Chapter 3
443 Words
The crowd surged in panic. Liam's grip loosened as bodies pushed between us, and I was swept aside, my face drained of color. I huddled in a corner clutching myself, cold sweat soaking through my back, one hand pressed against my chest as I gulped for air.
I was a werewolf, but the wolfsbane had ruined my eyes, and the dark terrified me.
A spiteful laugh rang out above me, and then a blinding pain crashed down. Sofia had a candelabrum in her hand, and she was bringing it down on my head, over and over. She grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked me up. "You dared to hit me?"
The pain at my crown hadn't eased. Blood ran down into my eyes, stinging tears out of me. The darkness magnified the fear until I broke, and his name slipped out of me almost on instinct. "Liam..."
Another slap.
"A useless thing that's afraid of the dark. Why didn't you just die back then with your mother?"
I froze. My heart plunged into a black pit and began to ache in tight, fine throbs.
In a daze I was back inside the warehouse.
The year I was 18, my father took a mistress, a woman with influence in East Hollow. She had my mother and me kidn*pped and locked in a sealed, lightless warehouse for seven days and seven nights. I watched my gentle, beautiful mother stop breathing in the dark, watched her body turn stiff and cold.
In the end it was Liam who tracked us by scent and pulled me out.
That animal who called himself my father said, "If she's dead, she's dead. If you don't want to be in this house, then get out too."
That was the worst stretch of my life.
And Liam had told Sofia about it.
Blood poured up out of my mouth in surges, and the tears wouldn't stop, as if they meant to empty me. Somewhere far off I heard Liam's voice, frantic.
"Mia! Where are you! Mia!"
I tried to force out an answer, but Sofia drowned the small sound. "Ah, Liam! I fell, my foot hurts so much."
He rushed over, scooped her up, and hurried out.
He passed within arm's reach of me.
My phone lit up.
Liam: Mia, the moment you apologize, I'll come find you.
I stared at the line of text and a laugh broke out of me. I swallowed the tears back down by force.
How familiar those words were. When he had the mate bond severed, when I had walked away to survive on my own, he had said the exact same thing.
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