Page 23 of Cultivating Caden
Chapter 7
Quade stormedinto his room and slammed the door. How the fuck did a twelve-year-old get under his skin like this? And he knew Ten. Dollars to donuts, he’d conned Caden into keeping him out of the infirmary. The two were probably eating or playing games or some shit right now. He’d go after the kid, but he needed to calm himself.
Because you know he’s right?
No way. Ten couldn’t know the beast inside Quade. He might have seen what happened, but he couldn’t feel the bloodlust, the urge to take a life. He would never know what it felt like to stand over a child—fucking younger than Ten—and want to rip her to pieces.
The desire to head down to Millinocket and get shit-faced rode him hard. Fuck the responsibilities he had. He deserved downtime just like anyone else. But he wouldn’t. He had to take care of that little bastard first.
But not like this. He needed to gain control of himself. Quade flopped down on the couch, throwing an arm over his eyes. He didn’t care what anyone thought about him, except for Ten. He needed Ten to see him as a decent person, even if the kid was able to poke around in Quade’s mind and ferret out the truth.
He knows the truth, but he’s not afraid of you. You’d know it if he was.
True, Ten wasn’t afraid, but he should be. Everyone in Sanctuary should be. But Quade never sensed fear from them. Even the littlest of kids didn’t seem to shy away from him. If anything, they sought him out and hugged him. He returned the hug as though they were made of spun glass: fragile, delicate, easily broken. Which they were. Hugging the little children broke down the walls that Quade tried to erect.
And that’s when the young girl’s face would rise up from his memories and threaten to overwhelm him. Ten insisted all he needed to do was embrace his inner wolf, and that once he did, everything would be fine. But Quade knew that wasn’t going to happen. He’d lived among his kind for twenty years. He’d seen their savagery firsthand. Hell, he’d taken part in it.
Ten was a child. How could he understand the horrors that Quade had participated in? Yeah, he might be able to get into Quade’s head, but that didn’t mean he would know the thrill of gutting your victim, licking their blood from your fingertips, or the overwhelming urge to devour them. Or the horror once you were in control enough to realize what you’d taken part in.
It was that that drove him to take Alomir to bed that first night. Anything to forget the faces of the people Quade had killed in cold blood, to blot out the cries of victory from his kinsmen. That which had started him on the path to becoming feral in the first place. No, Quade would do his damnedest to keep those thoughts and memories away from Ten, because a little boy didn’t deserve to be part of the monster within Quade.
He got up and jerked open the door. He could smell Ten in the area, which meant he was in Caden’s room. Why couldn’t he have done as he was told? He slammed his door and tore off down the hall. Instead of knocking, he rammed the door with his shoulder, causing it to splinter.
“He’s here,” Ten announced in a singsong voice.
“What the ever-loving fu—heck do you think you’re doing, Caden? I told you to take him back so the doctors could look at him.” He gestured to the table where half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cans of orange soda sat. “What’s this crap?”
Caden shrugged. “We were hungry, so I got us a snack.”
“Get over here, Ten. We’re going back to the infirmary.”
“You can play winner.”
Quade blinked. What the hell was Caden talking about? “What?”
“Winner. You can sit here and play against whoever wins the game—which will be me, by the way.”
The thought of it was ludicrous. Quade didn’t play video games. He sat in his room and brooded until they called him for a mission. On occasion he might go for a jog to keep himself in shape, but those had always been few and far between. Mostly he sat in his room and watched repeats ofAngel, because that man knew how to brood.
“I’ll get you a soda.”
He glared at Caden, who didn’t take his gaze away from the wide-screen television, which showed candy-colored cars with mushroom people and lizards and what looked like plumbers zooming around a track.
“But we—”
“One game,” Ten begged, turning around and giving him puppy-dog eyes. “Try it. I bet you’ll like it.”
Quade looked into those silvery orbs and his resistance melted. Ten asked for so few things, and really, would it hurt if he gave in? “One game, but only if you promise you’ll go back to the infirmary right after.”
Ten squirmed in his seat. “I promise.”
Right, Quade totally believed that. Still, he sat down and waited for Ten and Caden to finish the game, which Caden did win, but Quade noticed that at the last second, Ten made a weird turn, which caused him to crash.
“Darn, I lost.” He jumped up. “Sit here—it’s got the best view of the screen. I’ll get the soda.”
Quade knew Ten was playing him, but he wasn’t sure what the end-game was. Best to go along until he figured it out, then let the kid know it wasn’t going to work. He might know stuff, but Ten didn’t control what Quade did.
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