Chapter 6
1016 Words
Chapter 6
The words hit their target with accuracy as I smelled the shame and anger that was doused in this room.
Elena's face went white from rage or something else entirely, and she launched herself at me with a snarl of rage, her hand raised to strike at me. She thought that she was fighting a mere human.
But I was ready for her.
I caught her wrist mid-swing, my grip was iron tight as I held her arm suspended in the air, not letting it move.
For a moment, we were frozen in time, neither of us doing anything else but simply existing.
Her face was twisted with fury, mine was calm and blank as usual, showing no expression on my face. She wanted to pull out of the tight grip that I had on her but I held on tight.
Then I slapped her.
The sound was loud enough that it echoed throughout the kitchen like a gunshot, and Elena fell to the floor immediately with a cry of shock and pain.
The slap had been delivered with the right amount of force. It was hard enough to send a message that I wasn't someone that she could think she could beat up and it was also controlled enough to avoid serious injury or revealing to them what I was before I was ready.
"Never," I said, my voice carrying the Luna authority that I never used as soon as I ran away which made Marcus and Elena freeze on the spot as I continued with my statement, "lay a hand on me again."
Elena held her reddening cheek, staring up at me with a mixture of shock and something that might have been fear, that she was trying to hide.
Marcus took a step toward me, but something in my expression made him stop, as well, not eager to face my wrath.
That's when my phone rang.
The sound cut through the tension like a blade, and Marcus, still operating on Alpha instincts narrowed his eyes at the phone and moved to answer it before I could react.
He grabbed the device from the counter, his eyes narrowing as he read the caller ID.
"Who the hell is 'Jerk of the Century'?" he demanded, his voice filled with suspicion and rage. One funny thing about Marcus was. He hates me being close to other men. That had been a red flag in our relationship and one that I ignored assuming it was because he couldn't share me and he clearly saw me as his mate, despite not being true mates. But the truth was clear. He only wanted to be the one cheating and expected me to be loyal and compliant.
My blood turned to ice when my brain registered what Marcus had said. I'd saved that contact information when I was sixteen, angry and hurt and determined never to forget the man who'd tried to force me into a marriage I didn't want to be in, all because the Moon Goddess was making a sick joke at our expense.
In all the years since, I'd never bothered to change it, never expecting him to call.
But last night, in the darkness of the guest room, after revealing through the humiliation that my husband and his mistress had wanted to force on me, to make me feel worthless and not capable of reaching the standards, my husband so clearly wanted, I'd done something I'd sworn I'd never do. I'd unblocked his number and sent a single message: "I need to talk."
Apparently, he'd been waiting for that message for five years, biding his time and giving me the space that I needed.
I stared at the phone in Marcus's hand, my mind racing with different questions. There was no way to explain this that wouldn't raise questions I wasn't prepared to answer.
No way to justify why I had the Lycan King's personal number saved in my phone, or why he was calling me now, when my carefully constructed life was falling apart.
"Answer it," I said quietly, my voice steady despite the chaos in my head.
Marcus's thumb hovered over the answer button, his eyes locked on mine. "Who is this, Sarah?"
Elena struggled to her feet, one hand still pressed to her cheek, watching this new development with obvious confusion.
She could sense the shift in the room's energy, the way it seemed like something important was about to be revealed.
"Answer it," I repeated, and this time my voice carried the kind of command that made Marcus's wolf recognize superior authority.
His finger swiped across the screen, and suddenly the kitchen was filled with a voice I hadn't heard in five years—a voice that still made my wolf whine with longing and regret.
"Seraphina," Kieran Nightshade said, his tone carrying five years of hurt and hope and desperate need. My heart almost stopped hearing his voice again for the first time in five years and my wolf almost keened at the noise. We have been deprived of Kieran for far too long.
"Thank the Moon Goddess you finally called. I've been waiting for you to come home."
The silence that followed was loud. Marcus's face went white, then red, then white again as the implications of what he'd just heard began to sink in.
Elena's eyes widened as she recognized the voice of the most powerful werewolf in North America. Not everyone had the privilege of owning his personal private number and nobody else had the audacity to save the number under such a name. It was unheard of.
And I stood there, caught between the life I'd built and the destiny I'd run from, knowing that everything was about to change forever. I had made the decision to involve Kieran in my life and I was going to deal with the consequences of this decision whether I liked it or not.
"Hello, Kieran," I said softly, my voice carrying across the kitchen like a whisper of wind before a storm. "I think it's time we talked."
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