Page 358 of Blood and Ruin: The Complete Series

The adults told us she and her mom didn’t like it here anymore and just left.

None of us believed them. Even when we broke into her house and saw it in perfect condition with all of their stuff gone. Even when the neighbors told us they saw them leave in a moving van.

We all knew it had to be a lie. Kiarra would never just leave without so much as a goodbye. If it came down to it, she would’ve sneaked out and told us beforehand.

It wasn’t until the years passed did doubt grow and festered into something else, making us think maybe she did leave us.

All without so much as a fucking goodbye.

Maybe we just imagined the bond we all had together. We were only kids, after all.

“Hey, I’m talking to you.”

Younger me ignores Trent but the little fucker keeps on trying to push him to react.

“Where’s your little girlfriend?”I freeze and catch my younger self doing the same and then smile when I remember what I did next.

“You scared her away, didn’t you?”

I can see the storm build in my eyes the longer he talks about Kiarra. My little body starts shaking from the slow build of rage inside me.

“She probably left because of you.”

Hitting too close to home, younger me snaps out and decks the fucker, giving him a broken nose.

I remember how good it felt to feel someone else suffer when I was drowning in it.

Trent curses out in pain, his eyes watering from the hard hit. Instead of crying about it, he looks down, noticing the blood and gets pissed. “You’ll pay for that.”

Younger me steps forward ready to beat the shit out of him, not caring either way when my little wolf rises up wanting to join in on the fun as bloodthirsty as me, even at that age.

But turns outTrentis just a bully that’s all talk as he stumbles back a step, the look on his scared shitless face, fucking priceless.

The smell of urine permits the air, as the little bully wets himself. His eyes widen in horror as he stumbles back another step before spinning around and running away.

“Freak!” he shouts over his shoulder before he disappears out of the park.

I shake my head at the dick and turn back to little me. He sits back down on the swing and starts fucking crying like a big baby.

I sigh, getting down to eye level with him. “Come on. It’s not that bad.” But I remember at that age, it couldn’t get any worse.

“Why did she have to go?” he mumbles to himself, the tears growing as he rubs his chest.

I remember feeling like there was a wide gaping hole there, like something was ripped from me but too young to realize it was the bond and my mate being taken from me.

I wish I could shake him out of it and tell him in the end it all worked out. That going through everything after this was worth having her now… worth having his family back.

But if there’s one thing I could change…

As if I’d summoned the memory up myself, the landscape starts to change and shift beneath my feet. The world around me moves by in a blink and before I know it, I’m back home.

Not a real home, but the place me and Luka were born.

Younger me is a little older but still as sad and fucking heartbroken. But now there’s a dark look hidden in his eyes, one that he tries to cover with humor.

Liam, Benji, and Joel; my three idiot cousins, surround me as I stand there ready to shift. I knew I’d get my ass beat by my parents if I shifted into my shadow wolf even if it was just to defend myself. But the beating was always worth it when I overpowered them and took them down a notch or two.

Even at that age, my shadow wolf was more powerful than the three of them combined.

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