Page 12 of Hawke

When the kitchen door opened again, I felt a rush of anticipation as I waited to see if it was Delilah. To see her pitiful face, to look into her blue eyes once more. My heart leaped forward, ready for her to yell, to scream at me. Show an emotion that was truer than the lies she spread on her face each day.

I wanted her to call me an idiot, a beast of the heart, but it never came from her.

Instead of seeing Delilah, it was Anaki. The slender dragon cautiously flicked his tongue out of his thin lips, taking in the faint smell of smoke in the air from cigarettes and cigars. “Smells like shit out here.” He narrowed his eyes. They flashed a brilliant yellow before fading once again. “Oh, it’s just you.”

With a snarl I stomped closer to the bar, but Anaki stood his ground by crossing his arms and lifting his shoulders to make himself look bigger than me. And he was. He was a fucking dragon, but he didn’t scare me. I wasn’t fucking scared of anything. Bring me death, bring me peace, bring me the fucking river Stix. I was ready to swim.

Free me from this fucking pain in my heart.

“You want to go?” I nodded my head to the door, the glass beneath my feet crunched beneath the rubber sole of my boot, the high-pitched clinking making my ears twitch.

Anaki rolled his eyes. “I could lower myself to your level, but I don’t enjoy being on my knees as much as you do.”

This fucker.

I jumped on top of the bar, but he was already out the door, flipping the bird. “Stop being an ass to her. Everyone hates you!” Anaki sang in that stupid sing-song voice he liked to sing to Delilah in.

And she fucking liked it. She smiled at him. He smiled back. He didn’t hide his affection toward her, and yet she ignored his sweet advances and came to me. She let me kiss her, let me be around her despite being an asshole.

Mine.

I pulled out my gun and felt the familiar ridges of the grip against my palm. It calmed me enough to jump down from the bar as I fiddled with it. I ran my calloused fingers over the rough grooves. I could barely feel the roughness, but despite all that, having the power in my hand calmed me.

Delilah wasn’t mine and could never be.

And I was too big of a bastard to let anyone else have her, either.

The world looked so black and white to an outsider. They saw me as an asshole. They saw me using her, taking what she gave me so willingly because she was a selfless soul. And hell, she was selfless. And then I took it like the evil villain I’d become.

I took every stolen moment I could and pretended we met somewhere else, another time, another place, another realm. A time when the Goddess should have given Delilah to me, so that we could be together instead of living in an alternate reality where Delilah dangled in front of me, her soul hanging on a string, standing on the other side of a veil where she was too far from reach.

The Goddess was torturing me.You can’t have her. You already lost your chance.

The club could only see the surface of what Delilah and I had. What they didn’t know was how much I fucking loved her. How I would die for her, give up my soul for her, protect her with my last breath.

She wanted me as much as I wanted her, but I couldn’t. I could not let that happen. How could I create a life with her when I wasn’t sure how long I would live for? Not with a wolf going feral, rabid. It could be days from now or years. I would not put her through that. I would not get her hopes up for a happily ever after because there was none.

I was dealt the wrong hand. My cards weren’t a royal flush. I was the joker, the reject, I was just surprised a woman like her looked my way.

A life with me wasn’t fair to her. Delilah needed to find someone else to love and care for. Someone she deserved, some damned human that could take her away from the dangers of this world I’d brought her into.

But I had to go and spit with venom that she was too broken to have. Whatever she was running from in her past was too much for me to handle. She was too much to handle. The mask of indifference I gave to her last night when I said I didn’t want her…

It broke her.

I broke the sun.

She fucking hates me now, but I do things with the best intentions.

I nodded to myself. This was how it had to be.

This had to happen and now that we were justfriends,I was going to have to let her go. No more drinking, no more letting my wolf take over to steal her.

No matter how good she tasted, or felt in my arms, or how right everything seemed. Because it could never be.

She ran around the bar like some kind of magical sprite, and I’d never deserved such a bright and beautiful ball of sunshine. She talked to the roughest looking fuckers trying to get them to laugh or smile like it was her damned mission.

I had a strange mixture of loving and loathing for that trait of hers.

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