Chapter 93
Chapter 93
TESSA POV
Warden Marshall looked deeply uncomfortable. I think he’s used to students like Maxim. Unbreakable under any pressure. Diamonds in the rough who
never cry
Whereas I read one history book and dropped. Maybe I used to be stronger.
“Any questions I can help with?”
“Were there more of my family ever found? If I set off over those mountains will I find anybody who remembers me?”
“I don’t believe so, no.”
Warden Marshall does not meet my gaze. “Okay,” I sniffed, clutching the history book to my chest. “Then I think you can go. I’ll be fine.”
The Warden stood up, fussing with his white and gray layers. “What about Maxim? I can send for him?”
“I’m meeting him in a few hours.”
With a nod he left. Deep in my chest, my wolf was fighting to comfort me.
Out here in the sunkissed meadow, there was nothing to but keep on reading Ravenbow’s dubious history.
My family weren’t the only outliers. Generations ago there were multiple shifter groups. Ravenbow was just the biggest and most ruthless. Alpha Hale merely consolidated the work of his forefathers.
Farmers conscripted to the fields, the inventors to the industrial area, the strongest, most aggressive to the mines. Prisons disguised as pack necessities. It’s taken Alpha after Alpha to make it happen but now Remy takes over a docile, content world.
Of course with humans and elves waiting greedily on the sidelines you could argue one unified shifter pack was better. Maybe everyone already knew this. It is only my ruined memory that makes me find this shocking.
But the way my wolf tugs and whirls tells me it’s new. It’s not what I understood before.
I kept returning to the drawings. The beautiful brown–eyed family. Dressed in furs and leather. Brandishing ornate bows. Sturdy leather boots, wild copper hair and steady expressions upon the snow covered rocks.
I’m searching inside my soul for answers. Tunnelling into something unknown but painfully real.
Hugging the thick leather book I lay down on the grass near the log. Allow the breeze and sunlight to wash over me. Inhale the scent of a hundred
different flowers.
Is this what I was aching to do up in the mountains? My wolf takes gentle but firm lead and I simply comply. I stretch out into the grass, keeping my eyes shut, my thoughts adrift on the breeze.
Malva…Malva hated me on sight. I wonder what I did before? Her voice was so annoying and screechy. I killed rebels with Maxim but that was when shifted…was that my first real fight?
No. No, my wolf reminds me that I escaped beatings from my mother.
With my eyes closed I see a frying pan. Flying towards me, laced with spite. The sensation of dodging it and freezing, my legs stuck in that treacly, sickening state of fear.
Eyes closed, trying to stay in the moment I can feel the heat of the fire, the scent of soup and the gathered hay outside.
I see dull, lined faces. Devoid of any love. Dressed in dark tan layers, dirt gathered in their miserable lines. A man and woman. Dark haired with curiously
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Chapter 93
glinting eyes. “Fuck off now Tessal
hear that man’s hissing voice clear as day and jerk in fright. Maxim never told this story. That man wasn’t Luca either. Where are these images coming
from?
My woll sends a calming rush from my head to my toes. Like sinking into a warm, drowsy bath.
Steadily breathing, but my head aches with sharp twinges of pain. Memories and their emotions weigh me down until I’m choking and spluttering on the
grass.
I feel all the hate, resentment and desperation to leave my village. The vague guilt at vanishing, more than outweighed by the fear of Luca’s anger at my rejection.
It seeps into me. Like a sponge gathering liquid, getting heavier and denser. My head hurting more with every reclaimed face and conversation.
Thug the book so tight I’m wincing, my back arching against the pain.
Childhood memories whirl. Faces, names and events are all just…back. The day Luca took me to the clearing with my brand new bow and arrow springs up. Celebrating hitting my first target.
Goddess that pride, it gives me a dizzy, flushing reaction across my cheeks, right down my neck. It’s twisted with the realisation that I felt this moment so strongly because it was new.
I hate my family for that. For giving me no encouragement outside of being cheap labour.
Luca and our childhood keep flashing by. Tiny rays of light through dark, lonely clouds. The jokes and teasing his dark eyed, cheeky face made. Protecting me. Promising we would change everything one day.
Only for inexorably painful loneliness to descend, my arms over my eyes, head pounding. The years where Luca vanished.
It feels so raw. I’m shrinking. So many torturously embarrassing memories hit me. Whipping through my head at speed until I reach hearing Malva talk about me on the train platform as a mute, useless virgin stinging for a second time.
My breathing shortens, my chest constricts. Memories are flooding into my awareness too fast. And they’re overwhelming. Too many sensations to handle. No Maxim though. Instead I’m hurtling along my wolf’s desired path.
Luca again. Why do I keep seeing him? What is my wolf trying to do?,
I want Maxim. I want our night in the train carriage. Or how it felt the first time I saw his stunning eyes. What he looks like with a beard. How it felt to agree to lie with him. His confidence, nerve, ability to slice through my shyness with a look, a held breath.
