appeared above her brows. “What favor?”
“The gwyllgi pack, he explained, had been a thorn in his side for quite some time. They had a tendency to cut their elders loose to roam Summer lands. They were often feral, wild beyond their alpha’s control. Other denizens of Summer put them down in self-defense, which gave the alpha means to demand recompense from the prince. To solve the problem, the Summer Prince decided he would rather deport the old ones to Earth to live out their lives, or not, under the control of a powerful alpha.”
“Your mother.”
“Basically,” he attempted to joke, “he wanted the violent gwyllgi pack ruining his fun off his meticulously landscaped lawn, and he had grown tired of shaking his fist and yelling at them to behave.”
“He exploited a loophole, very fae of him, but you were a child.”
“I was guilty.”
A curse slipped out under her breath, and he took heart that she found it in herself to care for that lost boy. It gave the man he had become hope.
“The Summer Prince decreed that if repayment for suffering was the issue, he would give the alpha one of us to punish however he saw fit. But, to prove he was a male of his word, he would honor the bargain to send the one of us home.”
“You sent Lethe.”
“I killed the male. It was my fault. I thought they would kill me, and I was prepared for that.”
Gwyllgi are violent and territorial. Packmates die in combat, in dominance challenges, while securing mates. Death was a part of pack life he had understood, and accepted, even as a child. Mom hadn’t shielded them from the realities of their natures. She had bled, fought, and killed in front of them to prepare them for what their beasts would demand as they matured. She wanted them to understand that if they were afraid to embrace their natures, they would die.
“What did the pack do to you?”
The question he had avoided answering all this time loomed between them, a gulf he could either swim across or drown in. The familiar blackness swirled around his feet, welcoming and cold enough to numb the pain, but Hadley was the lighthouse beacon that drew him over and over again.
“They beat me within an inch of my life, and I think they would have killed me if my beast hadn’t been so strong. It gave the alpha the idea he could sell me to give the widow funds to care for herself and her children.”
“You were enslaved?”
“I was sold to a goblin who owned a coliseum where he hosted various fights between supernatural creatures. Nothing was taboo. There were no rules. Except one.” He dropped his gaze to the floor. “No matter how many went into the ring, only one came out.”
Hadley peered around the door at him, but he couldn’t bear to see her eyes swollen and red.
“I never lost.” He gritted his jaw. “The goblin kept me for decades, and I never lost. Not once.” He extended his arm. “I kept a tally, but I never counted them. It was enough to see the damage I had done written into my skin.”
More of her body appeared around the door. “You fought for your survival.”
“I killed for my survival.”
“How did you escape?”
“Lethe came for me. She was the only one left who thought I was alive after all that time. She waited until she was grown, until she was strong, and she came for me herself. We teamed up, fought our way through the guards.” A breath shuddered out of him. “She entered the ring, as an opponent. That’s how she got in. That’s how she found me.” He tasted bile. “I could have killed her. My own sister.”
“But you didn’t.”
“The fighting broke me.” He expected she would have heard the rumors. “The beast and the man split into two personalities. I was the beast in the ring, and the man in my cell at night.” He glanced up then. “That’s what caused the Jekyll and Hyde syndrome.”
“How does Natisha figure in?”
“Mom summoned her from Faerie to fix me. She didn’t realize it was Natisha’s pack we had stumbled across. I didn’t either, since they didn’t offer me a healer before selling me. Natisha told me later, after Mom bargained with her. She had known we were kin, in Faerie, and she never breathed a word.” He rubbed his knuckles. “No one would have stood against a healer of her renown. Her word could have