– Chapter 167

Knocking on the door of the bedroom my father assigned Selene, I hear a dull thump and a sudden scampering sound within. Pushing the door open I scan the space, noticing a photo book splayed haphazardly on the bed as if it had been dropped there in hurry, and a pair of abandoned slippers on the floor by the headboard. However, I don’t see hide nor hair of the woman I came to find.

Stepping inside, I call, “Selene?”

Her sweet scent floats to my nose, muddled with a distinct tinge of acrid fear. Despite my sympathy for her plight, my sweet mate unwittingly placed a hunt under my nose, and no wolf worth his salt can resist such a tempting offer. “Come out, come out wherever you are, little wolf.”

I hear a muted whimper in the direction of the bed. Furrowing my brow, I realize it had sounded awfully low to the ground, and after a moment I understand. The poor thing was so frightened she’d actually crawled under the bed to hide from me. Slowly striding forward, I close the distance between us, trying to wipe the smile from my face. The last thing she needs is to know how adorable I find her behavior.

Kneeling down at the foot of the bed, I duck my head low enough to see the cowering she-wolf. She’s flat on her belly, her eyes wide as dinner plates as she stares back at me, positively trembling with fear. “You going to make me come all the way down there to get you, baby?”

She doesn’t answer, instead sidling closer to the wall and turning her face away from me. Resolved to retrieve her, I lower myself to the ground, at which point I discover that she’s both out of my reach, and I’m too broad to fit into the narrow space myself. Clever little mate.

I could move the bed, but I decide to try and coax her out instead. Mimicking her position, I settle in for a chat. “Okay sweetheart, let’s just talk.” I begin, grinning wolfishly when she looks at me in surprise. “We need to get to know each other if we’re going to be married after all.”

Selene still doesn’t answer, but the scent of her fear isn’t as strong as it was before, so I continue. “You should know that Garrick is dead.” I share, hoping that this information will help her trust me. “He denied everything, but I saw –” my voice trails off as I remember my visit to their house, to the basement he’d used as her prison cell. It was too horrible to contemplate keeping a child down in such desperate conditions for so long. “I saw where he was keeping you, and I found his Wolfsbane supply.”

She curls in on herself a little, as if reliving the pain of the potion. “We destroyed all of it. You don’t ever have to worry about anyone hurting you ever again, Selene. You’re under my protection now.” Her stomach growls in reply, and the corner of my mouth tilts up. “I wish you’d come out and talk to me.” I tell her. “If you did, we could have some lunch together.”

She’s so thin that her eyes look too large in her beautiful face, giving the impression of a puppy dog expression when she finally asks, “Will you let me eat if I don’t?”

Axel growls fiercely in my head, and I’m just barely able to stop from letting the same sound escape me. I wish I could kill Garrick all over again, and I know then that as long as she’s out of reach, she’s never going to trust me. “Of course I will.” I promise, fighting to keep my tone gentle, “but you might have to share it with that spider.”

Selene’s gaze follows mine, landing on the huge arachnid curiously approaching her. It was a bit of a gambit. After all, eight years in a basement had to have acquainted her with all kinds of creepy crawlies, but that could either immunize or hyper-sensitize her to them. Luckily for me, it’s the latter. With a terrified squeak she rapidly crawls out of the narrow space, yelping when she hits her head in her rush, and then again when I catch her beneath the arms and pull her into my arms.

Selene flails against me, trying to escape at the same time as she struggles to wrap her head around how I managed to get to her so quickly. Unfortunately she’s so frail that it takes very little effort for me to trap her wriggling limbs, “Easy, sweetheart, you’re all right. You’re safe.”

The squirming bundle whines in protest as I snuggle her to my chest, settling on the edge of her bed and rocking back and forth. “I promise I won’t hurt you, Selene.” I vow, rubbing a soothing hand up and down her spine the same way I might a skittish horse. “That’s it.” I encourage when she begins to settle, “Just let me take care of you.”

