Page 24 of When Roses Burn

Devnair sighed before replying. “She’s not doing very good at it, but I do think she was trying to help. Her hands are bloodier than mine.”

Briar lifted her hands and studied them like she’d forgotten they existed, never mind that blood covered them. When trails of red slid down her wrists and fell onto the floor, she lowered them again.

I frowned as I studied her. “Why would you try to free him? What game are you playing now?”

She recoiled, as if my question stunned her, but I didn’t understand what she was doing with the elf.

“I’m not a monster,” she whispered.

“I beg to differ.”

Tears flooded her eyes before she blinked them away. At one time, her distress would have swayed a stupid me; now, I felt nothing, other than hate, while gazing at her.

“Whatever her reasons, your girl was trying to set me free, Seth, Knox, or whoever you are now.”

Beside Devnair, Briar shuddered. She wasn’t looking at me anymore. Her attention had returned to the head in my hand.

She hadn’t recognized me, and yes, the past ten years had changed her too, but not enough that I wouldn’t know her anywhere.

Her espresso-brown hair was pulled back from her beautiful, oval-shaped face, which was thinner and paler than the last time I saw her. That paleness wasn’t just because the color had drained from her face the second she saw me. Briar had loved being outside, with her head tilted back and her face to the sun. That must have changed over the years.

At one time, I’d marveled over the deep rose-red color of her lips. They remained an enticing shade of red, but it disgusted me that I’d once pressed my mouth to hers.

Her sea green eyes didn’t hold the sparkle they possessed during our days together. Instead, they were flat and filled with uncertainty.

The hideous wedding dress they’d put her in exposed as much of her flesh as it covered. It hugged curves I once kissed every inch of, but her body was leaner and more athletically built than I recalled, something the dress exposed.

Yet with as much as the dress exposed, it managed to cover my mark on her… a mark that would never fade, even if we both wished it would. I had no idea why she’d let me mark her when she planned to betray me within minutes, but she’d played her game well and gone all in on her treachery.

At five foot seven, she was far smaller than me. At one time, I’d worried she was fragile without her full powers, but I’d learned this woman’s perfidious heart was far from delicate.

She was as beautiful as I remembered. No, she was more beautiful. The youthful girl was gone, and in her place was a gorgeous woman with haunted eyes and a body built for fucking. A body built… for me.

As soon as the thought entered my mind, a flash of rage accompanied it. I wanted to make this woman understand the depth of suffering she’d confined me to; I would break her as much as she’d broken me.

But I had underestimated the effect seeing her again would have on me and the beast. It was my old animal, the one I never met, who marked her as its mate, but apparently some of that animal still resided in the beast, or maybe it was within me.

It didn’t help that she still smelled of strawberries and eucalyptus. That her scent was as enticing as I remembered, and while I was determined to make her pay, my cock still stirred at the knowledge of how good it felt to have that smell enveloping me, how tight her pussy was, and how much I’d craved her and, to my dismay, still did.

I’ll cut my dick off before I ever stick it in her again. And I would.

To drill this into my head even more, I picked out the similarities between her and her mother… a woman I’d gladly rip to shreds before pissing all over her corpse. They both had dark hair, but Briar’s was a softer shade. The shape of their faces was similar, as was the shape of their eyes, but Briar’s were warm, whereas Marina’s were colder than ice.

It was possible to tell they were mother and daughter, but there weren’t as many similarities as I would have liked. Still, she was Marina’s daughter, and she had her mother’s treacherous soul.

“What brings you here, Knox?” Devnair asked. “I haven’t seen you or the other three shifters in a while. In fact, I haven’t seen any shifters since I last saw you all. You were running free at the time, but I figured they’d killed you. No one escapes the barrier.”

“No one escapes the cells either,” I said.

“Until you.”

“Until me.”

“You knew he was free!” Briar accused Devnair.

The elf ignored her.

“I found a way past the barrier,” I stated.