Page 70 of Loup Garou
I shuddered, remembering all too well what he spoke of.
Eion kissed the top of my head. “Lindsay, I will never, ever get that image out of my head. I’ll never forget you begging me to kill you.” He cried harder. I joined him, the tears falling with ease at the remembered pain of our past. “You begged me to let you follow her. To let you be with our baby. I couldn’t. I was selfish but I couldn’t let you die too. I’dlost her and I couldn’t lose you too. I should have known about the attack. I should have stopped it!”
“Shh, Eion. They’ll never hurt me again, you saw to that. I remember that much. I remember waking up to find you there, standing over me.” I touched his cheek. “I remember begging you to let me go and you telling me that if she’d have needed me to be there too, she would have waited.” I lost it as tears fell openly down my cheeks. “You told me you couldn’t sense her soul lingering, that she was safe. I remember. I clung to your every word and I remember what happened to you once you knew Myra and Gina were there to watch over me. I saw what you did to them, Eion. I saw you shift for the first and only time that night.”
He’d gone into a blood rage and he’d killed everything on the bus that had caused me harm and pain. “Lindsay, I shut off. I don’t remember killing any of them. I couldn’t think. I knew before Myra said anything what they’d done and that I’d have to look you in the face and tell you the baby didn’t make it. That she was gone. And I knew she was the only thing still holding you to me. Those bastards attacked you for no reason. And then you shut the door in my face. You built a fortress around you, disappeared from the public eye and were gone. Myra and Gina acted like guard dogs. They wouldn’t let me near you. Why? I’d never hurt you. Ever.”
Taking a deep breath, I locked gazes with him and confessed the truth. “Those monsters that took me had a reason, Eion. They told me I was the mate of a powerful man and they wanted to hurt him through me. I thought they were talking about you.” Running my hand over my lower abdomen, I bit back more tears. “They laughed as others pinned me down and ripped my body to shreds. I couldn’t stop them. There were too many and I didn’t understand how to use my powers fully. I begged them to stop. They didn’t. They just kept talking about the need to destroy my mate’s line, his chance at happiness, and weakening him to the point he didn’t fight back anymore.” A choked sob ripped free from me as the memories of it all hit me.
“Lindsay,” Eion whispered as he reached for me. “Don’t. I’m sorry. I should have left the past in the past.”
Shaking my head, I let him hold me. “No. I lay there trying to stay awake through the pain, trying to heal what they’d done. I tried. The entire time I blamed you. I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me about them wanting to hurt you. Why you wouldn’t give me all the facts. How you could let that happen to your family. I even thought you held back from telling me the truth because you were upset with me for telling you I wasn’t ready to get married. That I couldn’t commit to you because something inside me wouldn’t let me.”
He let out a long breath. “Gods, why in hell would you think that?”
Taking a deep breath, I cried against his chest. “I thought you were the one they talked about because…because they talked about my blood and the baby’s…I can’t talk about this. Just know that they told me they could taste the royal blood in me now. They celebrated that they took a royal heir, and fully planned on taking me after they finished. I thoughthewas you and at the time I hated you for that. It took me a long time to understand you couldn’t have known and that if you had, you would have come to me, never letting it happen to begin with.”
“If you understood that, then why didn’t you contact me?” he asked, sorrow etched clearly on his face.
“Eion, something deep inside me wouldn’t let me go back to you. It knew we couldn’t last. I don’t know how. But it knew.”
Eion thrust another wave of power out. “Bullshit! We would have… Lindsay?”
“What?”
“Are you telling me that they thought the baby was this mate-guy’s and that her blood matched his royal line?”
I nodded.
“And I find you now with Exavier.” His entire body went rigid. “Is he your mate?”
“Eion, I’ll go. The two of you are family. He didn’t know. He couldn’t have. Exavier’s not responsible for our losing her. He—”
Power leaked off Eion. I felt his hate, his rage as if it were my own. I tried to pull him to me. To hold him. He wouldn’t let me. “He’s always known they wanted to take over. It’s common knowledge. And he has always known who his mate is. He wouldn’t tell me. He didn’t like talking about it because he ‘missed her too much’.”
His magik increased and I grabbed hold of him. “Eion, calm down. Don’t take your anger out on him. He’s your family. Don’t do this. He’ll kill you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lindsay.”
Cupping Eion’s face, I shook my head. “No, Eion. That’s not it at all. I’ve had a peek inside him, in dreams, at what he carries, and it’s pure evil. He can’t help it resides there and he’ll never be free of it. You don’t have that. No part of you is evil. I know that. You’re more than a good man. If you go at him harboring nothing but hate and rage, his power will recognize it. It’ll draw on the same source it takes from when dealing with evil creatures and it will destroy you. Not Exavier—he has no way to fight through it when it consumes him. He’s on the edge already. I can sense it in him. It’s not as bad today as it was but it’s there.”
Eion pulled a tiny portion of his power back. Not nearly enough to make me comfortable. “They hurt you. They hurt our baby because of him. How can you stand there and defend him?”
“Because he’s my mate. Because a piece of me knows Exavier would have done anything to keep her safe had he known—his child or not.”
Eion let out a soft, sardonic laugh. “That means nothing. I have a mate out there and there is no way she’d come before you, Lindsay.”
I ran my thumb over his lips, missing the touch of them. “You say that now, but once you meet her you’ll understand. It will all make sense.”
“Do you love him?”
I closed my eyes.
“Lindsay, do you love him?”
“Yes, I’ve always loved him.”
He made a move to go around me. Terrified he’d get himself killed, I took hold of his shirt and yanked him to me.
