50

G E O R G I E

✿

Beyond the stone parapet were the streets of Minkaujin, glowing a warm red emanating from the lanterns at the ends of the roof.

"How did I deserve you?" I asked as I wrapped my arms around his torso and snuggled up against him looking down at the city. I felt safe in his arms. Arrived. As if it were my home.

He kissed my head in response and the tenderness of that gesture brought tears to my eyes.

I couldn't lose him, ever. Who was I without him? How could I get through a single day without Beau? The answer to that was, not at all. It would utterly destroy me if he left me and the ferocity of his wolf devoured him.

"I'd love to meet her," I blurted out, tempted to distract myself from the raw anger raging inside me. Beau was still here with me, the curse hadn't taken him yet. I just had to keep it that way.

"Who?" he asked as the night wind gently swept across us, flapping the shirt I'd tucked in before falling asleep.

"Rose and your cousin April," I replied, stepping so close to him that I could feel his denim against my bare legs.

Beau stroked my hair and I heard the smirk in his voice as he said, "They love you already. Once you get to know them, they will spoil you like a lost daughter. Believe me, Rose has been bugging me for hundreds of solar orbits about finally getting to meet her daughter-in-law.”

I had to smile while my heart burst with joy. How long had I dreamed that he would introduce me to his family as his mate and accept me as the closest member of his intimate circle. "And what did you say?" I pressed curiously, leaning back in his arms to look up at him.

"I told her that would never happen." His eyes found mine. "Like I said, I never wanted a mate."

My heart automatically contracted at the stab of pain. "And what would you say now?" I ventured out.

Beau snorted. "Are you still asking me that?" He growled, his hand resting on the mark on my neck. "Fuck even the devil himself can't part me from you anymore."

My lips curled into a smile and I laid my head back on his chest to listen to his heartbeat. My hands ran down his back, caressing the bulging scars that adorned his skin. After a while, when neither of us said anything, I whispered, "You never talk about your sister. Won't you tell me what she was like?"

I just waited in silence, patiently running my finger over his skin until he was ready to speak. But when he didn't reply, I said, "It's okay, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"No, you have the right to know more about her." He sighed, then buried his face in my neck and inhaled my scent deeply. "Her name was Nya," he said softly into my ear and then kissed my ear gently. "She was only six solar orbits, but she was already damn cheeky." I felt his little grin in my ear. "That little brat would have gotten along great with April."

I laughed with him. "Certainly."

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and straightened up again. "She was taller than most people her age, and she always cut her hair herself, even if it looked awful."

"It sure looked better than if you did it to her," I countered to make it easier for him to face the past.

"True enough," he smirked. 'I used to carry her on my back in wolf form every time we ran away from home in the middle of the night. We didn't live in pack territory, you know, because we didn't belong to any pack. It was just our family of four, in a little cottage in the middle of an inanimate forest floor.”

That was new to me. 'I didn't know some lived like this? I thought every werewolf needed pack togetherness.”

“Usually yes, but since the curse has been on our family for so long, we have chosen not to endanger any pack again. Maybe I shouldn't have.' He laughed dryly. “But I couldn't withdraw at the age of eleven. Not from Rose, not from April or Xenos.”

"That's a good thing!" I didn't even want to imagine what would have happened to a lost little boy if he had had to fight it out on his own.

He looked at me and his eyes softened. "Yes, because that's how I found you."

Oh heavens, that man! "And I'm not giving you back either."

He grinned mischievously, but there was a warm, tender glint in his eyes. "Told you were possessive."

I raised a brow as my heart filled with love. "And you don't?"

The grin on his mouth widened. "Never said otherwise, baby."

I punched his chest, laughing. "Go on, idiot."

He bit my bottom lip. "Your command," he joked, but then his face became serious. “Nya saved me. My mother sometimes locked me out for days, refusing to let me into the house. But Nya... She was always there, she wouldn't leave me alone a day, if only to annoy me. If it hadn't been for her . . .' He stared silently over the parapet at the city. "Then I'd be dead long ago."

My heart bled at his words and tears welled up in my eyes. tears of anger. "How could a mother do that to her son!"

He gently wiped the tears from my cheeks while a small smile hung on his lips. "She didn't know any better at the moment."

I couldn't understand that smile in the slightest because I was way too angry at his mother for abandoning him. My hands, which had automatically clenched into fists, were shaking. "No, you deserve so much more!"

His eyes sparkled, then he chuckled and kissed the tip of my nose. "I had my wolf and my sister."

I was perplexed by Beau, who didn't even have a shred of anger at a mother who refused to love her own child and gave him no attention. He had never said a single bad word about her.

I looked at his hard face, lost in the dark green burning eyes. If Beau loved then with all his heart, even - as I now understood - if nothing was returned to him.

I love you so much, my heart screamed, but I just said, "I wish I'd met Nya, she sounds like a great sister."

"Yes, she was." Rough and forced out, as if he could hardly bring himself to say the words. And I looked at what was going through his head. I should have protected her.

Beau stroked my collarbone where hours earlier there had been a small wound from Malvera's claws. "Where's your strategy today?"

I was about to sit bolt upright and inwardly withdraw, but I stayed where I was and rubbed my cheek across his chest. We had this step behind us. I was a soldier and I knew he was proud of me. "I know I should have brought my bow."

“Your first option is to transform. Why didn't you do it?"

My breath caught in my throat and my hands got wet. Feverishly I searched for an excuse. "I thought you'd be less pleased if I walked the streets naked after the transformation," I joked.

He quickly bent down and bit my ear. "Try again."

