“It’s okay,” she smiles, but it doesn’t touch her eyes. She briefly places her hand over mine, then sighs before lifting Cherum’s hand off her head. She sits up to stretch, then looks at Cherum with a tired expression. “I asked him to go to bed, but he won’t. He said he can’t leave my side until Cedric comes back for some reason.”
That’s right. I looked around the room and realized that Cedric really wasn’t there. I didn’t think he would leave her side for anything after today.
“Where did Cedric go?”
Lira shrugs. “To the sea. Cherum said something about him being back tomorrow and not to worry about it for now. He said the Siren King wanted to see him or something like that.”
He left to talk to Lira’s father? Anxiety fills me. Is he going to try and take my mate from me now? He can’t. My only crime right now is not being more sensitive to my wife’s needs. Maybe he really was just called back for some other reason, but he mentioned the necklace calling out to him. Did the king feel it too?
“Lachlan?” Lira looked at me with concern. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” I told her too quickly, trying to paste a smile on my face. “I’m fine. Just….thinking about everything that happened today. I’m sorry if it got to be too much for you.” I remember her reaction to seeing those men from her uncle’s pack. “Can you tell me what happened? Why…..why did you have such a hard time?”
She looks away, pressing her lips together, and I can tell by the look in her eyes that she is talking to her Lycan.
She doesn’t want to tell me.
Did something happen with that man, Isaac, in her last pack? Does it have to do with her first life? I want to ask, but the contract prevents me from doing so. I can only hope she might trust me enough to tell me.
“Did…,” I tested the question out in my mind to see if I could ask it, and nothing happened. My throat doesn’t close up and pain doesn’t radiate through me. “Did those men hurt you?”
She stays quiet for a few seconds, still talking to Val, then turns her head to look at me again, faking a smile. “No. Not….not really.”
She was scared of them, though. I wish she would just tell me why.
I remember what that man said about her mother. “Did they hurt your mom?” I asked, going out on a limb with the only question permissible to me that I could think of at the moment.
Lira’s eyes went wide. “Did….did he say anything about my mother?”
“That answers that question,”Killian mutters, bloodlust setting in to avenge our mate’s mother.
“He made an off-hand comment,” I told her, not wanting to lie. “I threatened him not to say more and he didn’t after that.”
“Thank you,” Lira sighed. “I always hated it when they would degrade my mother for the things my uncle made her do.”
I shift uncomfortably, not wanting to ask this next question, but needing to at the same time.
“What things did your uncle make your mom do?”
She looks down at her hands, knotting them in her lap. “Lots of things. Women are not treated very well in my uncle’s pack, Lachlan. My uncle also thought that my mom was a threat to his title. He would,” she pressed her lips together, then looked up at me. “What happened to Yasmin was a regular occurrence for my mom.”
Disgust fills me. “That man, the one from the docks, did he hurt your mother?”
She hesitates before she nods. "I think so."
I gulped nervously. “Did….did he or anyone else ever hurt you that way?”
She stays silent for a moment, shifting uncomfortably in her spot on the bed. She takes a shuttering breath, then says, “No. Not really. Not….nothing has happened yet.”
Yet?
Killian growls ferociously in my head, catching on before I fully do.
There are so many more questions I want to ask, but each one, even when I think about them, makes my throat swell. Is that man going to try and hurt my wife? Did he before? Is that why she reacted the way she did?
“Kill him,”Killian snaps. “Kill him now.”
“I’m going to kill fucking all of them,”I said in a deadly tone to my Lycan. All of them are dead.