“Listen to what? More of your accusations?” she cried out.
“More of my truths.” He tried to soften his tone, something he’d never done with another person in his life. “I can sense your deceptions, mate. Of all the people in the world that you can never lie to, that you can never deceive in any fucking way, I am that person. Do you hear me? Listen to me well, damn you, if you aren’t honest with me, then I can’t protect you and I can’t protect your family. Not without knowing exactly what they face and what I’m protecting them from.”
“My family doesn’t need your protection.” But he could hear the hesitancy, the sudden fear that filled her.
“Gypsy.” Releasing her, he raked his fingers through his hair in frustration as he tried one last time. “Sweetheart. Your brother died because he refused to trust those who could help him . . .”
“My brother died because his sister betrayed him.” Flat, hard, she spoke the words as though it were a trained response.
“Baby, no.” The softness of his voice shocked him as he reached out to touch her cheek, only to have her flinch away from him.
“Go do whatever Breed stuff you do when you’re not accusing innocent people of lying to you,” she charged, turning away from him, the insulting sense of her complete distrust causing the animal to react before the man could pull back.
He had her against the wall, using his stronger, heavier body to hold her there as she stared up at him in shock.
“I watched my mother lie screaming in inhuman agony as her living body was dissected just hours after her mate’s,” he snarled in her face, ignoring that flash of horror in her eyes. “Her screams cut into my soul like a blade whose sharp edge I can never escape because I was unable to warn the mate who could have saved her. I was too young, and I was too slow to slip past the guards plotting against them or to sense the packmate, the fucking brother Lawe and I wanted only to protect. One whose loyalty to the Council exceeded his loyalty to his mother. There is nothing, mate, not a fucking thing you can teach me about guilt, dark memories or nightmares. But have no doubt I have much to teach you about fucking loyalty to the only person you know in your heart can help you without betraying you.”
Her gaze flickered. For a moment, for the briefest moment he swore she was weakening, that the trust he knew she felt, that he could sense her about to give into, was suddenly jerked back.
Her green eyes hardened, her expression flushing with anger—at herself, at him, at whatever thought or brutal pain ravaged her heart.
“Did you betray your mother?” she asked then, the tears that thickened her voice unbidden, and hated—by them both. “Were your actions the ones that caused her and her mate to die?”
“My inability . . .”
“I’m the brother who betrayed your mother,” she retorted furiously then, the agony that raged inside her like her own beast shocking him with its strength. “Do you hear me, Rule? I’m the same as that gutless coward—”
His lips covered hers.
The kiss, filled with fury, with pain, with the need to cut off the agonizing torment of a child made to believe she was a monster, was infused with the hormone that filled the glands beneath his tongue with a suddenness he hadn’t heard of.
Anything to hold back the words she would have spilled between them. The knowledge that his mate couldn’t differentiate between an innocent girl’s actions and a depraved Coyote’s use of them.
Tearing his lips from hers, he stared down at her, watching as the tears she should have shed remained locked in her soul and flailed at his like the barbed whips the lab soldiers had used against him when he was just a cub. She didn’t shed the tears, but they dripped down her soul, gouging into it and leaving wounds that bled night and day. The sobs she held inside shuddered through her body, causing her to flinch repeatedly in barely perceptible little jerks that tore past her control.