Page 27 of Ghost

“What happened?” he snarled, his arms tightening.

Damen peeled to a stop beside us. “What took you so long?” he asked, reaching toward me. But before his hand touched my own, Titus stepped backwards.

“What. Happened?” Titus repeated, holding me out of Damen’s reach. “This is much different than the situation that you described to me. How could you have let it get so far?”

“The situation changed.” Damen frowned at Titus, lowering his hand. “I was outnumbered. I wouldn’t have had to resort to drastic measures. I was waiting for you to get here, tohelp. But I had control of the situation, she wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

“You should have left before it ever got to this point!” Titus retorted. “I don’t even know what made you decide to bring her here. This entire situation is on you.”

Damen narrowed his eyes in response. “You need to watch yourself, Titus.”

Guilt knotted my stomach as I watched them. Titus and Damen were fighting. And what was worse, it was because of me.

That wasn’t fair—it was my decision to stay here, in the end.

“Please stop fighting,” I shot them my best no-nonsense look. “It was my decision to stay. I didn’t want Damen to be eaten. I—”

They stopped glaring at each other and turned the weight of their attention to me. I almost couldn’t breathe from the weight of it. Damen’s face was a picture of barely-concealed anger. But what was more frightening was Titus’ blank expression.

Now that I had their attention, I didn’t like it.

“I was trying to help…” My explanation sounded pathetic.

“I told you to run.” Damen’s voice was deep with disappointment. “You could have died. What in the world possessed you to stay?”

My insides twisted painfully and my vision drifted away from them.

I had done it already, ruined my one chance at true friendship. Somehow, I had misinterpreted. Damen had been telling me from the beginning that I wasn’t up to his level.

It shouldn’t have hurt, considering I already knew that.

“I’m so sorry…” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. There were no words to cover the depths of my shame.

Damen suddenly cursed. “That’s not what I meant, Bianca.”

This time Titus didn’t move as Damen’s hands gripped my fingers. “I’m sorry, that’s not what this is about. I’m taking it out on you. Forgive me.”

I hadn’t been able to look at him, but of course he noticed. His finger touched my chin, urging me to raise my face. Once our eyes met, I was trapped.

He continued, “We were scared. You could have been killed. This was nothing for me to handle by myself. It would be highly unlikely for a shifter to be able to seriously hurt me. But you…”

I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. It made me sad that he believed he was indestructible. “Where’s Kasai?”

“I sent him back for a moment,” Damen let out a breath. Releasing my hands, he glanced at Titus. “We’ll need to take care of things here.”

Titus set me back on my feet, touching my arm as he also moved backwards. His expression was still unreadable.

The tension between the two of them was still palpable. Ironic, considering the rest of the room was now calm in comparison. The two of them glanced at each other before stepping away to whisper between themselves.

I took that moment to survey the rest of the room.

A lioness paced between myself and five subdued hyenas. Well, mostly subdued. Their attention drifted, and any time their focus wavered in my direction the lioness growled at them.

Obviously—considering the circumstances—it was safe to assume that she was a shifter, and I wondered who she was. Surely not the legendary Mar—

“Maria,” Titus called, breaking his conference with Damen. “Ada is on her way, she had to have sensed this.”

The lioness crouched and hissed in response. It was such an animalistic reaction I couldn’t help but instinctively step back. Titus, on the other hand, wasn’t perturbed.