“Raul, stop! You’re going to kill him. Stop!”

I heard her words, felt Bethany’s fists pounding frantically against my back and shoulders. But it wasn’t enough to dim the red haze enveloping me.

Ten years. For ten years I’d left her alone—the woman I wanted most—in order to protect her. I had thought that I was doing right by Bethany in doing so. And this asshole—the man she had chosen to be with and commit to for life—had taken her for granted. He had betrayed her trust. He’d attempted to shame her to all of her family and friends.

He’d made her cry.

He deserved to die. Painfully.

“He can’t breathe, Raul. Stop it! You’re going to crush his windpipe.”

Arrogant prick had thought to claim the woman who was mine. And he’d hurt her—my Bethy.

“Stop him,” she appealed to Mike and Stephen. “Raul, don’t do this! Please let go of him. Please, I’m begging you.”

The scent of Bethany’s fear hit me. Along with that of her tears. She had moved to my side and was practically hanging from my bicep now, using all of her body weight in her attempt to get me to stop choking her worthless ex-fiancé—who had just lost consciousness.

Reluctantly, I forced myself to let him go. He dropped to the floor with a thud, collapsing in an unconscious heap.

Bethany released my bicep and dove to the floor after him.

I wasn’t having it. I swung her back up again and into my arms despite her struggling.

“Let me go—I have to help him.”

They were the wrong words for her to say to me. I was never letting her go again. And I was not letting her near that asshole to help him.

“He’s fine.” It was the truth. More or less. Gregg with too many g’s would live. Not that he deserved to.

“He’s unconscious!” She was still flailing and struggling in my arms. And crying. Her voice was shrill, hysterical. “He needs medical attention. Raul, you have to let me help him. Please.”

“I said he’s fine,” I snapped callously at the woman whose happiness and well-being I had sworn to myself ten years ago I would always place before my own.

Because as much as Bethany’s tearful pleading gutted me, her loyalty and concern for a man who didn’t deserve it from her awoke a dormant monster of bitterness within me that was as dark and ugly as it was childish and irrational.

Even my own fated mate chose another over me. A man who had cheated on her and lied to her.

She couldn’t begin to understand what I had sacrificed for her safety over the past ten years—the ongoing pain my wolf had endured by staying away.

I could barely see straight as I carted her from the living room, barking orders in Portuguese over my shoulder so that Bethany wouldn’t understand them as I told Mike to make sure the bastard lived, but to leave his mind to me.

I wasn’t done with Gregg yet.

Be gentle! Be gentle, my wolf howled at me. The rage that had me in its grip thinned as I realized I’d carried Bethany into her bedroom and I was on top of her, pinning her to the mattress. And she was freaking out. Thrashing beneath me, she was babbling a mile a minute through her tears, alternating between berating and pleading with me.

My mate. Was. Terrified.

And it was all my fault. I’d fucked things up royally. Again.

“I won’t tell anyone anything, I swear. You don’t have to kill me. We can pretend this never happened. You and your men can walk away. I never saw any of you—I promise. Swear on my life. Please? Damnit, Raul, how can you do this?” she sobbed. “What’s happened to you? How can you kill me like I mean nothing to you?”

I blinked. My brain struggled to process her words as my emotions fought to reset. Bethy thought I would kill her?

“Kill you?” My voice was soft. It felt even worse to say those words out loud. Like a knife in my throat. “How could—how can you even think that I—?”

I was acting like an asshole, that’s how.

“I’d never harm you.” I felt hollow inside as I said it. But I said it again and again, along with anything else I could think of to reassure her. “I promise you’re safe with me.” I kissed her tear-streaked face. “Always and forever safe.”

I rolled us over so that she was on top. My fingers combed through her hair; my hands ran up and down her back and arms. But I felt helpless to soothe her as she continued to cry and blather more promises about not saying anything to anyone.

“S—swear I won’t tell anyone you’re a—a werewolf … subspecies,” she said with a sniffle.

I wanted to flay myself.

She didn’t understand. She wasn’t getting it. And it was my fault. For waiting too long. For pushing things too fast.

For fucking it all up like I always did.

“Bethy, I’m sorry I scared you back there. I lost my temper. But you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not going to hurt you. Not ever.”

“What about Gregg?” she wailed.

“I won’t hurt him, either. Anymore,” I appended. Not physically, at least.

She let out a little gasp. “Because he’s already dead?”

“No. No, he’s not dead. I told you he wasn’t dead.” Didn’t she believe me? Eh, fuck, why would she?

“You said he was fine. You never said he wasn’t dead.”

She was too smart to be mated to me. The fates had made a mistake. “Okay, you’re right. But when I said he was fine, I meant that he was alive—that he would live.” I was sick of discussing that S.O.B. “Listen, let’s talk about this later. Right now we need to get you back to Argentina. I have a doctor there who—”

“Back?” Her brow pinched as she looked down at me, her glassy eyes red, her blonde hair in disarray. “I’ve never been.” She paused, her frown intensifying the longer she stared at me. She seemed to be trying to gauge whether or not I was serious. I knew from her heart rate the moment she realized that I was. Dead serious. “I—I can’t travel out of town, much less abroad, Raul. I’m on call this weekend. Besides, I’d have to get updated inoculations—”

“Sweetheart, I bit you a little harder than I meant to last night.” Sometimes honesty was the best approach.

“You mean this bite?” Her fingers flew to the initial bite I’d made and had subsequently repeated on the side of her throat.

“Yes, that one.” As well as the ones on her thigh, shoulder, and breast. Often partial honesty was a better approach. “I have the best doctor in the world in my employ at my home in Bariloche. I want Rafe to take a look at your neck for me, okay?”

