Page 26 of The Forbidden Wolf King
Axil looked scared of me and deep down that made me feel good. I wanted him to hurt. I shuffled closer to him so that I could look him straight in the eyes as I told him what he did to me. He appeared like he was in pain before I even opened my mouth.
With a shaky breath, I held his gaze. “I’m dead inside because of you, Axil.”
Agony crossed his face and he stumbled backwards into the wall until his back hit it. I pushed forward, stepping closer so that I could reach out and touch his heart with my hand. I laid my palm over the spot on his chest that contained his heart, like I had so many times that summer. Feeling the frantic chaotic beating made me feel good.
“I loved you with every ounce of my soul, the entire weight of it was yours,” I told him. “You made promises, knowing how broken I was from losing my parents so young. You told me thatyouwould be my family,” I reminded him.
Shame burned his cheeks but he stayed silent, letting me speak my truth.
“And then you left me. Threw me away like trash!” I screamed in his face, retracting my hand. “And now every man that has come after you has gotten a shadow of me because there’s nothing left!” I beat on my chest hard, as my wolf rose to the surface and Axil did something I didn’t expect.
He covered his face with his hands and burst into sobs.
The raw heartfelt emotion shook me to my core and I didn’t know what to do with it. Axil Moon, theking wolven,didn’t cry. He wasn’t weak. He didn’t break down in sobs over a woman.
Or did he? And was it a weakness?
I stared at him in shock as he broke down and part of me wanted to pull him into my arms and squeeze him so tight until he stopped, but the bigger part wanted him to hurt. So I turned, and hopped out of the room, slamming the door and leaving my past behind me.
Hurt me once. Lesson learned. Hurt me twice … never gonna happen, because I’m not that stupid.
Axil Moon was dead to me.
* * *
I rushed right outside,through the network of hallways and found my brother.
He started to lay into me about making Eliza pack but when he saw the look on my face he stopped. He handed me a large piece of flatbread with butter on it and my mouth instantly watered. I yanked it from his grasp and then slipped past him and into my hammock without saying another word. I wanted to be alone, just me and my yummy flatbread and my stupid feelings. Sometime later I fell asleep and then woke up early the next morning. The campfire was dying and the sun was barely out.
I stepped out of the tent to find that my ankle could now support all of my weight.
Cyrus didn’t look up at me as he added another log to the fire. “Ivanna and one other made it back late last night. They looked half-starved but not severely injured.”
I nodded, handing him a second log without speaking. I knew Ivanna would survive but I didn’t care right now. I hadn’t been able to get Axil’s words out of my head all night.
I’ve spent all these years loving you and you hate me?
Did he really believe he loved me all these years? The sound of his sobbing haunted my soul. Maybe he did.
I’d never seen a man break down like that. Hades, none of the women I knew cried like that. Unless they were submissive or had just lost a relative in battle. He cried like I’d died. Maybe I’d mourned him all those years ago and for some stupid reason he’d held on to hope? So he’d only just lost me last night.
It didn’t make sense.
I didn’t see how he could be so delusional but alas, men were stupid sometimes.
My brother finally spoke. “You made her pack? Zara, are you insane?”
Eliza.I needed to check on her. “Maybe,” I told him and he finally looked up at me with a little compassion.
“You okay? Was it rough out there?”
I sighed, “If killing two wolves, while fighting off another two, and then being mauled by a bearin, only to walk Eliza out on a broken ankle is rough … then yeah it was.”
He stood then, shifting on the balls of his feet before pulling me into an awkward stiff hug.
My brother didn’t hug. Clearly. He was horrible at it. It actually hurt, he was squeezing my back so hard, but I said nothing. It would probably be another ten years before he hugged me again so I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed him back.
“I was so damn proud of you when you stepped out of those woods, Zar,” he said, pulling back. “Mom and Dad would have been too.”
