A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(66)

Pressing his mouth to her head, he kissed her hair. “What I think is that your strength of mind and will is remarkable, Melisande.” He held her tighter. “After you escaped, you got your revenge?”

“I returned to my queen and demanded vengeance, and she granted it. Truthfully, I think she was afraid of me, afraid of what I’d become. It took me five years to find the cheetahs—they’d moved in the interim, probably afraid they’d eventually face Ilina retribution. And I cut them down, one after another, digging their hearts out of their chests with my blades.”

“Except for Castin’s.”

“He wasn’t with them, and no one knew where he’d gone. I never found him.”

“He dies.”

She pulled back far enough to meet his gaze, her own flint. “But not at your hand. He’s mine, Feral. Mine alone.”

Fox cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the mouth before pulling back. “I’ll give you the killing blow. If you want me to, I’ll even let him heal first before you take him on. But he’s going to feel my wrath, angel. Allow me that. I need to make him suffer for what he did to you.”

She watched him with fathomless eyes. “Why?”

Tracing her lovely eyebrow with his thumb, he told her as much as he understood. “Because . . . you’ve become important to me. Precious to me.” And, goddess, it was true. He’d never wanted to care too deeply for another, having always known that caring . . . loving . . . only led to heartache. But he was absolutely falling in love with Melisande.

She turned and pressed her cheek to his shoulder again, a sadness in the move that made him hurt. “I’ve done some terrible things, Fox.”

He stroked her head. “Nothing you didn’t feel you had to do. Or that you hadn’t been driven to do.”

“Perhaps, but you don’t understand. When I was . . . dead inside . . . when I was the woman you first met, I couldn’t feel remorse. I couldn’t feel guilt, grief, love, joy, any of it. Just anger. And hatred. And duty. After a thousand years, I knew right from wrong, but the end justified the means. I wreaked my vengeance on the cheetahs. And when the world believed us extinct, I eliminated the threats to my race so thoroughly, so thoughtlessly, that I left a nine-year-old orphaned.”

Fox stroked her back, aching for her. “We all do things we regret.”

She pulled away from him, standing. “The thing is, I want to go back to being that person.”

He stared at her. “Why?”

“Because I can’t live like this, Fox. I feel . . . And I’m tired of feeling. I won’t live like this.”

“What are you saying?”

Sadness and determination drenched her eyes. “I’m saying that when this is over, when Castin’s dead, and we’re home again, I’m going away until I stop feeling again, until I’ve reclaimed that coldness for good.”

And he’d likely never see her again.

Chapter Fifteen

Fox stared into the fire, thinking about Melisande’s words. When this was over, and they were free of the labyrinth, she meant to leave him, meant to turn herself back into that cold, unfeeling warrior.

Anger built inside of him until he thought he was going to have to awaken her to help pull him back down. It was well past midnight, he suspected. Outside, he heard the wind howling and knew the storm had yet to abate. Inside it was warm, now, Melisande curled into a ball beside him, asleep as he remained on watch. Protecting her.

She was his, dammit.

He shook his head at the thought. He didn’t want her to be his . . . did he? He ran his hands over his face. Goddess, he didn’t know what he wanted.

Melisande. He wanted Melisande.

Deep inside, his fox made a low, rumbling sound of agreement. Then growled, as if it didn’t know what it wanted any better than he did.

What she was suffering was his fault, the fault of the connection between them that had somehow made her feel again. If he’d never come into her life, she’d be stronger.

That was all he wanted for her, to be strong and whole. To never suffer as his sister had. The thought of her like Sheenagh, in too much pain to live, killed something inside him. As did the thought of living without her, but there was no help for it. He was going to have to let her go, as hard as that was to accept. All he could do was hurt her. In a different way, perhaps, but just as surely as so many shifter males had before.

How could Castin have betrayed her like that?

He hadn’t known the male long—they’d worked together for a handful of months about 130 years ago in the north of England. And he hadn’t known him well. His memory of Castin was of a serious and focused warrior not interested in the pranks Fox and some of the others had enjoyed playing on one another. He supposed he could imagine the male so focused on reclaiming his animal, back in that dark time, that he’d willingly tortured helpless females. Damn him to hell.

His time to pay for that crime had come. And once Melisande’s vengeance was complete? It wouldn’t change anything. He knew, both from Sheenagh’s experience and from watching other revenge killings over the years, that vengeance never solved anything.

Still, Castin had to pay for his crime. A man who would visit such torture on a woman was not a man an animal spirit would willingly choose. Castin wasn’t the one meant to be chosen. The worst, not the best.