Shit, the last thing he wanted was to touch on those memories. They pushed at him anyways, his lion throwing extra sendings of blonde hair running in front of him, blue eyes flashing over her shoulder. He squeezed his lids closed and shoved back on his inner animal before more than a growl bubbled in the back of his throat.
Mistake. Blue eyes turned green. Blonde hair turned auburn. And the blood staining her shirt switched from her middle to her collarbone.
“You’re not.” Trent’s words cracked through the night. “You’re spiraling, Rhys. Last time we had to tranq you? You were gone. I couldn’t feel you in my head anymore. The only times I’ve felt that before…”
He trailed off, drumming his fingers against the wood of the porch step. Rhys knew what he meant. He’d watched it with his father and with Trent. An alpha’s job didn’t come easy. He lorded over the rest of the pride and kept the peace. When that failed, he dealt the final blow to keep a rogue beast from rampaging through the world.
Rhys let off a frustrated growl and turned a glare on his alpha. “You and I both know where this is heading. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it’s somewhere down the line. All the nights in the cave and second chances won’t stitch me back together.”
The words hit him hard. Harder than ever, in fact. He’d known for a long while he’d be one of those shifters meeting a final, bloody end, but only in the last few months had something inside him rebelled.
His lion snarled and shoved sendings at him. Green eyes. Gorgeous, green eyes.
Trent nodded thoughtfully and pushed to his feet. “That’s about what I expected,” he said with a shrug, “but you’re living in a different reality if you think I’m giving up. You’ve made it six years, asshole. You don’t get to flush those away.”
Rhys let off a frustrated growl and clamped down on his beast. Fuck this talking bullshit. Words didn’t suit him. They hadn’t helped keep Hannah alive. They hadn’t helped when he exacted his revenge. Words hadn’t kept him from being exiled from his own fucking pride.
He’d had a mate. A mate with blue eyes, not green. A mate who was dead.
There was no coming back from that.
Chapter 6
Sage woke slowly, fighting through the pain that tried to drag her back into her nightmares. Hands grasped at her. Hot breath blasted against her face. Gold eyes glinted at her with malice in their depths. Then there was pain. Hot, searing pain that carved itself into her skin until she felt it in her bones. She bucked and screamed, but no sound seemed to make it out of her mouth.
Nothing stopped the pain.
Wetness coated her cheeks by the time she kicked herself free of the monsters behind her lids—and the blanket wrapped around her legs. Sage sat up and drew her legs close to her chest. She wiped her cheeks on her knees and glanced at the clock on the stove. The hour had ticked past midnight while she fought in her sleep.
Two hundred days. Two hundred days, and not a damn thing had changed.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Nothing had changed for the better. For the worse? Jasper had blown a hole in the walls of Shiftermax. Her father had escaped with him, too. She didn’t believe for a second they would quietly disappear and never bother anyone again.
The strangled, suffocating feeling returned. They didn’t even need to be in the same room to fill her with dread.
Assholes.
Her lip curled in disgust and she shoved to her feet. Restless energy coursed through her as she moved. Up the hall. Down the hall. A spin around the couch. She prowled into the kitchen and back out again, only to start the trail all over.
Her den felt too big. Too empty. Having lived her entire twenty-eight years under someone else’s roof, having her own space felt almost claustrophobic. It was as if she’d been dragged under the waves of crystal blue water, with no sense of down or up, left or right, and all the while her lungs were bursting for another hit of oxygen.
Besides that, she still sometimes caught whiffs of the former occupant. Garrett hadn’t been one of her immediate tormentors, but he’d been present for enough. His history with the Crowleys only made him worse. To smell him in a place that already didn’t feel like home was another nail in the proverbial coffin.
She was so fucking tired of this life.
Claws sliced her insides as her lioness fed off her agitation. She reached for the animal, but fur only brushed against her before jerking away.
Out. She needed out. Somewhere she could breathe easily without any reminders of what she’d suffered.
She stuffed her feet into shoes and shoved open the back door, but her energy crumbled the moment night air touched her skin. Restlessness still shot up and down her limbs, but the idea of taking another step was so utterly exhausting that she sank down on the top step. With her back to the railing, she stretched her legs out long and turned her face to the sky. She doubted she’d find sleep again, but maybe she could find a sliver of peace in the stars.
She didn’t know how long she sat before she heard footsteps approaching in the darkness. Her heart kicked back to life and she shot a glance to the den next to hers. But no, Rhys didn’t live there anymore. He’d given up the space for the latest mated pair, Seth and Lilah, and claimed the room in the barn. With the other animals, she’d heard him joke to the others.
After what she’d watched her
