Chapter 12 Twelve
Rhea's POV
When I awoke, Theron was in a chair at the other end of the room, staring hard in my direction — so radiated he with unwanted need that his gaze had turned me hot from across half the room.
The light of day was shining in through the windows, throwing shadows over his face. He seemed exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept a wink. He wore his silver hair loose about his shoulders, and there was something untamed in his gaze.
Both of us were silent for a long time. The weight of everything that had unfolded the night before hung between us in silence.
Finally, Theron broke it. "You have magic. Shifter magic."
There was an accusation in his voice. Not a question, but a kind of statement that rang like betrayal.
I sat up, bringing the blanket around me. "I didn't know."
"You didn't know." He echoed my words like they were alien. "That you're a hybrid? That you have the blood of my people's worst enemy?"
My mind raced. Werewolves and shifters were natural born enemies. Almost had the old wars annihilated them both. And Theron, as old as he was, may well have fought in those wars.
"My mum must have been a shifter," I murmured. "Alaric never told me. He kept it hidden."
"Hidden." Theron's laugh was bitter. "Or suppressed. You can bind shifter magic, especially in kids. Bury it alive and only wake it up if something stirs the sleeping dog.”
The mate bond, I realized. Our bond had revealed something inside me.
“I watched your past,” I confessed, needing him to comprehend. “When I cured you last night. I saw your memories. A woman. Dark hair, fierce eyes. She was important to you."
Theron’s face shuttered at once, going cold and remote. "That's none of your concern."
The words were more painful than a slap to the face. "How is it not my concern? We're supposed to be mates."
"Supposed to be." He stood and walked to the window. “The goddess of the moon has a twisted sense of humor. Tie me to someone with the blood of those who destroyed everything I ever loved.”
I heard something snap in me. "I didn't choose this. I didn’t want to be born half-breed any more than you wished to be cursed.”
“The curse is mine to bear,” Theron said without looking at him. “This one is not something you should have to bear as well.”
“That’s not your call to make.”
He met my eyes at last, and the agony inside his silver gaze stole my breath away. "Yes, it is. I brought you here. I claimed you. But I'm not going to make you save me, Rhea. Not when you are everything I have devoted centuries to fight against.”
Before I could answer it, before I could say that I didn’t give a damn about old wars or ancient grudges, he left the room.
I sat there in his bed, enveloped in his scent, and tears stung my eyes. The sweet guy from the other night was no where in sight and a terrified Lycan stood before him.
And I saw that my power, the thing that had saved his life, could be the same thing as pushed us away.
Training that afternoon was brutal.
I found Theron at our little private training room the same as always, but everything was different. The patience from earlier was gone. In return there was only the cold, merciless discipline.
“Stance,” he barked the moment I walked in.
I put myself in position, already afraid of what was about to happen.
"Wrong." He did not contradict me this time, but stood and looked at me with cold eyes. "Again."
I shifted, attempting to recall what he’d shown me previously.
"Still wrong. Do you want to die? Because that’s what is going to happen if you can’t get basic things down.”
What he said cut deeper than it should have. I distracted myself and made myself get it right.
When I finally managed to get the right position, he simply ignored it. Just went on to the next drill.
"Hundred strikes on the dummy. Fast and hard. Don't stop until I tell you."
My muscles ached from yesterday but I didn’t grumble. I put myself into it, putting all of my hurt and confusion into each punch.
Five seconds and 50 strikes in, my arms were screaming. I began to lose my shape at seventy.
“You may proceed,” Theron intoned without expression. “Your enemies don’t care that you’re tired.”
I huffed in, and forced my way. Eighty. Ninety. Now my knuckles were bleeding, and the wrappings weren’t doing much to shield them.
When I collapsed at ninety five, my legs as weak, Theron wouldn’t offer me his hand. Just staring down at me.
"Again," he said.
Something in me snapped. "What is your problem?"
"My problem?" His voice was deadly quiet. “My issue is, I’ve been training warriors for eternity and you’re the weakest I’ve come across.”
The words were intended to cause pain, and they did. But I refused to show it.
I hauled myself up and, with what remained within me, made it through the last five punches. When it was over, I turned to look at him through labored breath.
"Better?" I asked, sarcasm oozing in my voice.
"You're dismissed."
That was it. No recognition for what I’d done. Not even an acknowledgement of how much effort I’d put in.
And he just left me in the training room by myself.
I managed to get back into my own chambers before the tears started. I hated that I was crying, that I’d let him do this to me.
There was a timid knock at my door. "Lady Rhea?" Ellyn’s voice sounded from behind the door. "May I come in?"
I wiped my face quickly. "Yes."
Ellyn came in with fresh linen and glanced at my face for one second before dropping everything and running over.
"What happened?" She told me to sit on the bed. "Did someone hurt you?"
“Just slipping.” I tried to sound dismissive. "It was harder than usual."
