Chapter 41

Chapter 41

He hated her.

And she couldn’t blame him, Ashley thought, closing her eyes and lost herself to Kale’s touch as she asked, “What happened to the villagers?”

“They began dying, one by one, screaming for mercy as the shifter blood they’d stolen killed them,” Kale said flatly as he pressed his lips against the top of her head.

Relieved that they hadn’t been able to hurt him, she forced herself to ask the only question that mattered. “What happened to the Pyte?”

“Years later after I reached my immortality, I hunted him down, making sure that I learned everything that I could about Pytes along the way and when I finally found him, I shot him through the back of the head and chained him up in that same cave that he’d destroyed everything that I loved. I waited for him to heal and when he opened his eyes, I shot him again. The next time that he opened his eyes, I asked him if he remembered what he stole from me.”

“When he laughed, I shot him again. The next time that he opened his eyes, I slowly cut off every finger, toe, and limb one by one, ignoring his pleas for mercy and when I was done, I asked him again. When he didn’t answer me, I shot him again. The next time he opened his eyes, he blurted out my sister’s name before I had a chance to ask him. When he was done screaming her name, I set him on fire and burned him alive. When he was nothing more than a pile of ash, I made sure that I swept up every last speck, placed it in a small barrel, filled it with mortar and once it was set, I destroyed the cave, making sure that if even one speck of ash had been left behind, that he would never be able to escape. I brought the barrel to the coast, hired a ship and sailed to the middle of the ocean where I wrapped it in chains, attached two anchors, and tossed it overboard,” Kale murmured quietly as he gently ran his fingertips up and down her back.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” Ashley mumbled as she reached up and wiped away a tear.

“Me, too,” Kale said, sounding lost in thought as she sat there, wondering how he could even stand being in the same room with her.

“I’ll leave tonight,” Ashley said, forcing the words out when the last thing that she wanted to do was to leave him, but she couldn’t stay, not if she was causing him this much pain.

“I’m never letting you go,” Kale said quietly as he stopped running his fingertips over her back so that he could wrap his arms around her.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Kale,” she whispered.

“Then don’t go.”

“I can’t change what I am,” Ashley said, wishing that she could make this better for him.

“I don’t want you to,” Kale said, sounding lost in thought.

“Why?” she asked, turning her head so that she could stare out the window only to sigh when she saw Cuddles carrying her metal mixing bowl around the backyard.

“Can you tell me why you’re afraid of Sentinels?” Kale asked instead.

“I’d really rather not,” Ashley said, because the last thing that she wanted to do right now was think about what happened, never mind talk about it.

“I can’t protect you if you don’t let me, mo ghrá,” Kale murmured, kissing the top of her head as they watched Cuddles drop the mixing bowl on the ground and-

She was going to need a new mixing bowl.

“Ashley?” Kale said, reaching up to push her hair back behind her ear as he waited for an answer that she didn’t want to give him.

She opened her mouth to tell him that it didn’t matter, only to find herself saying, “My mother didn’t die right away.”

“What?” Kale asked as she felt him go still beneath her.

“She kept trying to shift, but she couldn’t,” Ashley said, staring out the window as she thought about that moment that changed her life forever. “I went from begging her to shift to praying that she would die, but she kept healing just enough to prolong her suffering. In the end, I don’t even think she knew who I was, but she kept saying my name over and over again, begging me to run, but there was nowhere to go.”

“What happened?” Kale asked, leaning down to kiss her forehead.

“I didn’t listen to my mother,” Ashley admitted softly on a shaky breath. “She told me to run, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave her. We’d been on the run for a while, living out of a car, cheap motel rooms when we could afford it, hoping that they’d forget about us, but she didn’t realize that my stepfather got the humans involved. He’d placed an Amber Alert on me and the manager of the motel that we were staying at called the police one night when my mother was at work, but it wasn’t the police that showed up.”

“Sentinels,” Kale correctly guessed.

Nodding, Ashley said, “My stepfather made sure that the Council found out that a Pack child had gone missing and that human authorities were involved. It didn’t take them long to find me. One minute, I was hiding in the closet, waiting for my mother to come back, and the next, there was a Sentinel picking me up and promising me that he was going to get me safely back to my Pack and that’s all that I remember.”

“When I woke up, I was in so much pain. I couldn’t understand what my mother was saying. I just remember lying on the floor, crying, and telling her that my head hurt. It took a while before I figured out that she was begging me to run, but I couldn’t do that,” Ashley explained, releasing a shaky breath before adding, “I couldn’t leave her there with my stepfather.”

“You don’t have to tell me this,” Kale said hollowly.

She ignored him and continued. “He didn’t even give her a chance to beg for her life. He just walked into the cell and tore her throat out. There was no warning. He…” Ashley said, closing her eyes as she slowly exhaled. “He didn’t even give me a chance to say goodbye to her.”

“Ah, Christ,” came the strangled whisper.

“He didn’t die right away. Long after my mother stopped crying my name, my stepfather was still screaming. He knew what would happen as soon as he did it, but he still killed her knowing that he would die with her. He was still screaming when a man that I’d never seen before walked into the basement. When he saw my stepfather, his eyes turned red only to immediately turn back to green when he saw me. His gaze softened when he said my name, telling me to close my eyes and promised me that everything would be okay.”

“I don’t know why I believed him, but I did what I was told. When the screams suddenly stopped, he told me to keep my eyes closed as he picked me up and took me away from there. He kept telling me how much my mother loved me and just how special I was as he held me in his arms while I cried for her. He told me that he loved me and how long he’d waited to meet me and that he was my father. He told me that he needed to go away for a little while but that it would be okay because he’d made sure that I was going to be taken care of and that as long as I stayed in the city, I was safe. Then, he told me that he loved me before he walked away.”

“I’m sorry, mo ghrá,” Kale said, pressing his lips against her forehead as she took a deep breath and told him everything.

“My father’s name is Cade.”