Apparently attempting a hail mary pass to escape me, Selene makes one final thrash. A pair of sharp little fangs dig into my arm, and I surprise her with my purr. The innocent she-wolf has no idea how badly I want to bite her myself – or how intimate the gesture is between men and women. We only bite our mates; her instincts clearly recognize me even if she does not.

In the end it seems my lack of rebuke convinces her I can be trusted, and she stills completely, pouting but cuddling closer when I continue purring my approval. “Good girl.” I praise, carefully tilting her head forward so I can examine the quickly swelling goose-egg where she hit her head. Tsking softly, I press my lips to the tender spot once, twice, three times.

“Is he really dead?” Selene asks in a small voice.

“Dead and burned.” I assure her, “I did it myself.”

I let that information sit with her for a moment, hoping that it won’t frighten her too much. He wasn’t the first man I’d ever killed, but he was the one I’d found the most pleasure in destroying. “Are we really going to be married?” Selene whispers after a moment.

“Yes,” I confirm, “Does that scare you?”

She thinks about my question for a long moment, before hesitantly shaking her head no. “I’m sorry I bit you.”

I want to kiss her more than I’ve ever wanted to kiss anyone, but I know she’s not ready for that yet, so I simply lower my cheek to her hair and breathe in her incredible scent. “I’m not.”

The images slowly fade, the bedroom dissolving around us until it’s replace with a new scene. I’m waking up alone in my bed a few weeks later, worry lancing through me when I instinctively reach for Selene but find her missing. As tortuous as it is for me to lie beside her every night without touching her the way my wolf aches to, her nightmares are so persistent that she’d never sleep at all without me. Rising from bed, the steady drumbeat of rain fills the air, and I’ve barely made it a step before thunder and lightning crash in near perfect synchrony, the sound shaking the walls as light shatters the darkness through the windows.

A muffled cry from the living room sends me running, and when I reach the communal space, I find Selene in the middle of a complete breakdown. In the back of my mind I recall there was a storm the night she escaped Garrick, but I haven’t been able to convince her to tell me exactly what happened that day.

Approaching her warily, Selene scrambles away as if I’m the devil himself. I stop in my tracks, sighing, “Oh Baby, I thought we’d gotten past this.” It’s true, after our first couple of weeks together Selene had gone from fearing me to viewing me as her only safe space. She was still incredibly skittish, but by now I’d become accustomed to her running to me – not away.

My words fell on deaf ears, in fact it seems like she can’t hear me at all. She’s staring at me as if she doesn’t even recognize me, sobbing and pleading for me not to hurt her. “Please no!” Selene weeps, sounding absolutely petrified, “It’s not right, Garrick!”

That stops me dead in my tracks, as two things become very clear. First, my mate is in the middle of a pull blown PTSD episode and has no idea where she is or who I am. Second, Garrick clearly did more than beat and poison her. Acting instinctively, I shift into my wolf form, not bothering to remove my clothes first. They fall in tatters around me, and Selene’s panicked breathing eases slightly.

The sound of her agony has me flattening my ears to my head as a low whine sounds in my chest, and to my relief my mate seems completely unafraid of the giant predator bearing down on her. She reaches toward me as I draw near, and I wrap my furry body around her, gladly offering her the only comfort she can accept at the moment.

The dream changes again, Selene’s voice echoing in my head much stronger than it had been at the time, “You coddled me!”

“If I coddled you it’s because I love you!” I hear myself replying. I don’t remember this conversation, but I can’t help thinking that I’ve never seen anyone in more need of coddling than my traumatized mate in the early months of our relationship.

“I never learned how to fend for myself!” She answers fiercely.

The strange thing is that I can’t see her, I can hear her, but I have no other context to place the moment. It doesn’t even make any sense, we haven’t known each other long enough to ‘ever or never’ do anything. My consciousness rolls around uncomfortably, and the surreal sensation of dreaming washes over me. This isn’t real. I realize. I’m only dreaming. Straining to leave the fantasy world and return to reality, I urge myself to wake up. Except I can’t seem to break free of this strange sleep. It’s like I’m trapped, walking through memories and things that haven’t happened yet.

What in the hell is going on?