He stalked away, a stainless steel travel cup crumpled in his fist.
Nat stared. “Oh.”
His friends had been furious about his ex. Duke... Duke didn’t even know Nat all that well. And he had just crushed an entire metal cup when he heard Nat’s answer.
No one had done that for Nat, either.
Duke stalked around the parking lot, further crushing the travel cup into a tiny ball. After a while, he looked around, heading over to a trash can.
When he returned to the car, his expression had smoothed out. He seemed calm.
Nat poked his head out of the car. “Are you okay?”
“You’re askingmethat?” Duke asked, his eyebrows jumping. “Areyouokay?”
Nat shrugged. “I guess. It happened maybe... six years ago.”
Duke scowled. “You were young.”
“Young and stupid.” Nat hunched his shoulders. “I fell in love with an alpha and he beat me. Well, I guess I should start from the beginning. My parents weren’t... great. They were okay. But they didn’t really want me around, and they always acted like I was a burden.
“I thought I had struck the jackpot when I moved in with my boyfriend, except he started telling me—” Nat’s breath hitched “—bad things. He said I was too stupid for college. And too ugly. I was under a lot of stress, partly because of him. He would throw my textbooks around and crumple up my assignments; I couldn’t bear to hand them in to my professors because the pages were a mess. And I got so embarrassed when people asked why my homework looked like crap.
“In the end, I dropped out; I thought it would make him calm down. But he got worse. I didn’t manage to leave for a while.”
Duke growled again, a low, animal kind of sound. “He beat you so hard that you lost your fingers?”
“He—” Nat bit his lip. “Yeah. Crushed them under a chair.”
Duke tensed. And his eyes glowed so white, Nat dropped his sandwich.
8
DUKE’S IDENTITY
“Uh,”Nat said around his spinning thoughts.
Duke had the same kind of glowy eyes as Wanda.
“Fuck,” Duke hissed. “Is that fucker still alive?”
Nat looked down. “Maybe. I left town and didn’t look back.”
“Give me his name.”
Nat frowned. “Are you going to hunt him down?”
“We’ll see.”
“What if you get into trouble with—with the police?”
Duke clenched his jaw. “I’ll make sure I don’t.”
“He really is the wrong sort of crowd,” Nat blurted. “Kind of a criminal. I don’t want him to come after you for revenge.”
“Give me a name, Nat.”
Nat sighed. “Giblin. Giblin Turkeyson.”
