VICTOR

The ache in his body as he began to wake was strange. Being a werewolf shifter Victor was accustomed to his body healing itself fast enough that he rarely felt any soreness unless he was recovering from more serious injuries. Searching his mind, he tried to remember being in a battle.

Did Rafi find us?

“It took you long enough to wake up, Victor. I’ve got everything all ready to go and I thought you were going to sleep right through it.”

His eyelids were still heavy but he pushed them open anyway. Nicole sounded furious. The woman he loved, he knew well enough to know that when she was this angry she was often extreme and unreasonable. Her tigress didn’t help with the extreme measures, they were usually the tiger spirit’s ideas.

“Don’t do it,” Victor said before he even knew what it would be, he just saw the wild look in her aqua eyes that glowed in the darkness of the cave.

Nicole laughed grabbing his face and squeezing it with her hand. “I’m doing it. I’m finally going to be free of you,” she said her eyes were moist and her pale olive tone complexion looked so soft and delicate in the low light conditions.

“You may hate me, Nicole but you can’t kill me,” Victor said testing the restraints behind his back. They were not burning his skin or causing his bones to ache. This meant she had not used silver. Why then couldn’t he break the binding?

“I don’t need to kill you to free myself of you, Vic.” She lifted a sharpened rock for him to see. “This mate nonsense that ties us together, I know how to cut the tie.”

“That’s ridiculous. A sharpened rock can’t rearrange the stars any more than it can rewrite destiny,” Victor said pulling harder at the restraints that still weren’t working.

Where are Killian and Angeline?

Nicole swallowed drawing closer to him. “Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” She grabbed the waist of his shredded shorts and pulled them down to his knees. “Still hard for me, huh? Even though I’ve got you tied up and I’m getting ready to cut your balls off?”

“What?” Victor pulled harder than ever at the restraints and felt then at last beginning to stretch a little. “Have you completely lost your mind, Nicole?” He crossed his legs as she frowned down at his crotch.

“Probably. I mean that’ll happen when the man you love is so fucking selfish that he ruins your life, and has you outcast from your family. When you find out they’ve been slaughtered and that you are all that’s left of your family line and all because you were lucky enough to be predestined to a selfish, coward, asshole.” Her voice was echoing back at him from all around the cave.

Victor nodded in agreement. She wasn’t wrong. Everything she said was true. “Apologizing isn’t enough and there is nothing I can do to bring your family back. Cutting off my balls doesn’t solve anything either.”

“It will silence my tigress.” She unpeeled his legs and pushed them apart, locking her own legs between his so that he would be unable to close them.

Her hand cupped his testicles as she lifted them.

Victor groaned at the feel of her hands on him. He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him that it still felt so good to feel her touch even when he knew she was about to literally try to cut me out of her life.

“This won’t change that you love me. It won’t change that I love you.”

“I hate you,” she said her shaky hold tightening as her gaze hardened. “You cost me everything and you fucking abandoned me. I wish I could kill you. I wish you were dead.”

Anger poured into the vat of fear that was churning in his stomach. “I could never hate you. That’s the difference between you and me.”

“No, the difference between us is that I would never have cost you what you cost me. I never would abandon someone I truly loved.”

“I didn’t abandon you,” Victor growled his chest rumbling as his wolf seemed to finally be waking up.

Nicole lowered the rock. “Looks like the tranquilizer darts I pulled out of my back are nearly out of juice. Time to cut free.” Her lips pressed together tightly. Nicole’s hand at his balls trembled and her breath was coming in short anguished gasps. Victor met her aqua blue eyes shining at him with unshed tears and anger.

A hard pull broke the binding at his wrists, his wolf strength was returning fast. He caught her hand with the rock and twisted it, forcing her to drop it. The angry roar out of Nicole told him how much she hated his touch.

Too bad.

The mesh that she was wearing gave him a peak at her deep coral pink nipples. They were tight for him and he could smell the moisture of her arousal between her legs. Hate him she might, but she lusted after him too.

Victor captured her lips even as the warning rumble reverberated from her chest and throat. She could go ahead and kill him, it would be worth it. Not touching her, not going after her was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do and now that she was there, right in front of him she hated him for not coming after her. She hated him for the sacrifice he made for her.

She tasted sweet and spicy. His shaft pumped against her stomach aching to fill her.

Nicole bit his lower lip and kicked him away from her with both feet to the stomach, launching him into the cave wall so hard it cracked. Dust and rock shards rained down on them. Nicole was crouched low on the ground ready to spring, the rumbling in her chest louder than before. Her eyes were wide and filled with anger and fear.

Victor shook the dirt from his body and pulling up what was left of his shorts as he watched her. “Do you think I don’t recognize you’re ready to pounce stance?” Victor laughed as he began to make his way along the cave wall toward the opening.

“Running away again?” Her growl continued to rumble even through her words.

“I never ran away.”

The pain and anger in her eyes seemed to set the blue sea of her eyes on fire. “You killed the shifter that was meant to be the father of my child. You were exiled and you left without a fight. Fucking coward.”

Nicole raced forward at a very fast speed but Victor was faster. He caught her and spun her so that she was against the wall and pinned her there with his body. “I was supposed to just stand aside and let some other guy fuck my mate?”

“Yes,” she roared baring her teeth.

Victor roared right back, his wolf rising to match her tiger’s level of rage. “Tradition be damned, Nicole. He would not have made a stronger child with you than I will. All he had to do was step down when I challenged him.”

“You and I will never have a child together,” the rumble was gone, which told Victor her tigress disagreed with her. The denial she was giving him was all of her own. Somehow, that hurt worse.

“You are wet for me even as you deny me.”

Her electrified aqua blue eyes narrowed on his face. “My tigress wants an heir. Don’t flatter yourself. I would never have a child with a man who says he’ll come back and never does. Even after I was exiled you didn’t come for me. After you killed Shan and set the Shadier family against mine and started a war that left me completely alone in the world, still no sign of this one who loves me so much.”

Her rage was driving her. Victor could see it and he should have been better prepared. Nicole’s hand closed around his neck and she lifted him easily off the floor and into the air. “I can’t believe how stupid I was,” Nicole said through clenched teeth. “I waited, and waited.”

Nicole’s eyes spilled the tears and they didn’t stop. She tightened her hold on his throat and he didn’t struggle. Victor wanted her to get it out. Whatever it took he wanted her to forgive him. If he had to be dead for that to take place, so be it.

“I waited until I didn’t exist any longer,” she breathed.

Victor stiffened, not because of his lack of oxygen. He didn’t know that he’d almost lost her to her tigress and it horrified him. If she’d nearly given up to her tigress then she was going to struggle to control her for the rest of her life.

I can’t leave her to be devoured by the spirit she shares her body with.