Mending the Beast (Awakening Pride #10) - Lacey Thorn Page 0,2
her arrival. He’d gone off on a quest to save the world because of her. Well, maybe not the world, but as many shifters as he could. Because he hadn’t been there to save her. Because she’d made him feel that she held that against him. Because she’d hurt him.
She’d seen it in his eyes. Had watched him become less and less the man she’d first seen. Because of her. Because she was unable to mate. Fear had her building walls that were too high for him to scale, and the filth that encased her soul kept her locked in the dark and silence on the other side. Alone. Where no one could ever hurt her again.
The pride she’d found herself a part of had split down the middle. Some were scared and concerned for Daniel, seeking ways to help him recover from the coldness of his unwilling mate. Then there were those who wanted to help her, to heal what remained broken inside her. She’d struggled not to see it as pity, but it was hard. God, it was so hard. She’d clung so tightly to the rage inside her that it spilled from her at inopportune times, wreaking havoc on those who loved her. Such as Daniel, who deserved someone worthy of him.
Now, she pushed everything aside and stepped into the shower, embracing the icy flow of water in the hope it would wash away any remnants of sleep.
She was close to her first destination. Walker’s Trading Post. It was where Thomas Walker had taken her after he’d found her staked to the ground. She’d been bleeding, close to death when he’d stumbled across her, and she’d been delirious for those first few days.
For the longest time, she hadn’t remembered anything between the attack and waking up in the bedroom at the trading post. But sometimes, in her nightmares, she swore she heard Thomas crying. Sometimes, she thought she felt him brush a kiss atop her head and whisper words of compassion to her.
Lies. Thomas had been anything but compassionate. Maybe, those dreams were an illusion of what she wished had happened in the aftermath. Who knew what her fucked up psyche was conjuring? She sure as hell didn’t.
Lately, she’d begun to wonder what had happened with Thomas in the first few days after he’d found her. Before they’d arrived at the post he’d called home. She’d lost that time in the fog of trauma, pulling deep inside herself as she’d tried to push everything away. She’d ruthlessly locked memory and emotion into boxes stacked tightly away where they couldn’t continue to rip her apart.
At least, while she was awake. Her nightmares were free game. Yet something pulled at her. Fragments of memory, maybe? She wasn’t sure. That was the thing about repression. Sometimes, it worked really well. She was terrified to pry the lid off of even one of the boxes from that period of her life. What if it was the one that sent them all tumbling, crashing down to shatter open at her feet? To shatter her more thoroughly than she already was.
But the voices wouldn’t leave her dreams. Thomas’ voice and other voices. One soft and soothing. Another hard and cold. Bright lights and cold metal at her back. Pain. Hands probing and touching where she’d been brutally violated. Whispers. So many whispers. Or maybe, they’d only seemed like whispers as she’d faded in and out. Was she going crazy? Or had Thomas made another stop with her on the way back to his home? And what had made him cry with such raw grief? Was her mind unraveling completely on her and none of those shadows were true?
Her phone was ringing when she stepped out of the shower. She ignored it. She should really turn off the ringer, but there was something comforting in knowing someone was reaching out to her even though she wouldn’t respond. Wasn’t that a good example of just how fucked up her head was? Her pride cared even when she acted as if it didn’t matter, as if they didn’t matter. She’d overheard one of their pride saying she needed to deal with what had happened before she could move on and maybe, be a mate to Daniel. They’d stated he was her one shot at living and not merely existing. But that was a joke. There was no happy ever after for her, and Daniel’s only shot at it was in finding someone who wasn’t her.