Chapter 22 Twenty Two
Theron's POV
Everyone left reluctantly. I could almost smell their emotions over the agony. Cassian's concern, sharp and desperate. Orin's curiosity mixed with jealousy. Kieran’s struggle, that icy mask shattering to display actual concern.
The door shut and it was just Rhea and I.
I was hardly aware, the curse devouring me from within. I was in agony and it felt as if my insides were being shredded; even the blood pulsing through my veins seemed poisonous.
“You don’t need to do this,” I repeated, needing her to know that she had a choice. Even now, even dying, I wanted her to choose willingly.
Rhea leant down next to me, her hands steady as she began unbuttoning my top. "I know. But I want to."
She touched me tenderly, mindful of my hurt. So she somehow got me to the bed and helped me up despite being so much tinier than I.
I could feel the pain spreading and filling my body but I was still hypersensitive, feeling every stroke, each breath. The resonance of the mate bond hummed between us, insistent on connection.
“You have to be there naked,” Rhea said, echoing what Miriam must have told her. “We have to be completely open with each other. No walls, no secrets."
My chest constricted for reasons not at all relating to the curse. I had lived in excess of three hundred years closed off from everyone. The thought of allowing someone to see all of me, to see the monster beneath the alpha, was scarier than dying.
“I’ve been an awful person,” I warned her. "Things you don't know about. Things that could alter your perception of me.”
“Then prove it,” Rhea replied, matter-of-factly. "All of it."
Silver flames danced to life on her palms. She put them on my chest, right over my heart.
The ritual began.
I inhaled sharply when I sensed her mind graze mine. Plotting, tentative at first and then curious, gentle as she pressed against the edges of my mind.
"Let me in," she whispered.
Everything in me screamed to resist. To keep my walls up, to save myself. But the curse left me no alternative. My walls turned to sand and suddenly she was there, in my thoughts, watching me.
My childhood flashed before us. A time when the world was of a different nature itself. I watched myself as a boy, wild and free, running in forests that no longer were there.
Then the wars. Centuries of violence and bloodshed. I flinched at Rhea’s horror as she felt them take in my memories of killing, leading armies, watching civilizations be born and die.
The curse being placed on me. The face of the witch as she cursed me in her fury and sorrow.
And Lilith.
I sensed Rhea suddenly breathe in sharply as she caught images of the female Lycan inside my head. We were young together, before the great war of species. Wild and reckless and thinking we were immortal.
We loved, or thought we did. But my pride and her ambition had crushed us.
“She meant something to you,” Rhea whispered in my mind.
"She was everything," I admitted. "Until she wasn't."
Rhea dug in deeper, beyond surface memories. I attempted to shove her out the door, not let her in on the darkest side of me.
“No more secrets,” she said again, holding me in place with her power.
So she saw it. The real reason for my curse.
She was a witch, the one who cursed me. Townley's younger sister." A great sorceress who had opposed me in the war. I didn’t just do her wrong on the field of battle. I killed her.
Not in fair combat. Not in the chaos of war.
I murdered her in cold blood, in a fit for slaying my warriors. I had tracked her down and ripped her open, without mercy.
It was murder, not war. And the curse was her dying vengeance.
I'd live forever, never to die, but never truly alive. Immortal but isolated. Until I met my mate and knew how to love without pride and violence tearing it apart.
“I’m not a good man,” I said roughly, words of betrayal fresh and raw again for the first time in centuries burning my eyes. "I've done terrible things. Unforgivable things."
Rhea’s hands never came off my chest. I could feel her thinking through everything that she had seen through our connection. The violence. The centuries of loneliness. The darkness that had lived in me.
“We’re all guilty of things we regret,” she said at last. “But you were good and trying to be better. I can see that too."
She showed me what she meant. Memories of me with her. That I’d provided her choices when no one else had. How I'd prepared her instead of maintaining her as a weak victim. How I had saved her when it would have been more convenient to use her.
“You’re not the man you were three hundred years ago,” she told him. “And I’m not picking that man. I am selecting the one you are turning into.”
The ritual reached its peak. Now silver flames rose up around both of us, so bright that even through my closed eyes I could see them.
The curse was breaking, I could feel it. Burst like glass; fragmenting, falling. I felt a burst of power coming back to me, ten times more powerful than before.
But I also sensed something else. Rhea's suffering, her recollections sweeping over me in reply.
I saw her childhood. Her mother’s expression before she died. When Beatrice knew Alaric was going to kill her, the only thing nothing left but to beg him to spare their daughter.
I sensed each time Rhea was taken advantage of. Every time that she had been told she was worthless, that her only value was political. The loneliness of coming of age in Alaric’s frigid home. The yearning to be free, to be recognized as something other than a pawn.
And also, more profoundly, I could feel her power underneath it all.
Raw. Untamed. Terrifying in its potential.
She was stronger than any of us knew. Stronger than she realized. It was more than just the shifter blood rushing through her. It was old, older than the war between us.
