Page 169 of Jagged Souls

She obeys in an instant. Then I walk over to the bed and pick up the bottle I was trying to get her to drink. Coming back to her, I kneel in front of her.

I hold the vial beneath her nose. She starts to open her eyes, but I tell her to close them. She does so immediately.

A slave to a master. Her to the poison of the V.

Keeping the vial under her nose, letting her ‘taste’ it as she breathes in deep, I pour the bottle of water into her mouth. She tenses, uncertain that what she’s drinking is the potion she wants, but she can smell the V so strongly, and the fog in her brain keeps her dumb.

“I need more,” she says, and I give her more water to drink.

It kills me that I’m deceiving her though, using a placebo against her. I’ve never lied to her before – even when I sent her away with another man, I was so fucking clear that it would break me. That I would trade the world to keep her if I could.

“So why aren’t you?” she demands.

“You know I’m sun-touched.” That I’m cursed by the gods to only live a life of misery. Every wolf is supposed to suffer as punishment for a past sin – that is why our change is one of pure agony. The fact that I can bear it means I must pay the price by suffering in all else. If I don’t, the gods will kill her and anyone else that brings me joy.

“I don’t care! I want you, you idiot!” she shoves me in the chest, her red eyes spitting with rage. With pain. “Don’t you want me?”

“Of course I do.” I ball my hands at my sides, knowing that if I reach for her, I’ll grab her and never let her go. “I’ll always want you.”

“So take me.” Tears burn her eyes.

Burn mine. “No.”

She rears back as if I hit her. Her lower lips wobbles. Fuck. If she cries, that’s it. I’m not going to be able to let her go. But instead, she lifts her chin. My little helfire, my little stubborn ball of flame. “Fine. Then I’m going to marry Jack. And I’ll – I’ll carry his eight pups, and I’ll – I’ll love him –”

“You’ll never love him,” I cut in on a low growl, shoving my hands into my pockets as the rest of me vibrates with a need to hold her.

“I will!”

“You might lie with him, Siome, and you might carry his eight pups –”

Her face cracks, breaking my fucking heart.

“– but your love is mine. It will always be mine.”

“So then take it,” she whispers, so much agony in that plea. “Please.”

“I can’t.” Lifting my head, I look towards the group of men on the horses. They are ready to carry her away from me. To a territory out west, where she will be free from all this violence.

From the touch of my curse that has already taken three of my four siblings.

I cannot bear it if it takes her too.

Looking at Jack, a man I owe my life, I wave him over. He hesitates, then he nudges his roan horse in our direction. Vance, Siome’s brother, comes with him.

In the last few seconds I have with her, I memorize her face so I can paint it – once I learn how.

“Smile for me, little helfire,” I murmur. “Just one last time.”

“Go to hel.”

Turning on her heels, she runs from me.

And it takes everything I have to let her go.

A vial of V is placed at my lips, and I lurch to the side, my hands reaching for it. But the air moves, and then it’s gone, and a frustrated cry escapes me. “Please…” I scramble around so my back’s to the wall, trying to figure out where he is.

“Tell me why it hurts,” he says, his voice beating down on my pathetic body as he stands over me. Not far.