CHAPTER 10
It wasn’t possible.
A surge of fear had Lyra wanting to take a step backwards, away from Grey, but she planted her feet to the black dirt and refused to obey it. She had no reason to fear him. Didn’t she?
It hit her hard that the male standing before her was much more than she had expected.
Much more than she had believed.
“You said you had a family… a pride… that you’re a tiger… were you lying?” She couldn’t bear the thought that he might have been.
Was he just like the other hellcat male, the one who had tricked her and sold her into slavery?
Had he been out to deceive her?
“No,” Grey bit out, his blue eyes holding hers, an edge to them that pleaded her to believe him and not hate him.
“But hellcats are solitary.”
He shook his head. “I’m not a hellcat, Lyra… I’m a tiger.”
He was lying.
Now that she had seen his nails turn black, and the fires of her kind raging in his eyes, she could feel it in him.
He was a hellcat.
He stepped towards her. “I’m a tiger… but in my bloodline, there was a cross-breeding. One of my ancestors wanted to make my family stronger, so they mated with a hellcat.”
Gods.
She had foolishly hoped he had been about to tell her that she had gone crazy, that everything that had happened had gotten to her and she had been imagining it.
He wasn’t pure hellcat, but he had the blood of one in his veins.
“I don’t understand it,” he muttered to his hands as he lowered them in front of him. His silvery eyebrows furrowed and she felt a glimmer of his pain and confusion, and fear. So much fear. “I don’t want to feel this way. I… I can’t be around you. I’m sorry, Lyra.”
He turned away from her.
Lyra stopped him with a handful of words straight from her heart.
“I need you.”
She wasn’t sure whether she meant she needed him to protect her from the fallen angel, or needed him physically, emotionally. It just came out, a blurted confession that only seemed to pain him.
He growled and looked back at her, his eyes vivid blue, glowing brightly in the low light, and his voice hoarse and low. “Don’t say things like that. I can’t…”
“I’m sorry.” She risked a step towards him, the need to comfort him overwhelming her, seizing her so fiercely she couldn’t stop herself from moving closer to him, even when part of her was aware she would only cause him more pain by doing so. “I didn’t mean to push you.”
Because he was doing his best to resist the instincts he didn’t understand.
It touched her, deeper than he would ever know.
It told her how much he cared about her and how fiercely he wanted to protect her.
Because of his tiger blood, the compulsions and needs he felt were weaker, only a fraction of what he would have felt around her if he had been a full-blooded hellcat, but they were still powerful.
They were taking their toll on him.
He was bearing it for her though.
Gods, it was noble, and beautiful, of him to fight them so fiercely for her sake.
His legs gave out and his knees hit the dirt, and he bent forwards and dug his fingers into the black earth, hanging his head between his arms.
“Please, Lyra,” he rasped. “I don’t want to hurt you. Get away from me.”
This was the reason he had left when she had spoken with the elf in the tavern, and the reason he had tried to make her leave.
This was the reason he had drawn his own blood.
He had been fighting his instincts for her.
“Go!”
Lyra shook her head even though he couldn’t see it and slowly approached him. She wouldn’t leave him when he was suffering because of his genes, because of her. She wanted to help him through it, needed to soothe him and assuage those instincts somehow to free him from their grip.
He was a good male.
One her heart said she could trust.
When she kneeled before him, he lifted his head and his handsome face twisted in a grimace as he growled, the pained sound tearing at that heart.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, her hands shaking as she thought about reaching out and placing them on his where he gripped the ground, as if he needed to anchor himself to it.
He shook his head and his eyebrows furrowed.
She managed a smile for him, even when she was falling apart inside, the sight of him hurting drawing her closer to him, filling her with a need to touch him and let him know she was here with him, and she wasn’t going anywhere. He could snarl and snap at her, could try to drive her away, but she was staying right where she was.
With him.
She was going to help him through this.
Because as fiercely as she had fought it, there was no longer any denying it.
He was something to her, and she was something to him, and that was the reason his instincts had him locked in their grip, were tearing him apart with a deep need of her.
The part of her that lay damaged and broken by everything that had happened to her screamed at her to run even though this was where she wanted to be.
It sank in that she wasn’t strong anymore.
She wasn’t being strong by cutting herself off from the world. She wasn’t being strong by keeping Grey at a distance, locked out of her heart.
She was being weak.
Being strong would be taking the risk, having the courage to try again and trust in him. It would be believing in him.
She was tired of being weak.
She wanted to be strong again.
Her eyes dropped to his full lips.
She leaned in to kiss him.