system. That slight tingling feeling swept through me again. The buzz. And the lightness that followed.

I tore my mouth from hers. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but I knew if I didn’t stop, I’d be pinning her to a tree and taking her. That wouldn’t rebuild trust.

Wren’s chest heaved as she grabbed my shoulders to steady herself. “Brix.”

“I’m yours,” I rasped. “Whatever you need. I’m yours.”

Something shifted in her gaze. I wasn’t sure what Wren might do. She didn’t run. She didn’t grab my face for another kiss. She wrapped herself around me, her face burrowing into my neck as she breathed deeply. “I’m yours, too.”

Those were the sweetest words I’d ever heard.