Page 13 of Freed By Wrath

Three years ago, the last time that happened, we’d ended up at a Halloween party that none of us had planned on remembering this long.

So naturally, shit was destined to happen, and of course Slash would be at the heart of it.

I pull the mask over my face, grateful Isaac is enough of a kinky bastard to own an entire collection of them.

Mine matches the one Slash stole earlier—black leather, same horn detail, molded close enough to my face that it sits without shifting. If luck is on our side, she’ll never know who we are.

The garage is not empty, but the building residents are either at parties or hiding behind closed doors with the lights off so they don’t have to answer for candy.

I circle to Slash’s car, hit the release, and lift the trunk.

The second the trunk opens, she bolts upright.

A tangle of copper hair spills over her shoulders before she shoves it out of her face, blinking against the sudden light.

And there she is.

Bloody hell.

She’s smaller than I remembered, but still all soft curves and stubbornness, with full lips pressed into a hard line that doesn’t match the wet shine still clinging to her lashes.

Somewhere between furious and breathtaking, she’d apparently decided to be both.

Mascara has bled down both cheeks in dark, uneven streaks. One sleeve has slipped off her shoulder, exposing the smooth curve of her collarbone, proof of how fiercely she fought against the cramped space. The tiny black horns are still hanging onto her hair by sheer determination, tilted so crooked they should look ridiculous.

Instead… They make her look dangerous. Beautifully furious.

Her chest rises and falls with sharp breaths, dark eyes blazing with enough wrath to burn the entire estate to the ground.

I forget to move. Forget to breathe.

For two full seconds, my brain abandons every coherent thought I’ve ever had.

Three years. Three fucking years since that Halloween.

I remember looking at Slash and wondering how he’d managed to choose the wrong cousin. Then remembering he wasn’t the only idiot in the room. I was one too.

We all were. Because at some point in our lives, we all talked about her.

But that night? Fuck. We were all enthralled by her.

We should’ve acted on it.

I don’t regret much in life, but letting her leave without tasting her is definitely one of them.

No. No.

She wasn’t ours to want. She belonged to someone else, even if every instinct in my body insisted he never deserved her.

We could’ve ignored that. Plenty of men would’ve. But we didn’t, because we never were that kind of men.

We watched from a distance instead, convincing ourselves that wanting her quietly was somehow the honorable thing to do.

Turns out doing the right thing can hurt just as much as doing the wrong one. But at the end of the day, he was her choice, and there are lines decent men don’t cross, no matter how badly you want to pretend those lines don’t exist, no matter how often your eyes drift back to them anyway.

Women in relationships are one of them.

So we kept our distance. Watched from afar. Convinced ourselves that wanting her quietly was somehow the honorable thing to do.