Kyra
“Derek!” she yelled as Roman lifted him off the ground.
Then others came to help, and Derek was gone.
She tried to run after them, but something strong grabbed her around the waist.
A wolf shifter male was holding onto her, keeping her away from him. She was vaguely aware of having met him before – his name was Tristan, and Derek considered him one of his brothers. They weren’t brothers in blood but in their deep connection to each other.
“Stop yelling,” Tristan said.
She looked up at him. His face was stony.
She let her body go limp. “I’ll stop,” she said. This was her fault. She created this situation. Even in her despair, she was aware of that. Tristan kept a tight grip on her for several more minutes. Then he finally loosened his hold. “I should throw you in a dungeon,” he said.
She nodded. She’d feel the same way.
“But for some reason, Derek doesn’t want that.” He let go of her, shoving her away from him a little. He pointed at a fallen log. “Sit.” He glared at her. “I would prefer to be following my brothers back home, but instead I got stuck dealing with you. Lucky me.”
Kyra wanted to be the one taking care of Derek.
He was her mate, and he’d nearly been killed. He’d nearly bled out, saving her life.
She didn’t deserve his sacrifice, but he’d done it anyway, even after he’d known that she’d betrayed his trust.
She would never be allowed back on pack land; she understood that. She was actually really fortunate that they hadn’t killed her on the spot. Or maybe she wasn’t fortunate at all; maybe the rest of her days would be her punishment, an endless torment of having known that she’d betrayed her mate in the worst way possible.
They sat there, and each second that passed was agony. Tristan stayed close, but he didn’t speak to her or even look at her. Kyra tried to distract herself by watching a group of ants crawl over a rotting piece of pine wood. But inside, her guts were twisted up into knots. She could barely take a breath. She put her hands flat on the ground and tried to let the earth calm her.
It did not work.
An hour later, Tristan’s phone buzzed. He spoke again, for the first time in an hour. “Okay. You’re free to go,” he said.
She jerked her head up. “How? Why?”
He scrunched his face up into a scowl. “The hell if I know. Like I said, if it were up to me, I’d toss you in a dungeon with those bloodsuckers and throw away the key. But apparently, Derek woke up long enough on the way back to the pack land to tell Roman to let you go. Apparently, he thinks you’re not a threat now, and Roman listened.”
“I can just leave?”
“That’s what Roman said.”
She got up on unsteady legs and started walking to her car, hardly able to believe that she would be allowed to go. But there was nowhere in the world she wanted to be, except near Derek.
She drove to the edge of the pack land, and then she waited. She expected to be driven away forcibly, either by fire or a silver bullet, but that didn’t happen.
She spent two days pacing outside the compound before anyone came.
On the third day, some of the pack members did come by and tried to get her to leave. They weren’t scary or mean, but mostly polite. She wouldn’t have blamed them if they were cruel. They had every reason.
Jameson came by first. “I heard a little bit of what happened, but I don’t know much. Tell me why you did this.”
So she told him, every detail.
“Hmm,” he said, when she was done. “I don’t think staying out here is helping. Do you need money? We can help you start a new life somewhere safe. Maybe South America? I know someone in Brazil who could help.”
Somewhere very far away from us, went unsaid, but the message was clear.
“No, thank you,” she replied. “I’m fine here.”