Page 60 of Prey for Me

We were never meant to be together, to be trapped in this limbo. But I promise myself in that moment for once, I’ll be the one to save them.

“Let go,” Raphael’s booming voice penetrates the silence like a sword.

I step back, fearful I’ll be cut by his sharp words.

He glares at his empire

His hand settles on the metal bar, warping it.

“They shot us up with so much shit I forget sometimes . But I thought I could save her.”

“Your mate?”

“No!” he stumbles over his words, trailing off, glaring at me before he whispers, “She wasn’t my mate. She was my sister. And I failed her. I watched her, then when she burned. They said they couldn’t risk it, the infection spreading.”

Something shifts in Raphael's heated gaze. My stomach somersaults as he steps closer. I suck in a sharp breath wondering if he’ll kiss me. Wanting him to kiss me. But he doesn’t He turns away and grimances.

I was sixteen when I was sentenced.

Sixteen? I can’t stop myself from shouting and he glares at me, but Raphael’s flare is half hearted.

Yes, sixteen. Tried as an adult.

For what?

Two counts of felonious assault with a weapon.

Then the story comes flooding back.

My blood turns to ice as his dark gaze shifts to mine, radiating rage.

“…against my mother.”

It feels so long ago, like a bad dream I can’t wake up from, the day my mothers body was found raped and butchered behind her office building. The day the Liberation Foundation burned to the ground. The day Faith and I lost our whole world.

He takes a step closer, a meaningful step filled with dark intentnions, and I step back rattling the chains as my back hits the wall. But I shock him by leaping forward and tugging him back into my arms. And even though he stands like a garogyle, still as stone, I refuse to let go, to allow him to close himself off from me again.

The cell seems to melt away and there’s only my alpha and me, embracing in the darkness, as if we’re the only people left in the universe. It takes a long time for his shaking to subside, as I stroke the burn marks I can so clearly make out even in the near pitch black abyss.

How had I missed them before? I wonder, and then I’m struck by the fact that I wasn’t looking. Not really. Raphael wasn’t a person to me before this moment, as shitty as that is to admit.

He was a symbol of an alphas power, of all the forces that used to control me, and emotionally, still do. He was an avatar that I thrust my lust and hatred onto.

And now I see him fully, and it breaks my heart. Sixteen isn’t young, but he was still a child. He didn’t deserve to be sent here. To be abused and tortured and have whatever goodness he had left in him torn out until he was a bitter husk of a man.

And suddenly, Nakoa’s words make all the sense in the world to me.You remind me of him.I hated him because he was a mirror into my own twisted soul.

“But you’re innocent. So who set you up?”

The shock on his face barely registers before it’s covered up by a sneer.

Trying to run away from the truth.

What truth?

That your father set me up, who else?

Guilt throbs in my heart, distorting the rhythm until it’s pounding out of control.

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