“There’s no need. It’s totally fine.” She’d begun shaking her head continuously. “I’ll just inject some antibiotic if it’s not better in a few days.” Her wobbly smile was strained.

The scent of her fear permeated the air, and my stomach roiled as I realized Mike was right: I was going to have to take her to Bariloche by force. She was too confused. Too frightened of me to go willingly now.

And I wasn’t leaving San Francisco without her.

I reached out to Mike through our mind connection, letting him know we were going to have to sedate Bethany after all. I’d been appalled at the idea when Mike had suggested that it might become necessary, but now I was grateful he’d had the foresight to think of it and to teleport back to Bariloche this morning to procure a safe sedative injection from Rafe.

I cursed my sister’s pack. This situation would be so much simpler and safer if I had access to Bethany’s mind and could render her unconscious that way. It made me sick to think of injecting synthetic drugs into her system. But we were running out of time.

Mike’s guys had taken the precaution of setting up surveillance and tracking devices on Bethany’s family and close friends overnight. While we’d been busy scaring the shit out of Gregg, the guys had sent word telepathically to Mike that Mrs. Garrett was already on her way over to check on Bethy.

We still needed to finish with Gregg and clean up the mess we’d made of Bethany’s apartment. And now it seemed I would have to find a way to put Mrs. G off before we hopped a jet home.

Though Mike and I had teleported to San Francisco for our meeting yesterday, the rest of my men had flown in with Stephen on one of our private planes. In light of where things stood with Bethany, I’d decided it was best for us all to return to Bariloche via private jet. I needed more time to explain things to Bethany—to better prepare her for the supernatural world she was about to be thrust into.

And time to figure out how best to explain the way I felt about Bethany to Sloane. I doubted Sloane was going to be very happy about Bethy’s arrival—or about the role of mate that Bethany would now occupy in my life.

“Antibiotics won’t help, baby,” I tried to reason with her. “I need my doctor—a werelock doctor—to look at your bite.”

“But that’s silly, Raul. I know tons of great doctors right here in San Francisco. Heck, I’m a doctor, remember?” Her laughter held a note of hysteria as she prattled, “My mom’s a doctor, most of my closest friends are doctors, I spend my days and nights at a hospital surrounded by doctors …”

As Mike entered the bedroom, I reversed our positions, flipping Bethany over so that she was once again on her back and I was above her.

The moment I did it, and she saw Mike coming toward us, her survival instincts kicked into full gear. She started squirming beneath me, then flailing like mad when she caught sight of the needle in Mike’s hand.

“Raul, please don’t do this. You don’t have to do this. I swear I won’t say anything.”

“Bethany, there’s nothing to be afraid of. No one’s going to harm you. We’re doing this to help you.”

She began sobbing again. She wasn’t hearing me.

She didn’t trust me.

“Shh—everything’s going to be okay, step-cuz,” Mike tried to reassure her to no avail as he approached the bed. “It’s only a mild sedative. It can’t hurt you.”

Her state of panic only escalated.

And I felt it as if it were my panic.

“Raul, you have to hold her still. Dragging this out will make it worse.”

I couldn’t do this. Her hysterical begging and thrashing was ripping my heart open. Calling forth memories and emotions I’d fought to block out over the years.

In my mind, she suddenly became my mother begging the paramedics not to take her to the hospital—struggling with them when they’d tried to move her onto a stretcher, pleading with them to let her deliver her baby right there on the kitchen floor instead.

For a moment, I felt utterly helpless. Powerless. Transported back in time to when I was the kid in the background repeatedly told to get out of the way; the little boy who’d had no control, no say in what happened next.

The idiot who’d simply stood there crying, watching his mom die.

Don’t go there.

Can’t afford to go there.

I was a man now. I was in control. I’d gone to great lengths and pushed extraordinary limits to ensure that I would always be the one in control—the one holding the power and calling the shots.

I got to say what happened next.

Taking Bethany was the right thing to do. She didn’t understand the situation. Didn’t know that her life was in danger and she needed to come with us in order to be safe. I couldn’t give her a choice in this.

I wouldn’t give her a choice.

A calm swept over me, shutting off my emotions and numbing the pain I’d felt in my heart at the sight of her tears. I sank my weight into her midsection, removed her hands that were clutching at me, and pinned them together at the wrist with one hand against the bed. My fingers that had been caressing her scalp in an attempt to soothe her fisted the roots of her hair to hold her head steady.

“Do it,” I ordered Mike. “Put her under before we lose any more time.”

Bethany’s wet eyes flared at my command.

I knew I’d sounded cold. Callous.

The fear and horror I saw reflected in her blue-green eyes at my perceived betrayal would haunt me. But it didn’t matter. I was saving Bethany.

I told myself she would understand later that this had been the right thing to do as Mike moved into position with the needle. I held her immobile as he pierced her jugular vein and depressed the syringe plunger, injecting Rafe’s modified opioid directly into her bloodstream to put her out faster.

Fresh tears flooded her eyes, even as I felt the tension in her body settling, her muscles relaxing as her form went limp beneath my hold.

“Slowly,” I reminded Mike. “Not too much.”

“I’ve got it. She’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

I tried to make my voice reassuring as I told Bethy again that everything was going to be okay, that she was safe with me, and that I was sorry.

I was—so fucking sorry.

Her glassy eyes were unfocused by the time Mike withdrew the needle. By the time he’d left the room, she was struggling to remain conscious as I stroked her hair and wiped her tears away.

I wasn’t sure if she could still hear me as I pleaded softly, “Please forgive me for this, Bethy. Please understand. I promise everything’s going to be okay.”

“Hate you,” she slurred in reply as her heavy eyelids finally gave in and lost the battle.

I sighed and kissed her sleeping forehead.

“I know. I hate me too.”