But Ellyn wasn't fooled. She darted into the bathroom and re-appeared with a wet cloth and bandages.
‘Give me your hands,’ she said softly.
As she washed and bandaged my bloody knuckles, her voice was that comforting one of hers. The weather, the kitchen gossip, anything but what was plain to them must be causing my distress.
"He's scared," Ellyn said softly at last.
"What?"
"The Alpha. He's scared of you." She sealed the bandage with her delicate fingers. "I have been here six months and I have never seen him look at anybody the way he looks at you."
“He treats me as if I am a thing to be tolerated,” I cried.
“He looks at you like you are the sun and he’s been living in darkness for too long.” Ellyn met my eyes. "That would terrify anyone."
Her words should have soothed me. Instead, they complicated everything.
That night, I couldn't sleep. My mind ran back through the day, desperation in my stomach as I tried to figure out why Theron had gone so cold on me.
Finally, I succumbed and went to the only place that would bring me peace. The library.
The room was empty and silent, perfumed by the soothing odor of old books. That information on shifter history caught my attention and I began drawing texts.
If I was going to be an X man, I wanted to know what that really meant.
The early volumes were straightforward histories. Those wars between the weres and.Fuckin' shifters. The bloodshed on both sides. The centuries-long hatred.
Then I stumbled upon something that made my blood run cold.
A text on hybrids. Sired out of werewolf and shifter entanglements.
"Hybrids have the power of werewolves and the magic of shifters," I read aloud. “They are profoundly potent for all of that and therefore profoundly dangerous. In the wars, hybrids were driven to extinction by all parties. It was power that neither the werewolves or the shifters could afford to have outside of their control.”
My hands were shaking as I turned the page. Illustrations of hybrids being killed. Burned. Drowned in silver.
My mom was probably a shifter. Alaric had murdered her for it. I was certain now.
Which meant, my entire life, I had been living with the man who’d killed my mother.
A sound made me look up. There was Theron, blank-faced in the door.
“You’re in my wing again,” he said, but his words were limp.
I stood, clutching the book. “Then why in the hell did you save me if you So abhor what I am?”
Then Theron stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. "I don't hate what you are."
"You could have fooled me."
In rapid strides he crossed the distance between us. Before I knew it, he had me corralled against the bookshelf, his arms caging me in.
“I don’t hate who you are,” he ground out and his face was no more than an inch from mine. “I despise the way you make me feel.”
My breath caught. "What do I make you feel?"
"Everything." The word came out tortured. “You fill me up with all these feelings I have not felt in centuries. And it's terrifying."
Then he was kissing me.
It wasn’t the tender kiss to end my fantasies of our first real kiss. It was desperate, angry, brimming with centuries of loneliness and pain and need.
I kissed him back with equal fury, all my frustration and pain going into it. I fisted my hands in his hair, dragging him closer.
Our wolves howled in recognition. Mate Bond We powered toward each other, that mate bond connecting us stronger than it ever had.
Silver flames exploded between us both, sizzling with almost tangible power. They knocked books from the shelves, dislodged by energy spinning through the air.
I didn't care. All I cared about was this. Him. Us.
Theron started as if he had touched something white back of him, and drew himself away suddenly, panting. His eyes were still wild, silver, his hair just as tousled from my grip.
"This can't happen," he said.
"Why not?" I was panting, my lips still buzzing from the kisses.
"The curse," he started.
“I’m not worried about the curse.”
"You should." He stepped away from me, creating some space between us. "You are too worthy to be someone’s cure. Better than being tied to me by some whim of destiny."
“That is not yours to decide,” he said. "I'm choosing this. I'm choosing you."
Theron looked as though he wanted to fight it, as though he wanted to push me away one more time. But before he could, Marcus raged into the library.
“My lord,” came an urgent voice, and then a pause as the servant saw what was happening. The scattered books. Our disheveled appearance. The crackling energy that was still in the air.
But Marcus was professional. He cleared his throat. “We have an intruder at the border. He says he has intelligence on an assassination plot.”
“Kill him,” Theron added without so much as glancing in my direction. “We’re not playing games.”
” He says he goes by the name Cassian Morwen.
The world seemed to stop. I blanched in shock and horror.
"What?" The word was barely a whisper.
Marcus turned to finally look at me, his face sympathetic. He's burning to see you, Lady Rhea. Says he’s got to talk to you about something.
My mind couldn't process it. Cassian was here? In Theron's territory?
"Take me to him," I said.
"No." Theron's voice was firm. "It could be a trap."
"I don't care." I pushed past him. “If Cassian risked returning here, it means something.”
Theron caught my arm. "Rhea, think. This is the man who cheated on you. Who would drag you back to your father."
"I know what he did." I met his eyes steadily. “But I also know he wouldn’t be here if something wasn’t terribly wrong. Take me to him."
For a long moment Theron scrutinized my face. Then he sighed. "Fine. But I’m going with you, and if this is a trap, I’ll kill him myself.”