Instead my memories are replaying sitting with Luca the rebel, after he built the fire. No matter how I squirm on the floor, nothing stops the flow of discomfort.
The history book falls to the side of me, my hands raking through my hair, rubbing at my tenples.
The dark–eyed, wild–haired man I rejected. Who laced my food with fucking mushrooms. The memories are building up in layers. I didn’t trust it was Luca back then. Now I can replay that memory through the all–knpwing present.
It’s horrifying. Embarrassment whacks hard. My childlike, naive responses, refusing to see him as anything but some scruffy pirate.
But now I see everything clearly. I know that it was Luca. The same man who bit me on my hip that dark night before I left. The one who ripped at my skirts and ignored any of my pleas.
Maybe he needed to be on those pills to see me that night. To force our mate bond to click.
But that same childhood friend told me, knowing I wouldn’t remember, that he killed my adoptive family. The Darnell’s. He told me for his own enjoyment.
17:08 Thu, 19 Jun.
Chapter 93
Malva’s anger is righteous. My parents were already long gone before Alpha Hale’s men came sasking their villains. I twist and turn, begging at my han as guilt begins to lash at me all over again.
Inhaling the fresh scent of flowers my thoughts twist again. To training sessions and exhaustion merged with pride, Briggs Irene, Allotte, Kai and Selas filter through. Pawesome. A fast, manically twisting kaleidoscope, all kinds of highs and lows dancing before my exhausted eyes. Practicing archery late at night until my shoulders ached.
I smile at the sight of them. Giggling to myself at foolish jokes and smiling at how Irene let me into her delicate, fragile world. Then the cliffs Sabnna and Hate. I am being rebuilt from the ground up.
Fragments closing in on each other, forming a combination of old and new
For as much as the old layers of sad loneliness reappeared and hurt, there was Maxim. There is the knowledge that I won’t be lonely anymore. I don’t need to be silent for anyone again.
Lying on the floor, time floats away with me. Finally, a cool tingling upon my brow melts away the headache. I start to remember Maxim.
Like my wolf is rewarding me for getting through everything else. All of him dances before my closed eyea. More tears fall down my cheeks as my heart brightens. Then widens, to the realisation of what it means to be loved by him.
There is no other way to describe the lightness, the gentle, beautiful way he makes me feel. The joy in his face when I finally conceded I needed him the same way. The way he holds and positions me so roughly yet when it comes to pleasure, he handles me so precisely it leaves me shaking. Able to trust in his touch enough to let go. Even his stubbornness, his insistence I listen to him. The flaws only make him sweeter.
Then those bells rang faintly in the distance.
I’m still basking in the warmth of falling in love with Maxim.
But I get it now. I know why I was quiet, shy, and hesitant. It makes sense. But now I know it, I can leave it behind too.
So when I finally open my eyes, tears of joy are streaming down my face. Sitting up, leaning against the log I see him sprinting towards me like it’s fate.
Like everything has led us to this perfect point. The sun is setting, it’s a warm, balmy night and the man of my dreams is blazing towards me like there is nothing else in the world that matters.
“I remember everything.”
“And?” he checks.
“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you more than I’ll ever be able to explain.”
“I’m sorry for leaving you. For Hazel. I heard about Malva.”
I start shaking my head. “I don’t care. It’s fine. All of it. I need you to listen to me.”
Maxim nods whilst brushing some crazy strands of hair from my face, plucking out a few stray leaves. “Just give me a minute Tess, its been a long day,” he mutters darkly, before delivering a deep, plunging kiss that sees me dipping back for him like a dancer.
“Fuck, I needed that,” he growls, still holding me suspended in the air. “Actually, no. I need more,” making me smile as he places his lips to mine again, forcing me to grip onto the collar of his shirt and simply enjoy the sensation of being entirely his.
Cocking his eyebrow quizzically, “More? Yes, I think so. I’ve missed you little Pagano,” as I grab him and deliver own ragged series of caresses. “Hmm. That will do, for now anyway,” he his voice deliciously deviant.
I smile in agreement, stroking his stubbled cheek softly. His amber eyes dance with something curiously fascinating. He could never be boring if he tried.
“Can I tell you what I learned?”
“Absolutely. No more interruptions.” slowly bringing me back upright. Only to kiss me again.
Chapter 93
“Maxim?”
“Yes?”
“After I explain…if you still wanted…could I have your bite?”
“Nothing would make me happier,” and I know by his tone he isn’t joking.
He plunges us down to sit on the log. Bundled up tight in his arms, receiving another flurry of kisses, I am instantly sat across his lap.
“Need that book?” Maxim checks, as turn my head to see.
“Yes–AH!” squealing as he tips me, my arms are leaning back as far as I can reach.
I squeal again as my training uniform rides up and his mouth lands on my bare stomach, smothering me with tickling, heat–stirring adoration
With zero effort he lifts me back up to sitting in his lap. This time with the book in my hands. “Now I promise I’m all ears,” he smiles.
AD
