Page 26 of Hell Kissed

Bea’s like a sister to me.

I just hope she still feels that way after everything that happened tonight. I’ll lay low for a while and then try to come back, explain and apologize for attacking her mate… my mate…

Shit. Everything’s a mess.

I shake it all away and just focus on getting the hell away from this pack and my new hellish friends.

At that thought, feet pound over the dirt behind me, and though I’m fast, they match my speed.

Dirt flings in the air as I turn on my boots and face the assholes.

Except… it’s a different asshole.

Kyvain.

And he’s brought friends.

Bea stands wide-eyed behind him, and she’s all I can focus on right now.

“Bea,” I whisper.

She lifts her big green eyes up to me, but a new mark glows white against her neck. Her mating mark. She flinches as it burns brighter before she lowers her gaze and stares at the ground.

“What the fuck did you do to her?” I accuse, looking Kyvain’s arrogant ass in the eyes.

His arm is bandaged tightly, but a dark red stain spreads from his shoulder downward.

Good.

“You planning on leaving? Never coming back?” Kyvain’s lips twist into a cruel smirk, and before I can say anything, he cuts me off. “My mate isn’t going anywhere just yet.”

“I’m not your mate.” My chin lifts, and I’m absolutely right.

Bea wears his mark, a slashing of three lines along her neck. I note a faint white scar branding the back of his hand with a new mark, a moon on fire it seems.

“My mark looks pretty on you. I like the way you wear it,” I whisper to him sweetly, a real fuck you. I want him to understand that he doesn’t own me.

If anything, I own him now.

Calvin and two other men in the shadows shift on their feet.

“We uh… we were all marked, Rhys,” Calvin says to me as if it might be an error of the Dark Moon that I might be able to fix.

“All four of you are marked as mine?” I ask with narrowed eyes, and really, this is getting entirely too fucked up.

They all nod.

Maybe it’s karma. This is what you get when you torment someone all your life.

Now you’re forced to love her for all eternity.

And she’ll never love you back.

Never.

I shake my head slowly and pause on Bea once more.

“I love you, Bea. I’ll find you again someday,” I whisper, knowing now I have to leave for longer than I ever anticipated, and just before I turn toward the fence, her bright eyes smile back at me with a hint of sadness and love shining within.