Chapter 40

Chapter 40

“Wait! What are you doing?” Ashley demanded as he threw her over his shoulder and headed for the nearest cell, deciding that it was time that he showed her exactly how he felt about Pytes.

“Giving you exactly what you asked for,” Kale said, trying to ignore just how good it felt to touch her as he headed for the cell.

“This isn’t what we discussed!” the little pain in the ass frantically pointed out as she wriggled in his arms, forcing him to tighten his hold around her and-

Fuck!

He couldn’t do it.

He didn’t want her anywhere near those fucking cells, Kale thought, shooting the cells in question a glare as he turned around and carried his squirming mate upstairs. He needed to figure out what to do with her now. He didn’t want her left here all alone and he sure as hell didn’t want Jacob to be the one that got to hold her at night, which meant that he no longer had a choice.

He had to turn her over.

“Where are we going?” Ashley asked conversationally as he ground his jaw, telling himself that this was the best thing for her.

For a moment, he considered handing her over to her brother, but after today, he didn’t want her anywhere near another fucking Pyte. He wanted her kept somewhere safe where he wouldn’t have to worry about her and as much as he hated to admit this, there was only one place that could keep her safe.

“You’re going upstairs and packing a bag and once you’re done, I’m driving you to Manhattan and turning you over to the Sentinels to keep you…” Kale started to explain, barely getting the word Sentinel out when he scented it, a spike of fear that had his words trailing off and-

Grunting when the little pain in the ass suddenly took him by surprise and managed to squirm her way free. That was followed by her taking off running up the stairs, where she stumbled, tripped, and fell with a grumbled, “Stupid stairs,” before slamming the door shut behind her and took off running all while frantically mumbling, “Shift!” to herself while he stood there, trying to figure out what just happened.

He listened as she ran to the front door, muttered, “Damn it!” closed the door shut, ran back to the living room as she continued muttering, “Shift!” before running to her room, closing the door only to apparently rethink that decision, ran back into the living room only to slow down and tiptoe past the basement door where he stood, dumbfounded, and as soon as she reached the stairs, took off running again, skidded to a stop in what sounded like in front of his room, stumbled inside, closed the door, and had him fucking sighing when he heard the unmistakable sounds of her diving beneath his bed.

For a moment, Kale stood there, wondering what the hell just happened, only to find himself heading upstairs, sighing heavily as he tried to tell himself that he didn’t care, but the problem was so much fucking worse than that.

He loved her.

He was in love with a Pyte and it was tearing him apart.

For so long, he’d held on to his anger, using it to push him harder, to keep him focused on his goals, and now…it terrified him to let it go. The need to hold on to that hate was killing him, but the thought of losing her was hurting him more.

He couldn’t do it.

He couldn’t let her go, Kale realized as he made his way upstairs. He needed her and there was no fucking way that he was going to let her go, but it didn’t change the fact that she was a Pyte and he had no idea how he was supposed to handle that. He was going to have to find a way, Kale decided as he walked into his room and dropped down in the chair in the corner as he tried to figure out how he was going to fix this.

“Couldn’t shift?” Kale asked, only to feel his lips twitch at her disgruntled grumble.

God, she was so fucking adorable.

“We’ll work on that,” Kale murmured absently as he tried to figure out a way to fix this. He thought that he’d had this under control and was able to handle the fact that she was a Pyte, but when he saw her eyes…

“I never should have told you that I hated you, mo ghrá. You just took me by surprise when I saw your eyes and I…I reacted badly,” Kale said, having absolutely no idea what else to say.

Nothing.

“Can you tell me why you reacted the way that you did when I mentioned Sentinels?” he asked, throwing a hopeful look at the bed, but other than sending off another spike of fear, she didn’t respond.

“I’m not going to send you away, mo ghrá. This is your home,” Kale said, hoping that would be enough to get her to talk to him.

It wasn’t.

“I’m so fucking sorry, mo ghrá,” Kale said, terrified that she was never going to talk to him again. He couldn’t lose her, which meant that it was time to start talking, Kale realized, releasing a shaky breath as he tried to figure out where to start.

“Did I ever tell you about my sister, Aine, mo ghrá?” Kale asked, already knowing that he hadn’t. He hadn’t told anyone about Aine, not even Logan, who’d been like a brother to him, or Izzy, who reminded him so much of Aine. “She was such a devious little thing,” he said, unable to help but chuckle as he remembered the way that her face used to light up when she teased him.

God, he missed her.

“She lived to torment everyone around her, but you could never stay mad at her. There was just something so infectious about that smile of hers and she knew it,” Kale said, feeling his smile turn sad as he quietly added, “I loved her more than anything.”

For several minutes, he didn’t say anything as he sat there, finally allowing himself to think about his sister for the first time in years. The pain was still there, probably always would be, but there was also a sense of peace that came from thinking about her that hadn’t been there before.

“What happened to her?” came the question that had him biting back a sigh.

“I made the mistake of helping a boy that I’d been warned to stay away from. I never saw him before that day, but I’d heard the tales about him, the ones the villagers used to whisper about when they’d had too much ale. There had been tales about him long before the villagers finally banished him, forcing him to live on the outskirts of town among the whores. I never thought much about him until I found out that Conn was looking for him.”

