I Bled For The Beast

TWO

Elias hit the doorframe before he hit Kael.

That's how blind with rage he was. My mate, the man who hadn't looked at me in six months, came flying down the stairs like a bomb with legs, skidded on the kitchen tile, and slammed shoulder-first into the wood frame hard enough to splinter it.

Kael didn't move.

Didn't flinch.

Didn't even take his eyes off me.

"That's him?" Kael asked. Like Elias was a bug he'd scraped off his boot.

"Get away from her," Elias snarled.

He was shifting. Not fully, his eyes were gold, his fangs dropped, his claws cutting crescents into his own palms. But his body couldn't decide if it wanted to be a man or a wolf. Too much adrenaline. Too little control.

I'd seen him fight once before. He'd lost.

Kael finally turned.

Slow. Deliberate. The kind of slow that says I have all the time in the world because you can't hurt me.

"You should thank me," Kael said.

"Thank you?" Elias's voice cracked.

"I just reminded you that you have a mate. You're welcome."

Elias lunged.

It was stupid. Everyone in the room knew it was stupid. Mira was on the stairs now, clutching the pup to her chest, her face white. I could hear the baby crying. I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears.

Kael caught Elias by the throat.

One hand. No effort. Just wrapped those scarred fingers around Elias's neck and lifted.

My mate's feet left the floor.

"Let him go," I said.

Kael looked at me. Raised an eyebrow.

"Why?"

Because he's my mate. Because that's what you're supposed to say. Because if I let Kael kill him in my kitchen, I'd have to explain it to the pack, and the council, and the ghost of whatever love I'd once felt for this pathetic, blind, beautiful man.

"Because I said so," I said.

Kael smiled.

It was not a nice smile.

He dropped Elias. Just opened his hand and let him fall. Elias hit the floor like a sack of meat, gasping, clawing at his throat, tears streaming down his face from the pressure.

"You heard your mate," Kael said. "Be grateful she's merciful."

Then he walked out.

Just... walked out. Through the back door, into the dark, like he'd never been there at all.

The door swung shut.

The room was silent except for Elias's choking and the baby's crying.

I didn't help him up.

That's the thing no one tells you about being invisible for too long. When you finally get seen, you don't want to hide again. You want to burn the whole house down so no one can ever put you back in the shadows.

Elias looked up at me from the floor. His eyes were human again. Confused. Scared.

"Lena," he said. "What was that? What did he want?"

I looked down at my thumb. The cut was gone. Kael's tongue had sealed it somehow—no scar, no blood, nothing. Just smooth skin where a wound had been.

"He wanted what you forgot you had," I said.

Elias's face twisted. Not guilt. Not understanding.

Jealousy.

Pure, ugly, belated jealousy.

"You let him touch you," Elias said. His voice was rising. "I saw. You stood there and let him—"

"I stood there because you weren't standing anywhere near me."

Mira made a sound from the stairs. Small. Scared. The pup was wailing now, full-lunged screams that echoed off the walls.

Elias looked at her. Then at me.

Then he made his choice.

He crawled to Mira.

Not to me. To her. He crawled on his hands and knees across my kitchen floor, past my bleeding apples and my grandmother's knife, and he wrapped himself around her legs like she was a lifeline.

"He's gone," Elias said to her. "It's okay. I've got you. I've got both of you."

The pup stopped crying.

I started laughing.

It wasn't funny. Nothing about this was funny. But the sound came out of me anyway—raw and broken and too loud. Elias looked at me like I'd grown a second head.

"What's wrong with you?" he said.

"Nothing," I said. "Finally. Nothing is wrong with me."

I walked upstairs.

Not to our bedroom, our bedroom, ha. I hadn't slept there in three months. I slept in the office, on a pullout couch that wrecked my back. But tonight, I didn't go to the office.

I went to the closet in the hallway.

The one Elias never looked in.

The one where I'd packed a bag six weeks ago, just in case.

The bag was small. Black. Unremarkable. Inside: two changes of clothes, a toothbrush, my grandmother's knife (I went back for it), and a folder.

The folder had papers in it.

Bank statements. A lease agreement for an apartment I'd never told Elias about. A letter of acceptance from a medical program three states away.

I'd been planning to leave for six weeks.

I just hadn't had the courage.

Funny how a monster in your kitchen can give you that.

I slung the bag over my shoulder and walked back downstairs. Elias was still on the floor with Mira, but he'd stopped comforting her. He was staring at the bag.

"What's that?" he said.

"I'm leaving."

"You can't."

"Watch me."

I walked to the front door. Not the back door, the one Kael had used. That door belonged to him now, in my mind. The front door was mine.

Elias scrambled to his feet. Caught my arm.

His grip was too tight. Bruising tight.

"You're my mate," he said. "You don't get to just....."

I pulled the knife.

Not threatening. Just... showing.

Elias let go.

"You don't know what you're doing," he said. "That Alpha Kael, he's not safe. He's not sane. He'll use you and throw you away."

"Like you did?"

Elias flinched.

"Lena. Please."

Please. He'd never said please to me before. Not once in five years. I'd cooked for him, cleaned for him, bled for him, waited for him. And he'd never once said please.

Now he was saying it because I was leaving.

That told me everything I needed to know.

"Goodbye, Elias."

I walked out the front door.

The night air hit my face cold and sharp and alive. Somewhere in the trees, an owl called. Somewhere deeper, in the dark part of the woods where the old pines grew thick, I heard something else.

A wolf.

Not howling. Not hunting.

Waiting.

I smiled.

Then I walked toward the trees.