Page 31 of Love the Way You Lion (Rise of the Resistance #3)

The Bird Loses His Temper

TAURUS

R age. All I feel is blinding, scorching rage.

Which is really unfair, because today was good.

I was good. The sky was clear. The blood bag was hot, just how I like it.

Deli actually smiled at me this morning—really smiled, like the scare from the drugging hadn’t eaten her alive.

She made one of her sarcastic little comments about my blood bags tasting like warmed-over regret. I almost choked on it from laughing.

She seemed like herself again. So I let myself hope. I let myself breathe. I went to work humming like some idiot in love. And I was. I am. I thought maybe— maybe we could start to move forward.

Then that gnobbly little troll reached out.

Of course it was Sari. Her name alone makes my molars grind.

My minx’s other mate family and self-appointed moral tornado.

The woman looks like she collects haunted dolls and bad intentions, and somehow still acts like she’s got the ethical high ground.

She's been circling Minx like a buzzard since the blogger died, clinging to the past, playing on her grief. Wilde and Sari were her mates first—Sari never let go of that, not even after death took him.. She’s been trying to twist Minx’s pain into something useful ever since.

She’s still on this stupid resurrection kick, and I need her to fuck off and leave my minx alone.

So when she wanted to talk, said she had questions about grief?

I figured I could use this opportunity to get her to back off.

If she needs my input on a theory, then she’s going to listen to me when I tell her why she can go straight to hell.

I should’ve said no.

Instead, I told myself I could shut it down.

That I could go in there, look her in her raccoon-eye-shadowed face, and tell her to back off from my wife, once and for all.

But I didn’t shut it down. She opened the door looking smug and unbothered, as if she hadn’t spent the last month trying to coax Minx into some twisted spell that would bring Wilde back from the dead.

Her tone was syrupy sweet. Her house smelled like dried blood and lavender.

“You’re here to try and stop me,” she said, already pouring tea like we were girlfriends catching up after brunch.

“Damn right I am.”

“Too late,” she said, smiling like a snake. “The theory’s sound. The spells are aligning. I just need a little more. A final ingredient. A final push .”

“You’re not dragging Minx into this.”

She waved a hand. “Deli already said no. Refused flat-out. Said it was wrong—said bringing Wilde back would break the universe, that some laws aren’t meant to be rewritten.

She’s been avoiding me ever since you lot dragged her out of that ruin.

Typical. She thinks staying away is the same as staying uninvolved. ”

For a second, pride swelled in my chest. That’s my Minx .

But then Sari leaned back and said: “You know Wilde asked her to marry him, right? Long before you ever did. Gave her a ring and everything.”

My world stopped. “What the fuck did you just say?”

“Oh, she didn’t tell you that part?” Sari asked, tilting her head with mock concern. “How awkward. You gave her your heart, and she just forgot to mention she already had someone else’s ring once upon a time.”

My fists curled into themselves. “You’re lying.”

“Ask her,” she said lightly, sipping her tea like it was gossip and not a live grenade. “I’m sure she’ll come clean. Eventually.”

I left. I don’t remember how I got out. I don’t remember the drive. Just the pounding in my temples and the sharp taste of betrayal clawing up my throat like bile.

My mate lied—again.

She didn’t tell me when she was hurting after Wilde died.

She didn’t tell me she went to Sari first. She didn’t tell me about the ring.

And now I’m supposed to sit here and pretend it doesn’t mean anything?

What else is she hiding? What other pieces of her past is she keeping quiet because she thinks I’ll get mad?

Is that what I’ve become to her? Some temper she has to tiptoe around?

I’ve never asked her to be perfect. I’ve only ever asked her to be honest. And still, she didn’t come to me with this either. So now I’m here, back in our home. My shirt is half-ripped from yanking it off. My boots are scattered somewhere down the hall. I smell like sweat and bourbon and betrayal.

I storm into the gym room, lock the door, and crank the music to near-illegal levels. Sound pours through the speakers like thunder, loud enough to shake the rage loose from my bones .

And then I start to destroy .

I hit the bag so hard it swings like a pendulum, slamming against its chains, creaking like it might rip free. Good. Let it. Let everything break. Let it all come down.

My fists ache. My wrists protest. I don’t care. I can’t care.

Because now I can’t stop picturing Minx, sliding that ring on her finger, accepting it, holding onto it, never once thinking that maybe I should know .

What did she do with it? Does she still have it?

Did she keep it somewhere—quietly, privately—like a memory she couldn’t let go of?

