of him. In the blink of an eye, he became the man she first met on the highway that cold, rainy night so long ago. “I saw the Fair Dryad brand Loch.”
Her jaw dropped, and her breath stopped in her throat. “You did?”
He nodded. “I was in the trees, and I saw him walking around in bear form. I wanted to talk to him about our patrol schedule for Silver Spruce, so I followed him. He came out on the bank near White Falls, and she was standing by the water. She looked like a real woman. At first, I thought he was fooling around on you, so I snuck closer. I planned to wait until she left and then kick the ever-loving shit out of him. Then I heard what they were talking about. She pointed to his arm, and the mark appeared.”
Holly’s eyes burned from staring at him without blinking. She moved her jaw, trying to say something. He cleared his throat and scratched the side of his face. He looked so vulnerable like this…so human, somehow. She hadn’t seen him like this in ages—maybe never.
“She floated into the water and disappeared. He broke down, crying on the bank. He took out a knife and held it against the mark. He tried to cut it out of his arm, but the blade wouldn’t cut his skin. Then he held it to his own throat. He was bawling like a little boy, but his nerve failed. He couldn’t kill himself. That was three days before Garret says Loch showed him the mark.”
Holly’s throat constricted when she realized what he was telling her. Loch lived with that agony and suffered with it all that time. He must have been going out of his mind at the idea of turning Ursula over to the Fair Dryad.
“Afterwards, he ran off into the mountains. We didn’t see him again for the rest of that day. When he came back, he had on a long-sleeved shirt to hide his arms. I stayed behind, though. I stayed on the bank there for a long time, just thinking about stuff.”
“What did you think about?” she blurted out.
He glanced over, and his eyes caught her in a tidal wave of buried emotion. “I made up my mind that I would let the Dryad take him and then that I would trade myself to her in exchange for giving Loch back.” He looked down at his hands moving against each other. “I did it on purpose. I didn’t want to tell you, but I guess you need to know now.”
“Why?” she breathed. “Why would you do something like that? Why would you take yourself away from me? Is your life here with me so bad?”
He rounded on her with a very different expression on his face. “Isn’t it obvious? I did it to get her to take my power away. I did it so I could bargain with her to remove the heartstones from my hands. I did it so I could finally go back to being just a shifter and not some freak with enough power to destroy the whole world. I couldn’t stand it.”
Her hand glided toward him. She wound up resting it against his bicep. His arm bulged with wiry muscle the way it did before, but he felt soft and fragile to her right now.
As bad as this experience must have been for Loch, it must have been a thousand times worse for Johnny. Of course, he must have been able to see in his clan brothers’ eyes—in her eyes—how terrified and revolted they were by him.
She had felt that way. She had been terrified and revolted by him. She didn’t know how to love him with all that power coursing through him. She couldn’t trust herself to respond to him. She always questioned whether his power was making her react to him in a certain way.
“Don’t tell him, okay?” he croaked. “Don’t tell Loch what I did.”
She opened her mouth again, but she stopped herself from giving her promise. What would Loch say if he knew that Johnny, his friend, his brother whom he trusted to the ends of the Earth, deliberately let the Fair Dryad put him through that ordeal without trying to help him?
He twisted around on the bed and came face to face with her. “Wyatt says you did it with him as a bear. Is that true?”
Now it was her turn to stare down at her hands. She nodded,