Page 52 of Rabid
My breathing changes, and a panicked snarl rips itself from my throat as a new, desperate, and terrified fight consumes me. “Put me down!” I demand, but when he keeps walking, my panic spreads. Claws tear out of the tips of my fingers, my blood pounding in my ears. “Put me down now!” I repeat shrilly, and this time, Tyran detects the alarm and distress boiling over in my tone, telling him that I’m not fucking around.
He drops me back to my feet immediately, dipping down until his eyes are level with mine. His gaze searches, looking for hints in my eyes about whatever just happened. Tears come for me, but I give them the fight I never could give to Burke’s betas that day. I stomp out their existence, refusing to let the pain take root. Memories swirl in my mind of the brutality, the taunting, the drugging, the sound of my old pack as they blamed me for all of it.
“I didn’t know, Seneca,” Tyran offers, worried eyes surveying the dead, broken mien that’s dripped down over me and stalled my emotions, cracking my ability to cope. “I didn’t know that you’d just had your Flux,” he tells me. “I heard what you said about what happened to you and how you ended up here. I thought it happened over time, I didn’t realize…”
“They carried me like that, slung over their shoulders,” I blurt, ignoring his words and hating how hollow my voice sounds. “They chained me, locked me up. I was naked and defenseless, and they carried me like that,” I say again, as though I’m reminding myself that it’s not happening now. I look down at my hands, claws still out and ready like I wish they could’ve been then.
“My pack threw things at me, screamed for me to be put down, that I was a traitor, a rabid bitch. They just let them… They always just let Burke…” My eyes find Tyran’s, spilling with pain and questions and anger.
In response, understanding and fury flash in his eyes. “Never again. I promise,” he declares to me, as though he alone holds the power to ensure that.
Tears once again well in my eyes against my will, and their presence does more to unsettle Tyran than anything I’ve ever seen.
“Never again?” I ask him quietly, distrust hammering through every word. “You dangle the pack in front of me like a carrot. Promise me I can find my place here, that this”—I gesture between the two of us—“is meant to be. You claim that I can have everything I’ve always wanted, and then you rip it all away from me when I don’t do what you want,whenyou want. What kind of life is that?” I demand, my voice pinched with hurt and fury as hot acidic tears spill down my cheeks, burning away the hope and safety I thought I could find here.
“I fucked up,” Tyran concedes, worry paling his face. “I made some bullshit assumptions, and I fucked up beyond belief. It willneverhappen again. You were right to take your time. I should’ve never pushed you. I’m so fucking sorry, Seneca.”
As much as I want his admissions and apologies to pierce the armor that now has a stranglehold on my heart, they don’t. I shake my head, and dismay filters through his features, his eyes begging mine not to give up, not to walk away just yet.
“Never again,” he repeats, still dipped down so that his face is even with mine. There’s no escaping the beseeching way he’s looking at me, his tawny brown eyes petitioning that I hear him out. “I won’t push you. I’ll let you lead, help you learn. No one will ever hurt you again...including me.”
Covered in the shadows of night with the fires behind me, I close my eyes against what he’s saying, wishing I wasn’t so desperate for all of that. Wishing I didn’t feel the pack’s attention still at my back.
“Can we talk?” he asks. “No bullshit, no games, just talk like we should have done from the beginning.”
I open my eyes and look at him, survey the appeal and apology swimming in his beautiful brown gaze. I observe the way he’s brought himself down to my level as though I’m finally someone important enough to reach and treat like an equal. His full lips are parted with anticipation, his body tight, waiting to see what I’ll say. As though he’s willing to fight for what he’s asking for—to fight forme.
“Fine,” I relent, taking a step back from him, needing more space between everything that just happened and the hurt still swimming in my veins. I try to dive back into the ever-present anger always just below my skin, to not feel the pain that’s wrapped itself like tentacles around my chest. But the anger is too far away, and I’m left tired and reeling in its absence.
It figures that the rage and fury would abandon me when I want their fiery protection to cocoon me. I can overreact and lose it over a smell on some asshole’s bed, but when I’m drowning in hopeless agony, I’m left to navigate it all on my own.
I start to walk toward the alpha house, Tyran at my back as though he’s both herding me and protecting me, and all I can think is...
Where’s the rabid bitch when you need her?
Chapter Seventeen
Tyran and I walk upstairs together.
My chest feels tight from all of the emotional cacophony that’s erupted, and I realize just how nervous I am.
Arguing, lashing out, that’s all easy. With my wolf’s rabid temper, it comes second nature. But it’s taken its toll. And now, talking, trying to connect emotionally, to deal with the truth of what’s simmering inside...that fucking scares me.
I follow Tyran’s steps as he leads me up the wooden stairs, but instead of turning toward the bedroom where I know I’m going to be surrounded by those countless females’ scents, he leads me in another direction.
“We aren’t going to your bedroom?” I ask with confusion as he moves through the house, aided by the light of the moon shining in through the windows.
He passes me a look of reluctance. “That wasn’t my bedroom. That was where...” he trails off guiltily.
“Ah. That was where you just had sex...sex with females like Presley.” Nausea rolls through my stomach like dice. I don’t want to know what numbers come up on his sexual tally.
“Yeah,” he admits, not denying it. “I lost it a bit when you didn’t claim me back right away. I didn’t realize how much it was going to bother me.”
His words are casual, but there’s something in the slight tic of his jaw that he just bit down against that tells me there’s more here. My eyes flit back and forth between his until I realize what it is I’m looking at.
Hurt.
I hurt him too.