It flamed hotter than ever, almost impossible to stand. I yanked Rhea to me, and our lips crashed together as the connection snapped into place.
It wasn't gentle. It was explosive, over powering, as if lightening struck me in the heart.
I felt the curse lift all the way. Chains of feelings I’d been wearing for centuries fall off. Felt myself regain my strength, no longer did I long behind bars begging to die.
But I also experienced the other connections. Subtle but it's there, and linking Rhea with three other guys!
Cassian. Orin. Kieran.
I felt jealousy surge through me, primal and possessive. She was mine. My mate. My salvation.
But through Rhea’s feelings, I understood what she felt for each of them. It was unique for each of them, but it was there.
She was swooning for all of them.
The fact should have pissed me off. Instead, I felt something unexpected. Understanding.
The four mates, that's what the prophecy had said. Four bloodlines united. I'd known this was coming.
I’d just hadn’t thought it would hurt less because it was unavoidable.
When we at last tore free, both panting, I glanced back down at Rhea. Her eyes were wide and they glittered a little bit silver. The mark had blossomed upon her neck, a wildfire lacework that declared she was claimed.
I stroked my own neck and felt the identical mark there.
"It's done," Rhea whispered.
I held her close, holding her as if she could vanish. As if this is a dream and I’m going to wake up and still be cursed, still be alone.
“Thanks,” I murmured into her hair. "For choosing me. For saving me."
“We saved each other” Rhea interjected.
She was right. I could feel her relief through the bond. It had been a great load on her—my living, and now it was removed.
We lay there for a long, silent moment with the bond buzzing between us. Content. Complete.
And suddenly, a knock shattered the moment.
"Theron?" Lilith's voice sounded through the door. "I know you're in there. We need to talk. About us. About what we were, and what we could be once more.”
I felt Rhea tense in my arms. I felt her insecurity spike over the bond. The fear that she wouldn't be enough to make me forget Lilith, the first woman I'd loved.
“Don’t listen to her,” I whispered, hugging her.
But again Lilith knocked, and this time more persistently. "I can smell her on you. You completed the bond. BUT THAT DOESN’T CHANGE WHAT WE HAD, THERON. What we could have again."
Rhea drew back slightly, her eyes on the level with mine. "You should talk to her. Get closure or whatever you got to do. I'll wait."
"No." I cupped her face. "There's nothing to say. That was 300 years ago. You're my mate now. My future."
"But she adored you," Rhea answered in a low voice. "And you loved her."
“I was in love with who I thought she was.” I laid my forehead against hers. "But I know you, Rhea. I know your soul, and you know mine. That's real. That's forever."
Lilith knocked a third time. "Theron, please. Just hear me out."
I sighed. She wasn’t going to step out until I took care of this.
"Stay here," I told Rhea. "I'll get rid of her."
When I attempted to get up, Rhea reached for my hand. "Be kind. No matter what went down with you, she came all this way to find you. She deserves honesty."
Knowing she had so much heart, even when faced with a rival, made me love you more.
I pulled on my clothes and cracked the door to slip through shutting it behind me to keep Rhea out of Lilith's sight.
The female Lycan was there, standing in the corridor, her amber eyes assessing me from where I stood. The new hicky on my neck.
“It’s true?” she said softly. "You chose her."
"She was selected by the moon goddess," I corrected. "I'm just following destiny."
Lilith's expression hardened. “We might have had destiny too. Before the war, before everything went to hell. We should have been together, Theron."
“We were young and dumb,” I said, not unkindly. "And we destroyed each other. You know that."
"We could start over." She stepped closer. “I have been searching for you three centuries now. Doesn't that mean something?"
It means you are carrying a ghost.” I met her eyes. "I'm not the person you once knew, Lilith. And you are not the woman I loved. Too much has happened. Too much time has passed."
"Because of her?" Lilith's voice turned bitter. “For some girl you don’t even know?”
"Because I've changed." I softened my tone. "We both have. The world has changed, and we need to change with it.”
Lilith seemed as if she were about to argue. “But then she looked at me, and something about my expression, a sense of finality that we could not shake.”
“You really love her,” she said, surprised.
"I really do."
She was silent for a long moment. Then she nodded once, sharp and definite. "Then I hope she's worth it. Three hundred years themselves worth waiting for.”
"She is."
Lilith began to move toward the exit, then stopped. "The shifter king, Thanos. He’s not here for the girl. He's planning something bigger. Be careful, old friend."
Then she was gone, hurrying off down the corridor.
I stood there, taking it in. Then I went back to my room and Rhea was waiting there for me.
She glanced up when I came through the door, and a look of anxiety was evident in her eyes. "How did it go?"
"It's done," I said simply. "She's gone."
Rhea breathed out, and I could feel her sigh of relief across the bond. I got back into the bed and tugged her against my body.
"No more interruptions," I murmured. "Just us."
“Just us,” Rhea agreed, snuggling up against me.
And for the first time in three centuries, I felt truly at peace.