Page 240 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

She hadn’t seen the carnage I had wrought, whatever my reasons. I shook my head at her denial.

“Everything I did, I did for the sake of the clan.” That hadn’t made it right. If anything, sometimes it had only made my resentment grow. “For the people my father was trying to hurt. The rare times we went to the cabin were the only times I felt human, and even then, we had all but stopped going. So you weren’t wrong when you called me a broken shell of a person.”

She flinched at the memory, and I instinctively ran my hand up and down her arm, chasing the reaction away. Reminding myself that she was here now, and that my father was gone.

“That’s exactly what I was,” I assured her, shaking my head at the truth I couldn’t deny. “Living each day waiting for the next horrible thing I had to do to my people,formy people, and wondering if all the good I was trying to do would ever be enough to make up for the bad. I was starting to believe it wouldn’t.”

Though sometimes, I still believed that. She wrapped her arm around mine as if she heard the thought, returning the comforting gesture I had offered mere moments ago. Warmth spread through me, and I pulled her tighter against my chest where she had always fit so perfectly.

“I was starting to believe none of it mattered,” I went on. “And then… And then I saw you.”

Her breath hitched, and she pulled back enough to look up at me. Another wave of tears spilled down her cheeks and I moved my hands to her face, brushing the wetness away with my thumbs.

It was still hard to believe that these hands—hands that had taken more lives than I could count—were capable of tenderness when it came to her. Only her.

“I thought that I had lost my capacity to be surprised by anyone. Or anything, really. Yet there you were, with your acerbic wit and your dangerous temper and your unending fearlessness.”

She had been so infuriating. So unexpected. So storms-damned alluring, even when I didn’t want her to be.

Another admission fell from my lips. “And the truth is, you were right, too, when you called me selfish.”

She shook her head adamantly—or as adamantly as she could with half of her face buried in the pillow.

“I don’t think you’re selfish, Evander,” she insisted. “I said that what yousaidsounded selfish. I have seen you time aftertime put everyone and everything ahead of yourself, including me.”

Though her argument eased something inside of me, she didn’t know how wrong she was. I was absolutely selfish when it came to her. I always had been.

“Until I didn’t,” I countered. “The thing is, that it had been months since I even felt like smiling, and suddenly, I found myself resisting the urge to laugh at every turn. I felt…whole when you were around, even then.”

And already so opposed to the idea of her being anywhere else. With anyone else.

I felt as much as saw the air whoosh out of her.

“Der’mo, Lemmikki.” The words were spewing forth from my lips now, each damning confession coming faster than the last. “Part of me honestly wonders if I would have called in that blood debt even if you hadn’t been about to marry Korhonan. I think I might have done anything to make you mine, no matter the consequences.”

I more than thought about it. Looking back, I was certain that I never could have let her walk away with Korhonan, not when she had felt like mine from the first time I asked her to dance. I hadn’t understood that feeling at the time, but I recognized it now, the raw possessiveness that stemmed from the deepest part of my being.

“Then, I was selfish again when I kissed you, knowing that it wasn’t something you could possibly consent to under the circumstances. I knew I held power over you, and I promised myself I wouldn’t take advantage of that.”But you were so storms-damned gorgeous, standing in my shirt, sleeping in my bed, so perfect and so very mine.

“But every part of me was drawn to every part of you, and I had never wanted anything in my entire life as badly as I wanted you that day in the cabin. I hated myself for that.”

And her, for a time being, but that didn’t seem pertinent just now.

A muscle tensed in her jaw and she placed a hand on my chest.

“Don’t make that something it wasn’t,” she ordered. “I already loved you then, and I wanted you, too. More than anything.”

That may have been true, but it wouldn’t have been enough for either of us under the circumstances. For all that she hated having her decisions made now, she would have grown to resent the hell out of me if she had been forced to stay at my side, if she had never truly had a choice.

“But the entire situation was convoluted by you being a prisoner,” I reminded her gently. “So yes, when your father came, I told you to go. It was, perhaps, the first unselfish thing I did where you were concerned. You did need that time, Lemmikki. You needed space to heal and process and consider what you really wanted.”

We had never talked about it since her return to Bear, but I remembered that day in the sparring room, when she referenced all of her anger. We had both let the subject drop, too afraid to tempt fate with the fragile bit of peace we had eked out.

But now we were here, drowning in the wake of all the things we had left unspoken for far too long.

I waited for her to argue, but she tugged her bottom lip between her teeth, nodding slowly.

“I can concede to that,” she acknowledged.