“You gonna let me out of the cage?”
“I am.” Torrent flipped to the side. A palm flat on the floor, he bent his elbow and pushed his body up using his cane for balance. “It pains me to have to let you go, but you must see for yourself, because nothing I say will make you believe it.” He walked to the door, then opened it.
“I don’t trust you,” I said.
“That’s the thing. I lost that, so I gotta work on it one day at a time.”
I rushed out of the cage before he changed his mind. At the door, I spun around. “Thank you for not punishing me. Or cooking me.”
He leaned a hand on the cage, gripped the bars tight, and smirked. “Oh baby, I will punish you, just not right now. It’s not the time or the place for it. Still, I dream of our life together. And in my dreams, you are constantly doing something you shouldn’t be doing, and I have to correct you. I foresee you will live in a perpetual state of swollen ass, because, you, my sweet girl, are a brat.”
“You think there’s a future for us?”
“I’m an optimist.”
“Since when?”
“Last night. I realized that if I don’t make it, you won’t either. I gotta stick around for you.”
“I used to be an optimist,” I said.
“Dressed too.”
“Hm?”
“You used to be dressed.”
I crossed my arm over my beasts. The entire time he’d been here, I’d worn only my underpants.
Torrent chuckled. “I’ve seen them already.”
I rushed past him back into the cage and put on my black dress, then tried to get back out, but his big body blocked the cage, his hands gripping the bars.
I stepped up to him, inhaled his aftershave, and he bent his head when I looked up. Freckles of hazel sparkled in his eyes.
He kissed my nose. “You be careful over there. If it doesn’t feel right, it is not right. You’ve survived this long on your own, so you must have listened to your instinct. Go on and do that.”
“Okay.”
“Cole!”
I jumped.
A minute later, Cole appeared at the door.
“Escort Sienna to the east wing.”
Chapter Fifteen
Torrent
Twenty minutes later, the boy returned to the kitchen where Hasel chopped onions as if they were made of steel. My eyes watered as I ate crackers and all the chicken soup I could stomach while her chopping prickled in my ears. Any minute now, I half expected her to chop through the entire counter.
I’d pissed her off. Both Sienna and I denied anything had happened, and keeping a mate in a cage without any proof wasn’t happening. It would send me into madness. Although I was still on the mend and weak, Hasel and the two others on the premises didn’t have the resources to contain me or my mate. They’d need to cage me and put her under observation. Seeing as my sweet mate had escaped her captors before, keeping her in this place against her will would prove a challenge, one Hasel couldn’t undertake. Sienna’s dad worked for us, and she’d promised Alpha Beast to keep Sienna at the community.
Cole returned and sat down with me. I leaned in. “Tell me.”
“You were right,” he said, his blue eyes wide. “She went, she saw, she’s back.”
“Mm-hm. Did you take her to my rooms?”
“I did.”
“Great job. Thank you. Now, I want to clear something up with you. Man to man.”
“Okay.”
“She is not your woman.”
“I got that on my own.”
“Good. Hasel?” She pretended she hadn’t heard when her hearing was better than mine probably. Thing was, I should’ve, at the very least, punished Sienna. Hasel wanted to have her stripped naked and lashed so she’d think about what she’d done to her mate. I didn’t have the heart to punish her, because I didn’t think it was fair. Raised sheltered from the world, then thrown into the fray to fend for herself, she was lucky she’d survived unharmed this long. I couldn’t punish her for falling under the spell of a much older woman who had treated her as a daughter. Sienna had never known a mother’s love. And I sure as fuck couldn’t punish her for wanting revenge against me.
In fact, I was proud of her.
Twisted shit. Such was mating. All fucked up until somehow it worked out. And ours would work out. Right now. Because I’d secured her in my room with no place to go. The women in the east wing had rejected her. Whether it was for failing to poison me or for getting away with nothing but half a day in the cage and some dirt on her black dress remained to be seen.
“Torrent?” Cole said.
“Hm?” I peeled my gaze away from Hasel’s knife.