Page 6 of Snag
I flush, actual warmth threading through my chest.
“You want to know something?” he asks, all low and rumbly.
“Anything,” I whisper, like an utterly breathless, utterly beguiled idiot.
“You’ve taken my vengeance for that day. For all the beatings before and after.”
I blink, confused. “How so?”
“The Cataclysm enforcers who liked to beat the shit out of Reck, Rath, and me under the loose guise of training us? Of making sure we were the biggest, baddest shifters around? The best assets for our father? You’ve killed them both.” He laughs harshly.
He means Chains and Breaker. Breaker fell by my hand on the beach, albeit with Muta’s venom slowing him down first. And I snipped the threads of Chains’s future, his life force, to stop Presh from manifesting her powers too early. Too quickly.
“What a blow to their fucking egos,” Rought says with a smile. “To be put in their fucking place by a girl.”
“I am the Conduit,” I say wryly. But I rub my forearms, where I can still feel Chains’s threads of fate scoring my skin. It’s usually not for me to question my past, my path. But for a moment, I wonder if I would still be standing here, right now, with Rought, if I hadn’t rescued Presh from the two Cataclysm lieutenants. If I hadn’t died onthat beach. If I hadn’t snipped Chains’s threads before his time.
I was already heading for the estate, to claim it and to try to figure out what had happened to my aunt. But would there have been any reason for my path to cross Rought’s? Any reason to pop into the Outcast clubhouse, then — completely out of character — dance with a near stranger?
I don’t think so.
I shiver, rubbing my arms. Again.
Rought’s gaze drops to follow my movement, his brow thoughtfully pinched. But he doesn’t ask if I’m hurt or cold. “Others don’t understand power like what you hold, Zaya.”
“And you do?”
He pauses for a moment, actually thinking about it. Somehow, that makes me like him even more.
‘Like him.’ What an utterly trite way of encompassing everything I’m feeling.
“I’ll learn the new you,” Rought finally says. “Though I think I understood the you of before, so that’s not a bad start, right? For our threads?”
He reaches for my hand and ever so gently brushes his thumb across the smooth pad of my left thumb.
“If … if you were mine …” I whisper. The idea is overwhelming, mind-boggling. I never thought, never even hoped —
“If I was yours,” Rought says, “we would walk on the beach together, like this, hand in hand.”
“Yes.”
“Snuggle on the couch together …” His gold-rimmed eyes ensnare me. I can’t look away, as if he’s weaving some sort of spell between us. A binding. “Sharing our favorite films and snacks. Do you still like licorice All Sorts?”
I haven’t had any in years, but —
He adds, “Not the jellies, though. Your favorites are the triple-layered ones, leaving me the coconut rings and the solid black licorice.”
I close my mouth. He’s right, of course.
He tilts his head, assessing me. Maybe seeing if I’m still with him.
I am. Completely.
“And we would go for drives up the coast, blasting music and stopping anywhere that serves milkshakes and fries. If I was yours.”
“Yes.” I exhale shakily. I’m not … that life … that’s not supposed to be mine, but … he knows me.
Maybe he only knows little bits of me, but I want to know all about his favorite things as well. I want to know how to make him smile, make him laugh, make him tighten his arms around me. “I want that.”
