Page 38 of The Hero Within
To anyone.
"Do it quickwy," Colton rasped, as CJ pinned his shoulders.
Skin seared as she held the blade to his mottled flesh. She'd been expecting him to at least scream but all that left his mouth was a rasped groan, and he turned his head to the side, panting through it. The stink of burning flesh made her swallow.
"Next one," she whispered, turning the flat of the blade and pressing it swiftly against the other claw mark. There were three in all, and a faint scratch where the fourth must have glanced his skin. Only two of them were deep and angry, but she swiftly cauterized the third shallow cut, just in case.
The second she was done, Colton collapsed forward into her arms, pressing his forehead against her shoulder and shuddering. The belt fell from his mouth, along with a strand of saliva, and a swift course of groaned Spanish words she couldn't decipher. Eden couldn't help rubbing her hand through his close-cropped hair, though she knew there was nothing she could truly do to comfort him.
And—
The curve of his spine flexed as he bent his neck. Scars marked his back. Hundreds of them. Eden sucked in a sharp breath, her eyes flying to CJ's.
She recognized burn marks when she saw them.
Small round burns like the end of a cigarette—or cigar, most likely, from the size of them. Some were pressed over others, deep thickened welts that looked like they'd merely built upon the base layers of scarring.
Holding the knife safely away from him, Eden stroked her free hand up his spine, cupping the back of his neck, her mind still shocked.
This was why he hadn't wanted to take his shirt off. He'd made sure the light was quenched the other night too, before he undressed.
His words from last night about how to break a warg flashed through her head:Torture. Sleep deprivation. Starvation. That kind of shit.
There was nothing else she could call scars like these, except signs of long-ago torture. And they had either happened to him young, before he was infected with the warg curse, or the torture had been so extreme even his super-healing hadn't been able to heal it all.
"Who did this to you?" she whispered.
"Hijo de puta." Colton shuddered and clung to her arm. "Fuck." He slowly managed to lift his head, his chest still heaving. "Are we done here?"
"Colton," she blurted, grabbing his forearm.
He froze, his dark eyes dropping to her touch. Eden's first instinct was to withdraw her hand, but she tilted her chin stubbornly and let her thumb stroke, just once, over the smooth skin on the inside of his wrist.
Their eyes met.
"Don't go soft on me, angel," he said quietly. "I've lived a bad life, remember?"
Right now she couldn't think of everything he'd done to her. All she could feel was horror. "Who?"
He searched her gaze, as if he realized she wasn't going to leave this alone.
"You think you were Bartholomew Cane's first victim?" Each word was crisp and cool, Colton locking down his emotions hard. He reached for his shirt and tugged it back over his head. A taunting smile twisted his lips as he pushed himself to his feet. "Sorry, angel. But you spent one night with him. I spent years."
And then he stalked away into the sweltering morning, leaving her on her knees with his knife in her hand, her entire world turned upside down.
It changed everything.
Eden could barely focus on anything else all day, as Colton pushed them hard. They had to move, he said, ignoring her attempts to question him about Cane when his burns healed well enough for her to bandage them.
Which meant she had to form her own conclusions.
Thinking about Bartholomew Cane made her skin crawl. As much as Eden didn't want to admit it, she'd never thought of Colton as a monster. He'd obeyed Cane's will, but when he'd finally locked her inside the hut where her brother was undergoing his first metamorphosis, he'd been almost apologetic, and there'd been a broken-down look in his dark eyes, as if he knew she'd never forgive him.
Left to his own devices she didn't think Colton had it in him to be cruel or violent. He just wasn't the type to seek it out.
Cane had been a different kettle of fish entirely. Even now the hairs along the back of her neck rose, and the man had been dead several years, killed by Colton's own hand apparently.
Not once had she ever wondered what it would have been like to work for Cane.
