Chapter 3
Jenny came to but didn’t immediately open her eyes. Using her senses, she could hear the whine of a motor and the whirr of tires on pavement. Her body had that weightless feel that told her she was lying in a moving vehicle. Her cheek was pressed up against something soft and smooth. The scent of the leather seat was secondary to the scent that commanded the space. It was soap and masculinity, spice and rage. It was Bishop.
Trying to move a hand an inch, her eyes snapped open and looked down. Her hands rested on top of a thin blanket that covered her, her wrists were bound with thin rope.
She tried to move her legs, but they were tied at the ankles. Her heart hammered against the wall of her chest as she wondered at Bishop’s intentions. Sure, he was pissed, and she understood it, but she was his Angel! This type of treatment was unheard of once a Skin Walker male discovered his mate. His possessive and protective instincts were supposed to surge fore. Sure, the fact that he had her bound and was kidnapping her spoke to his possessive instincts, but his protectiveness… She wondered if she hadn’t done more than delay Bishop’s affliction with her injections. Had she damaged him? Had she twisted him somehow?
Now, her heart was hammering against her chest even harder than before. Pinching her eyes shut, she tried contacting Monroe through the mist. Nothing happened, which meant they were either too far from StoneCrow, or Bishop had done something to her. Jenny’s eyes snapped open, and she had to stifle a terrified whimper that was trying to wrench its way up her throat.
“The scent of your fear is offensive,” Bishop clipped out from the driver’s seat, apparently completely aware that she was now awake. “If I wanted you dead, you would be. If I wanted you hurt, you would be.”
Shoving up off the seat, she recognized the vehicle as one of the Humvees from StoneCrow. The scenery outside the window was unfamiliar though. Dense forest was just barely visible through the dark window tint and the heavy sheets of rain pouring down. Tearing her eyes from their perusal, Jenny tried to catch Bishop’s eye in the rearview mirror. He refused to meet her gaze. “Where…where are taking me, Bishop?”
“Someplace we can be alone.”
She swallowed and tried again to break her hands free of their binds. Because she was a Walker, she was stronger than an average human female, but the rope was too tight and she only succeeding in painfully chaffing her wrists.
Contemptuous eyes met hers again in the mirror. “What did you inject me with?”
“It wasn’t harmful. I wouldn’t do that to you or anyone else. I took an oath…”
“Wasn’t harmful?” he gritted out angrily. “It delayed what nature intended. I was sick, Jen! I was starving and exhausted, and I thought I was going mad. My beasts were shredding my insides every minute of every damn day demanding I find something, only I didn’t know what that something was because you hid it from me!” He snarled, “You hid from me.” His eyes narrowed to cruel slits. “I almost asked Monroe to put me down! I thought I was broken. I thought I was done! So don’t you dare sit here and pretend you have any ethics or moral code. You let me suffer. That so-called oath you took as a Doctor don’t mean shit to me, woman.” He angled his face away from her. “You did this to me! You who was supposed to do no harm!”
“Bishop,” she breathed, but he didn’t let her speak.
“Was I not good enough for you? A lowly Sentry. Did you have your sights set higher? Monroe StoneCrow perhaps? Do you want the Dominant?”
“No, Bishop! I didn’t want anyone else. I don’t want anyone else.”
He was back to avoiding her gaze. “I’m bound to you, and it disgusts me because I don’t know how I can ever trust you.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated again, head lowering defeatedly as she looked down at her hands. She’d been wrenching on her binds the entire time Bishop had been speaking and only now realized that the ropes had cut deeply into her skin and had blood soaking the ropes and her jeans. Good, she thought, I deserve the pain.
“You’re only sorry because you got caught. What was the end game? Let me die? See if the Grandfathers would grant you someone more to your liking?”
Her head snapped up. “No! It wasn’t like that Bishop. I wouldn’t have let you go. I couldn’t. You mean too much.”
“Save it! Your actions have spoken louder than your beautiful lying mouth. I meant so much to you that you stood by and let me suffer. You made me suffer.”
Jenny quietly studied Bishop’s profile. The scent of his rage and resentment filled the cab and made it difficult to breathe. Worse, she couldn’t denounce any of it. He was right. This was all her fault.
Tearing her eyes away, she focused out the window and sighed before trying again. “I’m sorry, Bishop. I’m sorry for all of it. I didn’t mean to take anything away from you.” Tears flooded her eyes and clouded the view of the forest whipping by. “I tried to do just the opposite.” She lifted both hands and swiped at her cheek when a tear slipped free. “I wanted you to have a choice in your mating.”
“Just me?” he scoffed, tone full of disbelief.
“Both of us,” she whispered. “We both deserve to make our own choices. I thought I was helping, and not just us but all Skin Walkers. Not all Walkers grew up with loving families. Some were treated like animals, caged, beaten, unwanted, or abused. One more lack of say in something could break them! I was only trying to help.”
“Some of those men have been looking their whole lives for what you’ve hidden from them. Who are you to decide they don’t deserve the love and aide of their mates?”
His words shocked her into silence as her mouth dropped open.
“Yeah,” his eyes met hers in the mirror. “I know what you’ve done.”
She didn’t respond. She couldn’t, lest she incriminate herself. There was no way Bishop could know that she’d created an inoculation that delayed the affliction. There’s no way he could know that she’d had every single Skin Walker employee at StoneCrow vaccinated. She hadn’t told a soul, not even her nurse, Stoney.
“RedKnife KillsPrettyEnemy,” Bishop muttered simply. “He told me about the injections, about what they really are, what they truly do.”
She wanted to defend herself but how could she. Any explanation would constitute an admission. Worse, he couldn’t understand the Walkers need for it. He didn’t even understand his own need for it. She gave him the only response she could. “Time,” she said quietly. “I was only buying everyone time.”
His words were harsh when he responded, “It wasn’t your decision to make. Who are you to make that call? Who are you to keep Walkers from what they want, from what many of them are actively searching for?”
Something about the way he said it had her lifting her eyes to glance up at him. “Were you searching?”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel, and he drew in a breath before exhaling it slowly. “I wasn’t looking. But, I wasn’t running either.” He flicked her a glance and then glued his eyes back on the road. “I always told myself I’d be ready when it happened.”
“And were you?”
“Of course not,” he snapped. “Because it didn’t happen the way it was supposed to! You strung me out for so long that…”
His words died off, and her guilt was back full force. “I don’t blame you,” she offered. “For any of it.”
“Yeah,” he admonished, “Well, I blame myself! No man should ever do what I did. No Walker should ever take from his Angel the way I took from you.”
“It’s my fault. I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew what could have happened.”
He turned on a road that darkened under the thick canopy of trees overhead. He drove a little further until the vehicle slowed and then finally came to a halt. Jenny couldn’t see anything out the windows now because it was too dark.
Instead of climbing out, Bishop’s hard eyes met hers in the mirror. “What did happen!” He growled, his brows drawing down. “I attacked you, Jen!” He shook his head in clear shame and breathed, “I raped you.”