CHAPTER 8
Something was eating away at Grey again. Lyra had thought him distant and quiet before, but since the village he had shown her that it had been the mere tip of a very cold, very forbidding iceberg.
He had barely said a word to her in the past day.
The few times he had spoken, most of them had been attempts to make her leave him.
Why?
She had said she would translate for him, and she would.
Although part of her still wasn’t sure why she hadn’t taken the out he had given to her.
With everything she had been through at the hands of males, when he had offered her directions to the nearest portal and told her to leave, she had expected to take him up on it.
Something had made her stay.
She wanted to say it was that feeling that he was far from home. Alone in this dark realm.
Lonely.
It still struck that chord in her, even more so as she walked beside him. There was only ten foot of space between them, but it felt like an ocean. She felt alone, even when she wasn’t. Lonely.
It was Grey.
He was too quiet, hadn’t spoken to her in over three hours now. That time he had wanted her to leave, but something in his eyes had said he didn’t mean it, so rather than arguing, she had just kept walking.
How long had it been since he had last asked how her leg was doing and whether she needed a rest?
She was starting to miss that gentle, caring side of him. The cold front had closed in shortly afterwards, chilling the air between them, that much she did recall.
Okay, so maybe that was partly her fault since she hadn’t been able to hold back the urge to bare her fangs at him, the thought that he believed her weak and vulnerable still pushing her to threaten him.
He wasn’t a threat to her though.
She knew that deep in her heart.
He had merely been concerned about her, hadn’t viewed her injury as a weakness he could exploit to overpower her or hurt her.
She had no reason not to trust him after everything he had done for her, yet she couldn’t bring herself to have faith in him. Had she lost her ability to trust? Was she always going to feel this way now, act this way?
Had she closed herself off?
Her gaze slid towards Grey. She wanted to trust him.
Fuck, she wanted more than just trust between them.
It had been slowly dawning on her from the moment she had first seen him, and now she couldn’t shake it. The need to fight the females who looked at him in the village had been the last clue, the one that had helped her see the truth.
She wanted him.
Desired him.
He was gorgeous, a warrior with a big heart, an enticing blend of dangerous and tender that drew her to him, made her ache with a need to know more about him and move closer still, until she was under his skin as deeply as he was under hers.
“Do you need a break? Are you hungry?”
Gods, she had missed the sound of his voice. It hit her hard, left her feeling she had gone days, weeks without hearing it rather than a handful of hours. She soaked it in, savoured it as she would water in the driest desert.
He only ever seemed concerned about her. She couldn’t remember ever meeting someone like that—someone like him.
Was he ever concerned about himself?
Would he just keep walking, not resting nor eating, unless she said she wanted it?
“I still can’t believe you charged into a slave auction to free everyone.” She let the words slip from her lips, a gentle outpouring of her feelings that she hoped might entice him into talking to her, telling her more about himself.
So she could learn to trust him.
“I couldn’t stop myself,” he said and then sighed, his bare chest expanding with it.
She resisted the urge to look at it and kept her eyes locked on his profile. “At first, I thought you might be someone from the auction.”
He stopped and when she looked back at him, he was scowling at her, his eyes dark and silvery brows knitted hard above them.
“I know better now. You can’t blame me for not trusting you.” She hoped he didn’t anyway. She hadn’t really thought about how he might take it. The words had just come out. Maybe she wanted to open up a little to him too, to allow him to get to know her better. “You have to admit, most people would have watched that procession march past and then carried on with their lives.”
“It was just something I had to do.” He shrugged and started walking again, long legs carrying him back towards her and then past her.
She followed him over a small hill and down the other side, towards the base of a mountain that cut a valley in half down the centre. “Because of what happened to your sister and your brother? You must have been raised well.”
He rolled his shoulders again and she had the feeling he didn’t want to talk about it.
Surprise swept through her when he spoke.
“Maybe. My position in the pride was that of protector.” He adjusted the left strap of his backpack, far too interested in it.
Avoiding her.
Why?
A lot of things she had been admiring about him suddenly made a lot of sense, and no matter what angle she looked at it from, it didn’t paint him in a bad light at all.
“What did you protect?” Curiosity firmly took hold of the helm and steered her towards getting an answer to that question.
When she had first met him, she had formed an instant opinion of him—he was a warrior, a male born for war and honed by it, one who obeyed the call of violence.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
The warrior was still there when she looked at him, but he had proven himself so much more than that.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye again, sighed and fixed his gaze ahead of them. “My little sister.”
The one who had found her mate.
She wanted to smile at that, at the thought of him playing the role of bodyguard to his sister. Beneath the growly exterior was a big heart that beat with a need to protect the innocent.
He had said he had attacked the auction because of what had happened to his sister and brother, but it was more than that, she felt sure of it. He would have done the same thing even if his sister and brother hadn’t been held captive in the past.
It was just the male he was.
His need to protect would have driven him to serve justice the slavers and free everyone.
“So do you protect the pride now that your sister is mated?”
He didn’t look at her. “No.”
And that sensation she had about him, that loneliness she picked up in him, made sense at last.
His role in life, the mission that had probably been his and his alone to fulfil for decades or more, had suddenly come to an end and he had been replaced by another male, the role of protecting his sister passed on to her mate.
Had there been nothing to keep him at the pride?
Hellcats were solitary, but as far as she knew, tigers weren’t. They were a pride animal, one who thrived while surrounded by others of their kind. What had driven him to turn his back on them and walk away?
It was more than just this mission for his brother.
Something had made him leave.
Something she wanted to know.
She stared at his profile, struggling with the urge to ask, afraid of taking that step closer to him. How was it possible to want something and not want it at the same time?
To want someone but not want them?
Was it just fear of getting hurt again that had her taking a step away whenever she really wanted to move one closer? She was afraid to trust again after what had happened to her.
She studied Grey’s handsome face and those eyes that told her everything he was feeling even when he wanted to hide it from her. Now that she was starting to know him better, she could see she had been wrong about him. He wasn’t good at hiding his feelings at all.
They were always there in his eyes even if his face remained impassive, unreadable.
Those eyes told her everything.
They slid towards her, softened and gained a warmth that reached out to her and offered comfort. They stirred a feeling in her, one even her battered and bruised heart couldn’t deny.
If anyone could give her a reason to trust again, it was Grey.
She lost herself in his eyes, in that silent promise they made, the one that said he would never hurt her, not if he could help it.
He would protect her.
His lips moved, and she struggled to focus on them, to tear her thoughts away from how beautiful his eyes were as they swore that to her.
His words registered one by one.
“Enough about me. I want to know how a hellcat ends up living in Norway.”
She stared at his mouth, her own turning dry as she thought about what he was really proposing.
He wanted to know more than just the story of how a creature born of fire and brimstone ended up living in the frozen north of Europe.
He wanted to break down the barrier between them and move closer to her.
Lyra swallowed her fear.
She could do this.
Because she wanted to move closer to him too.