I broke through the clearing and saw Tadhg standing there, waiting for me. I slowed and stalked forward, my body crouched low to the ground. As part of the Guard, Tag trained with me daily. He was strong, and at one hundred and seventy-five years old, he could definitely hold his own and had seen many battles. He was one of the strongest soldiers I had.
But I was in charge. I was the Alpha. I was the strongest.
I stopped a few feet from him, letting him sense the aggression pouring for me, letting him know I was ready for a fight, even if there was no malice behind it. I wanted—needed—bloodshed. I needed something to help fill that emptiness and the hollow deep inside me. And a good old-fashioned Lycan fight in the middle of the woods would do just that.
The question was whether he’d take me up on the challenge or not.
He tipped his head back, his large black snout inhaling deeply and made a low sound, one of acceptance of the battle. It was one I knew well enough, because I would’ve never backed down from a challenge.
I crouched, and he did the same. I could imagine if we were in our human forms, we’d both be grinning like sinister psychopaths.
I let my claws retract slightly to dig into the earth, felt my muscles clench, heard the blood rushing in my ears as my heart pumped faster and harder. Not only would I be exhausted once I dragged myself back to my cabin after this fight, but hopefully I’d be sore and bloody, the pain enough to tear something dark and painful out of me.
And then we were crashing forward, massive bodies slamming against the other, claws and teeth rending flesh. I growled in a dark sort of triumph as I grappled for supremacy with Tag and was unrelenting in my onslaught.
I needed this fight down to the core, down to the makeup of who and what I was. Maybe he sensed the emptiness in me, because right now I sure as fuck wasn’t hiding it. Maybe he saw a kindred soul. Maybe he feels the same for his own unmated life.
Whatever the reason, he was just as brutal as I was, with snapping fangs and vicious attacks, tearing at flesh beneath thick fur, gripping the back of necks with our teeth. He never let up, and I growled my approval of his brutality.
As the fight progressed, we went harder at each other, became more vicious.
And as I let the pain slam into me, satisfaction burned as bright as the sun in my body, scorching away any other emotion or feeling until all I felt was that physical ache.
It was the only thing that could help mask the anguish that was a constant.
So I embraced it and wanted more.
4
Evelyn
My life was currently a mess, a wreck… a perfect shit show. It had been days since I quit on the spot at Bosco’s, days since I had the energy to go job hunting. Just the thought of taking on another waitressing position—the only thing at this point I was qualified for that made any kind of decent money—sucked the soul right from me.
But the lack of employment wasn’t what ate at me now. It was the fact that I hadn’t heard from Darragh in that same amount of time. Too many days of silence, no answer when I called her, no return texts or phone calls after I left frantic—crazed—messages.
“I am an absolute mess of epic proportions.”
I always hated the generalization people made about kids in the foster system, the stereotype that we were damaged, broken… ruined. I hated it, had never believed it, but there were times this little voice deep down inside me whispered that it was all true. It was this insidious scratch, sneering that the traumas that had happened in my life, ones I knew were there but didn’t remember, had taken any kind of innocence or good out of me.
I bit that dark voice back, buried it so deep it would be a lifetime before it clawed its way out, but when I was down, the shadows moving over me and trying to drag me to hell, I heard it whispering up from the sad parts of my soul. It was an old, toxic friend, an ex-lover who hurt you over and over again, one you wanted gone, but it never fully left.
And it was because of all of that, the situations and moments in my life that had shaped who I was, that I tried so damn hard to be someone else. Laughing when things weren’t funny, smiling when I wasn’t happy. I’d become a good actress, a perfect liar.
Because I’m missing something so essential in me that it’s like I’m missing half of myself.