God of Monsters (Juniper Unraveling #4) - Keri Lake Page 0,145

hell. Much as I want to, I can’t take what he did away from you. But I’m not going anywhere.”

Exhaling a shaky breath through my nose, I kiss him again, feeling the tingle at the back of my throat, the same butterflies as before. Only now, I’m more guarded. More vulnerable to the risk that I’ll wake to Remus. “I love you,” I breathe. Even still, the words are worth saying. They’re worth the pain of ridicule and rejection, because they’re my truth.

His brows come together, and I stare down at him, waiting for what comes next. For his face to morph into Remus’s. The laughter. The pain of having ripped open my chest, only to be forced to face the unrequited silence.

A sharp exhale escapes him, and the tightening of his jaw is the physical proof of a battle raging inside of him. “When I was captured as a boy, those were the last words my mother said to me. Like a chain that’d been snipped, I feared that was the last time I’d ever hear, or say, them again.” He rubs his thumb over my lips, gaze fixed there. “The love I feel for you is endless. Infinite. Unbreakable.”

I rest my head against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, and let him wisp me away to the black, placid sea.

Chapter 43

The masculine scent fills my nose, casting a chill over my skin. Still asleep, my lips hunt the source of it, tongue dragging over flesh. It’s a strange sensation, like hunger and excitement hitting me all at once. At the sound of a deep guttural growl, I open my eyes.

Remus smiles up at me, his deformed fingers tracing my temple, and I back myself down his body.

“No! No! No!” Clamping my eyes shut, I turn away from him.

“Thalia.”

It’s Titus’s deep voice that draws me back again, and with a nervous tickle in my chest, I dare to open an eye, praying he’s real. It’s his handsome face that greets me, with the telling lines of concern etched into his tight brow.

He’s not Remus.

Remus isn’t here.

Remus is dead.

I climb back up his body, falling beside him, where he cradles me in his arm, against him. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what, exactly?”

“That I can’t … that I … see him. And I want to see you. Only you.”

“You will. When you’re ready to see me.”

I lift my gaze to the patch at his eye. “May I look?”

“It isn’t pretty.”

“It’s fuel. It makes me hate him. And hate has to be stronger than fear. Stronger than pain. Otherwise people wouldn’t do horrible things to others, right?”

Instead of answering, he lifts the patch to expose the mutilated flesh beneath, the sight of which stirs fury in the pit of my gut. The socket has been stitched, and the sutures have healed nicely, but the destruction is there, and at the memory of Remus making light of it during his tortures, I grind my jaw. Tears of rage fill my eyes, as my muscles tense, spoiling to throttle something. “Tell me he screamed in his suffering. Tell me he begged for your mercy.”

“He did. Until his last breath, he begged, and I still denied him.”

“This hate is not who I am, Titus. But the pain he’s caused. The suffering … He didn’t deserve mercy. And I’m glad you didn’t grant it. I hope he rots in hell eternally.”

“Seeing him bent over you with the blade. I lost my mind. Just snapped. Like I was seeing the world through the eyes of an animal.”

I remember Freya’s words, that a savage lies in the heart of all men, and it occurs to me how true it is. Except, some men are driven by different impulses. Some men are violent for different reasons, and those reasons lie in the very depths of the heart. “My father used to say that a man’s lust for bloodshed is a consequence of whatever desire stirs his heart.”

He cups my jaw, stroking his thumb over my cheek. “You move like the waves inside mine, Thalia.” Face hardening with pain, he turns his eyes away from mine. “When I lifted your limp body from that bed, I realized how vulnerable I could be. How weak.”

“It’s so strange, isn’t it?” Tilting my head, I guide his eyes to mine. “All my life, I’ve been made to feel fragile, and here, you are the biggest, most dangerous and intimidating man I’ve ever met in my life, and yet, I feel powerful