“He’d caught the boy’s scent during the last shift and something about it had set him off. I’d never seen him like that before. He was terrified and I…I wanted to make him look foolish in front of the English prick, so when I saw the boy running through the fields, trying to outrun the villagers coming for him, I hid him in the caves where the villagers used to store their grains. I took him past the point that the villagers were too afraid to explore and made sure that no one would ever be able to find him. As soon as I had the boy settled, I rushed back to the village and watched as Conn finally lost control, panicking over a little fucking boy while I laughed my ass off.”

“I fucking hated him,” Kale bit out as his hands clenched tightly into fists, wishing that he could go back and wipe that smug smile off the bastard’s face when he’d found out that Kale’s father was dead and stole Kale’s rightful place in the Pack. “He had no business trying to lead our Pack, but that hadn’t stopped him from forcing us to flee Ireland and beg for fucking scraps from an English prick.”

“The next day, while everyone was still panicking as they tore the village apart looking for him, I snuck back into the woods with a satchel filled with enough food to feed an army and made my way to the caves, smiling the whole fucking way until I made it to the caves and realized that there was something wrong. He was on the floor passed out and I couldn’t wake him up.”

“At first, I told myself that he was just exhausted, but that quickly turned into wondering if Conn had scented illness on the boy and was trying to stop it from spreading through the village. I didn’t want to be the reason why my mother lost any more children, so I stayed in that cave and waited, terrified that I was going to die alone in that cave.”

“Then, I started to notice changes, small at first, but then the boy was suddenly bigger than me. I was fascinated by the changes. Every day, I’d cut out early on my chores and rush to the cave, excited to see how much he’d changed overnight. It wasn’t until he was larger than all the other men in the village and Pack that I realized he wasn’t human. I didn’t know what he was, but I knew that I couldn’t let him live.”

“Every day for a week, I tried to work up the courage to kill him, but I couldn’t do it and god, I wish that I had,” Kale said, unclenching his fists so that he could rub his hands down his face.

“You don’t have to do this,” Ashley said softly from beneath the bed and as much as he would love to stop, he couldn’t.

She deserved to know the truth.

“I should have known that Aine would eventually follow me and when she did, I wasn’t able to get her out of there fast enough. One minute, we were staring at a pair of bright red eyes and the next, we were running for our lives. I’d never seen anyone move so fast before. We’d barely made it into the next cavern when he was there, reaching for Aine. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to pull her free and dragged her into a small tunnel that was barely big enough for us to squeeze in before he could grab her again.”

“She kept screaming my name, begging me to keep going, but there was no more room. It wasn’t until he managed to grab hold of her and pulled her out that I realized that I was stuck. I couldn’t move. No matter what I fucking did, I couldn’t get to her. As my sister was screaming my name, I was stuck in a fucking tunnel forced to watch as that fucking monster ripped her throat open,” Kale said hollowly, the memory of Aine’s screams threatening to push him over the edge.

“She wouldn’t stop screaming even when he’d had enough and decided to throw her around the cave like a fucking ragdoll. When he was done, he dropped her broken body in front of me before walking away, leaving me to watch my sister die. She was so fucking scared,” Kale said, his voice breaking at the end as he was forced to close his eyes. “I eventually managed to break free, but by then, it was too late. She died in my arms minutes later and I-”

“Shhhh,” Ashley murmured softly as he felt her climb onto his lap and wrap her arms around him. “It’s okay.”

“I couldn’t save her,” Kale said, wrapping his arms around her and held on tightly, refusing to let her go.

“I carried Aine back to the village, telling her that everything was going to be okay, but I knew that she was already gone. I just…I couldn’t let her go. I didn’t realize that something was wrong until I heard the screams. He’d torn through my Pack, leaving them to die. I heard my mother screaming my name as I made my way to our cottage, ready to kill the bastard only to realize that she wasn’t calling for help. She was telling me to run.”

“You were just a child, Kale,” Ashley said soothingly as she kissed his forehead.

“I was the fucking Alpha. It was my job to protect them,” Kale bit out, repeating the same words that he’d told himself as he’d carried Aine’s body into their cottage and…

“It’s okay,” Ashley said as she ran her fingers through his hair.

“He saved my mother for last so that she was forced to watch as he killed all of her children and I…I couldn’t move. I stood there, watching as he ripped my mother’s throat out until my legs gave out and I dropped to the floor with Aine in my arms. She kept screaming my name, begging me to save Aine, but I couldn’t move. So, I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the screams to stop and when they did, I knew that it was my turn to die.”

“Only, he left me there at the mercy of the villagers hellbent on getting every last drop of shifter blood that they could get their hands on. They finished off men, women, and children begging for help and drained the dead as I begged them to let me hold Aine. While they dragged me outside, I swore that I would find him one day and make him pay. When they pressed a knife to my throat and told me to stop moving so that my blood wouldn’t spill on the ground, I decided that I would make sure that I killed every fucking Pyte that I could find to stop it from happening again.”