Page 23 of Ravaged Wolf
“Now you stop right there, Trevor Floyd!” she shrieks. “You stop this very minute. Think, damn it.Think. What happens to Izzy if you do this?” She stalks closer, and unlike Dad, she keeps coming, her eyes wild. “Listen to the bond, baby. It’s already there. If you die, what happens to her?” Tears stream down her face, and she shakes, but her voice is ferocious. “Listen to the bond, baby. Please.”
Listen? It’s all I can hear. Izzy’s pain beats at my heart. Her fear scores my brain, scraping the nerves. Her shame stabs me through the gut.
How can I live with the shame?
“Let me go,” I say. My toes curl over the edge.
“Don’t you dare, Trevor Floyd,” she snarls back, her own wolf gravel in her throat. “I didn’t raise a coward. Listen to your wolf.Listen to him.”
She has no dominance, but still, her words turn my fractured mind to my wolf.
He’s howling in his cage, desperate to fight, to protect his mate, to comfort her, but he’s trapped, torn from her, powerless, but he still cries for her like he has the right. Like he’s her mate and not her rapist.
His voice doesn’t falter. If there is an infinitesimal chance she can hear him, in this dimension or another—even if there is no chance in hell—he’ll howl for her to let her know he’s here, she’s not alone, never alone, as long as he has breath in his body. Guilt flays him, too, but he is stronger than I am. He will live with this for her. He will do anything for her.
He inhales and howls again.
A small sharp ache stabs just underneath my sternum, so subtle I almost miss it, but I notice because this pain isn’t mine.
It’s hers.
I feel her.
She hurts. She’s lost and scared.
“Listen,” Mom urges, prowling closer.
I can’t leave Izzy to hurt alone.
My weight shifts back to my heels.
Before I can make another move, my mother shifts and leaps for me. She sinks her fangs into my shoulder as my brothers grab me from both sides and drag me from the edge. They wrestle me to the ground, and my father’s wolf throws his bulk on top of me, pinning me to the tar roof.
When the struggle is over, I’m flat on my back with my parents’ wolves crouched above me, my brothers on their knees at my sides, their shoulders heaving, all of us gasping for breath.
Above us, the sky is pitch black, not a star in sight, the only light a scythe-like sliver of cold moon.
I can’t feel Izzy’s pain anymore.
All I can feel is my own, and the horrible, crushing knowledge that I have to live with this, every moment of every day, for the rest of my cursed, wretched life.
The next fewdays are a blur. I’m thrown into a cell. Mom and Dad visit. Their faces are gray.
My body is nothing but crushing weight and unbearable pain. My thoughts fight each other like ferals, mindless, senseless, mad.
There are no sheets on the steel cot, no case on the plastic pillow. No sharp edge. No window, no glass pane, no mirror. The fluorescent light overhead never goes off, but that’s fine. I don’t deserve comfort.
They feed me. I don’t eat. They take me to the showers. I stand where I’m put until they drag me out. They don’t give me clothes until the day they take me to the room where the Council meets.
Again, I stand where I’m put, this time behind a wood table. Mom, Dad, and my brothers are there. They sit on benches behind me. Now, their faces are white as sheets, except for Mom’s. Hers is red and swollen.
The Council sits in front of us on a dais with the alpha, Madog Collins, in the middle. I’m introduced to a silver-haired male in a suit. I instantly forget his name.
Everyone talks and talks. Dad, my supervisor, the guys from Facilities, my friends, my brothers, Mr. Owens, Howell Owens, the alpha’s second, the medics from the infirmary. Voices are raised. Mom weeps in her chair, her fist shoved in her mouth. I can see her from the corner of my eye.
I did this.
I hurt her, too.
