take out my anger and frustration on. But that meant Angela would be safe. And I could carry on with my life the way I had before.
Before her. I whispered a quiet fuck as I felt an unfamiliar pain in my chest. Longing? Love? Both, I was certain. And I’d lost it, lost her, because of my past. It would never go away, never leave me alone, and my life was better lived in seclusion. No one to hurt, no one to hurt me.
Sighing, I left the cave, pushing through the crevice that always made me feel claustrophobic, and hurried back to the cabin. I could go hunting. It would be good to have meat, and God knew I wanted to shoot something.
Instead, I grabbed my axe and headed outside. I attacked a tree like my life depended on it. I didn’t use the neat chops I would normally make for firewood. It was the violent hacking I needed to diffuse some of my anger and frustration. The tree groaned as it fell, the leaves rustling. I started lopping the branches off, stripping the leaves, piling the thinner sticks together before I started on the trunk. My arms would be hurting tomorrow. I hadn’t worked this hard in a long time.
I was angry with myself. For the person I had chosen to be all those years ago, for the life I had chosen for myself when I hadn’t known what it would mean. I hated that hindsight was perfect.
The tree was chopped up by the time I realized I could have left those damn batteries outside again. I wasn’t thinking straight.
I piled the wood into my arms and carried it into the cabin bit by bit until the basket next to the hearth was full. The rest I stacked outside the cabin in a neat pile to fetch when needed. I cleared the branches I’d stripped off, putting them into piles to dump into the valley, when a twig snapped behind me. I spun around and attacked without thinking, going for the neck. But he was as fast, grabbing me in a death grip and swinging me to the ground.
I fell with a grunt, but was back on my feet in a flash, blinded by fury.
“Easy, Viktor,” a deep voice said. A familiar voice.
I blinked, clearing my vision, and looked at Axel, who stood in front of me, knees bent, hands ready for another attack. I straightened slowly and said, “Sorry.”
Axel also straightened, frowning at me. “What the fuck’s going on with you?”
I grunted. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Have you been having problems with strangers showing up?” Axel asked.
“Yes,” I said, frowning. “Why?”
“I found one on my property the other day.”
My blood ran cold. “When? Who?”
Axel shook his head. “A hitchhiker who got lost, apparently. That was his story. I don’t know if I believed it, but I couldn’t very well snap his neck.”
“You should have,” I said darkly.
“Whoa, buddy, calm down,” Axel joked, holding up his hands. When I didn’t laugh or even smile, he looked at the pile of branches on the floor. “What’s this? Are you planning on becoming my competition?”
I grunted again and stomped to my cabin. After all the hard, physical work I’d done to deal with my emotions, I was still in a black mood.
Axel followed me into my cabin. “Looks like you’re sorted for wood,” he commented, looking at the over-full basket next to the hearth, the fresh logs in the fireplace itself, and then at me. “Where’s Angela?”
I didn’t answer that, either. What the fuck was I supposed to say? She left me because she found out what I was? She went home because she doesn’t want to stay? Dammit, it hurt like a bitch and I hated feeling this weak.
“How do you do it?” I blurted instead.
Axel sat in one of the armchairs, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Tell me what happened.”
I dropped myself into the other armchair. “She found my guns. And she ran.”
Axel whistled through his teeth. “Occupational hazard for guys like us, I guess. People fear us for what we were. They don’t see who we are now.”
“I don’t give a shit about what anyone thinks, I never have,” I insisted. “You know me. I’m up here to stop it from happening again, not because I’m ashamed of myself. But with her… everything is different.”
“You’ve fallen for her,” Axel pointed out.
“The fuck I did,” I bit out.
Axel raised his eyebrows. “You can lie to me