Like a secret she didn’t trust me to handle?

I slam the bag again, this time with both fists, palms open.

The impact rattles my elbows. Why didn’t she tell me?

I would’ve understood. I would’ve listened.

Even if it stung, even if it tore something open—I would’ve rather had the truth.

But now it feels like she let me give her my everything when she hadn’t let go of his.

The mirror across the room shows me my face twisted in fury. My hands shake. My breath comes in short, harsh bursts. I can see the blood where my knuckles split open, dripping down into the padding. Good. Maybe I deserve to bleed.

Sari meant for this to hurt. That’s what really twists the knife. She wanted this wedge. She planted it with precision. But the soil she used—Minx’s silence—that’s what let it grow. The bag bursts, and sand spills out like guts, spraying across the floor.

It’s still not enough .

I grab the dumbbells, start curling them not for form, but for fury.

My arms scream. My jaw aches from clenching.

I think about her in that hospital bed. About the way she trembled when she woke up.

About how she reached for me . The thought is acid behind my eyes.

My whole chest tightens, like my ribs can’t hold the anger anymore.

The bag’s gone. The weights are dented. The floor is cracked beneath one of the plates I hurled.

And still I want to scream.

So I do. I roar into the silence between songs. A sound that rips something open in my chest. A sound I didn’t even know I was capable of. It doesn’t make it better. I sink to my knees in the mess. Breathing like I just ran a marathon. My hands are shaking. My vision swims.

She’s my wife. My mate. My Minx. And she didn’t trust me with this. Again.

I bury my face in my hands, blood smearing across my cheek.

I love her so much it hurts. And right now, that love feels like a cage.

Because what if I am the reason she hides things?

What if she really thought I’d lose it? Am I proving her right?

I want to believe I’m better than that. I have to be better than that.

But I didn’t give her the safety to tell me. Not really.

So I kneel there, in my own wreckage. Punishing myself the only way I know how.

I don’t know how to forgive someone who didn’t trust me.

And I don’t know how to stop loving her, even when I’m shattered by her silence.

I dig my nails into my thighs as I sit in the wreckage, surrounded by torn equipment, spilled sand, and the smell of my own blood.

This isn’t just rage anymore. This is despair with claws.

If she doesn’t trust me now—after everything we’ve been through— will she ever?

I wrap my arms around my knees and lean back against the shattered punching bag stand, bones aching, muscles twitching from overuse.

Every breath feels too sharp, like I’m swallowing broken glass.

The silence between songs stretches out, but I don’t move to restart the music.

I want to scream again. I want to punch a hole through the floor.

But none of that will change the fact that she made a choice—not once, but over and over —to shield me from her truth.

The worst part? I understand why.

I am the clone who once ripped a man in half for looking at Talia wrong.

I am the brute with fists like wrecking balls and a mouth that forgets gentleness when I’m hurt.

I’ve tried so hard to be better. I’ve fought every day to make this life with her something safe —something she doesn’t have to survive.

But what if she still sees me as a threat?

What if she still thinks my love is conditional, that if she says the wrong thing, I’ll walk?

Or worse—that I’ll stay, but not the same.

I grind the heels of my hands into my eyes, like I can force the storm to stop. I feel like I’m unraveling. Not just from the betrayal, but from the fear that I’m not what she needs. That I never was.

My Minx has every right to her past. Every right to love, to mourn, to make impossible decisions and regret them. Wilde was her mate. She lost him. And maybe in some corner of her heart, she still holds a piece of him so tightly she can’t bear to share it.

But I need her to let me be the one she shares it with .

And if she never does? I don’t know how long I can be the second heart in a bond built on silence.

I don’t know how long I can watch her choose quiet instead of truth.

Because it’s not about Wilde. It’s not about some ring hidden in a drawer .

It’s about me standing here in the wreckage—alone—again.

I thought we were past this. I thought we were building something stronger.

Realer. Something rooted in honesty and fire and mutual ruin.

But she didn’t give me that. She gave me what she thought I could handle, and now I have to decide if that’s enough.

If she can’t bring herself to let me see her whole—flawed, grieving, messy, raw—then what the fuck are we doing?

Am I her husband, or just the consolation prize that came after the tragedy?

My hands tremble. I flex my fingers, watching the dried blood crack along my knuckles.

If I lose her again—if this becomes one more fracture we try to plaster over—I don’t know if I’ll come back from it.

Not this time. She’s my wife. My mate. My Minx .

And I love her with every monstrous inch of myself.

But I can’t be the only one willing to burn for this.