I clasped my hands behind his back and dug my nails into my palms while avoiding looking at him. "I had the knife with me."

No more secrets, an inner voice reminded me.

"Why didn't you change, Georgie?"

No more secrets. I had to tell him. But how could I? How could I confess to him that I no longer felt my she-wolf?

It wasn't a lie when I assured him I wasn't a girl anymore. I had been through and survived much more than most people twice my age. But I had kept something from him. The wounds of years of captivity ran deep and would not heal; some of these never would. i was broken Deep and irreversible. Because Hades had taken something from me that would never heal.

He had taken my wolf from me.

So how could I explain to a man who was more wolfs than man that he had committed himself to a broken woman who would never heal. Who could never run through the woods with him in wolf form, who could never rub her fur against his?

I knew it was time to tell him eventually, but I just couldn't get the words out of my mouth. I looked up at him and... and stayed silent. Again the feeling of uselessness rose in me. I was a cripple, why would he love a cripple?

I saw his thoughts racing. His mind was razor sharp, he would neither let the subject rest nor forget it. But today I couldn't talk about it. Not when I'd just confessed to him the blood running through my veins.

I quickly wriggled out of his grasp and forced myself into a carefree tone. "What would you have done differently, huh? Show me!"

Beau continued to study me for a while, and I was already breaking out in a cold sweat when he seemed to ignore my teasing, but then his eyes twinkled. Hallelujah!

A mischievous grin crept onto his mouth. "Well, as you wish."

It was a beautiful stolen time together, between the politics of the palace and the looming threat of the Deathbringer that we stole. We circled each other, playfully attacking each other and laughing while his touches wreaked havoc on my hormones and drove me insane. But then the tide turned and it didn't go as I had planned.

'Now here. Put a powerful punch right there and you'll take out your opponent in seconds,” Beau told me, pointing to the location of his kidney. “Best with your foot.”

"Okaaay." I laughed and rolled my eyes. "Sure, understood." Then he attacked me, I defended skillfully and then swung my foot.

Beau stumbled backwards, that was all. “No, that wasn't enough strength. You need to put more into your punch.” He stepped back in front of me, his expression intense. "Try again."

I hit again, but it still wasn't enough force for him. I laughed lightly as I frowned in confusion. Okay? It was logical that I didn't use all my strength in training. Slightly out of breath, I straightened my ponytail: "Beau, what's this about? Of course I'm not going to hit you properly."

“If that combo doesn't work, your target should be the temple. One hard punch and I'd be dead."

A queasy feeling slowly spread through me. My hands came down and I said carefully, "Beau, stop it."

He ignored me, didn't even seem to hear me, and continued to give me clear instructions on how to bring him down.

Everything in me froze to ice. "Stop it." My voice was so cold it rattled in the night air.

Beau closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he exhaled loudly. "You need to-"

"I know exactly what you're doing." I interrupted him roughly. Of course I knew what he was doing here. He prepared me for the moment he became a rogue.

"It's okay," he said so softly that something inside me broke with a loud crack. He grabbed my hand and put it on the back of his neck. "The carotid artery is the most vulnerable part of my body."

I gasped and pulled my hand away like he burned me. I refused to believe what he was trying to tell me here. “We're going to break the curse, Beau. I will find a solution, please trust me.”

"I'm running out of time." He shook his head and I saw the quiet acceptance in his eyes. “I should stay away from you. Should be so far away from you that you can't even see me. And yet I'm here because I can't stay away from you.” He cupped my cheeks and kissed my lips tenderly. “If I want this. If I want us, then you have to be prepared for the worst."

I blinked back tears and pulled away from him. It felt like a heavy freight train had run over me. "And what's the worst case scenario?" I hissed, controlling the rising anger. "I'm weighing the dangers to myself, Beau, and you're not!"

I would have thought he would get angry too for offering me a fight, but he just looked at me and shook his head again with a small, sad smile. The moonlight reflected in his eyes. "My wolf is too dangerous."

"I don't care," I blurted out defiantly, wiping tears from my cheeks in frustration.

'That's naivety. You can't care less, not if you want to live.” He took me by the shoulders and gave me a serious look, as if he wanted to drum it into my head. "First hit me in the temple and then slit my throat with your claws."

That couldn't be true! He didn't just say that, did he? I shook my head violently and backed away in panic. "No! Are you even listening to yourself?!"

"Georgie..." he soothed me, but I kept backing away.

I raised my hands defensively. "No Beau! No stop! It pains me even to think that I should...” kill you. I sobbed and couldn't even say the words. “That… I could harm you. How can you ask me to-” kill you. Oh God! "I'll never hurt you, can you hear me?! Never!"

"It's okay." He tried to pull me towards him, but I slapped his hands away.

"How dare you ask me to do that?" my voice cracked and I sobbed loudly as I pushed him. I punched his chest over and over again. Beau kept his hands still beside his body and let me yell my anger silently, allowing me to push him back. "You asshole! Miserable bastard! Fucking bastard! How? How can you?! How-"

"Okay, that's okay." He caught my hands and tried to pull me against him, but I still refused.

"Why are you saying that? Why are you asking that?”

"I will not. I'm sorry.” There was sadness in his undertone, and as he spread his arms he said, “Come on now.”

I flew straight into his embrace and he pulled me tight. "It's alright, forget what I said." He rubbed my back gently while his other hand cupped my head against the back of his neck. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

I hated that curse, that deadly ultimatum! I sniffled and wrapped my arms tightly around his neck. "Never again, never say anything like that again."

"I will not."

"Promise me!"

A gentle kiss found my lips. "I promise it!"