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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

STONE

While I had promised Zuri that I would tell her everything, as soon as she turned toward me to give me all of her attention, the words seemed to stick in my throat. I snapped my mouth closed and sighed softly, scooting to the end of the bed and dropping my feet to the floor.

“Do you see my tattoos back here?” I asked, drawing my fingers across my back.

The bed dipped behind me, Zuri inches away from me on the mattress. She drew her fingers across the tattoos on my back, the skin that I had hated for years of my life.

“Yes,” she whispered. “What about them?”

“They cover up a birthmark that spans from shoulder blade to shoulder blade.”

“A birthmark?” she repeated. “Why would you cover that up?”

“Because it’s disgusting.”

“Stone, how do you know it’s disgusting?” she asked. “You can’t even see it.”

I pressed my lips together. “Because it is red and blotchy and huge.”

“And?”

All this time, I had been telling Zuri not to worry about what other people thought about her, that their opinions didn’t matter. Yet, I had been the biggest hypocrite in existence. I had let my father’s and brother’s opinion make me hate my skin.

“And …” I whispered. “Derrit and my father would hurt me for it.”

Zuri sucked in a small breath, then moved closer to me until she sat flush against my left hip. She moved her fingers across my back, right over the birthmark that I had hated forever and ever. For fucking years.

“How would they hurt you?” she whispered, her mouth against my shoulder.

Kissing the ruined skin.

Once her lips lingered there for a few moments, she finally pulled away and glanced over at me, her eyes burning with such intensity that I thought I was sitting next to the Moon Goddess herself right now.

Truthfully, I had wished that the Moon Goddess had visited me when I was younger, when my father and brother would beat the living shit out of me every night until I had enough of it. Until I left their rule with some of the others that I now call packmates.

“What did they do to you?” she asked again.

I leaned back on my right palm and drew my fingers over the claw marks across my rib cage. “My father did this to me when I was four,” I whispered, the pain shooting through my body at the memory.

Tears filled her eyes. “Stone, this looks like it was deep.”

“It was,” I murmured. “I didn’t think I would make it. I remember lying in a pool of my own blood at the doorstep of the pack house. My father’s business partners came over that night and stepped over my dying fucking body without even asking if I needed help. They didn’t care.”

My throat closed, and I balled my hands into fists.

“H-how’d you … survive?”

“My grandma finally found me,” I said. “And from that moment on, I lived with her.”

“Still with your pack?”

“It was never my pack,” I said. “Derrit is older and the firstborn son of the alpha. If I hadn’t left before he became alpha at eighteen, then he would’ve killed me on the spot to make sure that nobody would challenge him.”

She leaned her head on my shoulder and drew her fingers across my scars again. I didn’t have many scars anymore since I had made the deal with that devil, but I had been too young to heal these scars.

I hadn’t even shifted for the first time when they happened.

“How’d you end up here?” she asked. “With your grandma and your pack?”

“After we left, I traveled around a lot. Joined wars and battles to become stronger. Trained with Carve and Wyatt. Most of the people in this pack are misfits too, coming from slaughtered families or running away from home.”

Her lips curled into a small smile. “You created a home for people like … me.”

“For people like us ,” I whispered, turning toward her and resting my forehead on hers.

Suddenly, James’s voice drifted through my mind link. I paused for a moment, listening to his words.

“Wyatt’s mate is alive, but we have a problem. Derrit and your father have just raided a pack nearby. Word is that they’re traveling with all their warriors. Here.”

I ran a hand through my unruly hair, kissed Zuri, and slipped off the bed. “I’ll be back later, mate. I have business to take care of and a pack to protect. My father is on his way here. And we need to prepare.”

“Before you go,” she said, grasping my hand, “I’d like to have a girls’ day with Sina and Maxine sometime soon.”

My lips curled into a smile. “I’ll arrange it for you then.”