Fable of Happiness (Fable 2)

“I’ll never willingly remember,” I snapped.

She sighed again. “In that case, we both better come to terms with how this will end then.”

I frowned. “How what will end?”

Her chin tilted up, and a chill ran down my back. Naked and sun-painted, she looked otherworldly. She looked as if she had a crystal ball and wasn’t just giving hypotheticals but a horrifying future that would come true. “You’ll make another mistake.” She shuddered, rubbing her arms as if she’d scared herself with the weight of her premonition. “You’ll hurt me, even if you don’t mean to. You’ll kill me because you’ll see them and not me. And then, you’ll be alone again. It won’t be because I ran. It won’t be because I got up the courage to hurt you to earn my freedom. You’ll kill me and be the only one to blame for your loneliness.”

I choked on my own spit. I fumbled for a refusal—something to prove how wrong she was. However, she merely turned her back on me again, grabbed her damp shirt from the top of my clothes, and shrugged it on.

It didn’t matter that she had no skirt, boots, or underwear; the way she walked with her spine dead straight and her aura of righteousness made her look like a queen. An already dead queen as she walked away until the chain pulled tight between us, and she could go no farther.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

WE WALKED BACK TO the house in silence.

I’d waited—not that I had a choice with a damn chain around my ankle—while he pulled on his T-shirt and jeans, and the moment I felt slack between us, I moved.

I marched in front of him, highly aware the shirt skimmed the bottom of my ass, leaving me exposed if I moved too quickly or the breeze caught me the wrong way. Heaven only knew where my boots and skirt had gone, most likely downstream and vanished into a cave somewhere. If Kas hadn’t had a flashback and made me panic, I would’ve thrown them safely on shore.

Damn man.

I shivered, my instincts prickling having him behind me. I couldn’t stop reliving the dream I’d had versus waking up with Kas almost inside me.

I shuddered and not entirely with anger. I hated that he’d made me wet. That I still tingled with the need to release. I hated that my body had responded to him all while my mind wasn’t in control.

But what really pissed me off was even in my dreams, he’d affected me. I’d shared a kiss with him back at my lovely little house. I’d seen mementos of a life together. I’d felt so peaceful and content knowing he was mine and I was his and that we loved each other. Not that I’d known it was him until I saw his eyes, of course.

Those tormented, shadowy eyes seemed to haunt my every breath.

Something screamed up ahead, wrenching my attention up.

What on earth—

Kas increased his speed, cutting in front of me and wading through long grass to the trap he’d set as we’d headed toward the river. He moved with jerky steps as if our argument still irritated him, but he didn’t seem unstable, or not as bad as he had been. He was in control of his balance as he came to a stop by the trap and found a rabbit hurling itself against the bars.

It screamed again. A god-awful sound that ripped through my heart.

Without pausing, Kas shoved his hand into the trap, grabbed the rabbit by the neck, and snapped it.

Silence.

I turned away, slapping a hand over my mouth and fighting the urge not to be sick.

“You should’ve looked away,” he muttered, resetting the trap and swinging the dead animal from his fist.

“You didn’t exactly give me a chance.”

“What did you think was going to happen?” His forehead furrowed, long hair tangled over his shoulders. “I didn’t trap it so I could release it with a free lunch, you know.”

I swallowed hard and strode ahead, forcing myself not to look at the poor creature. Two seconds ago, it’d been alive. Now...it was gone.

I wasn’t squeamish with most things, and I understood why he’d killed it. But...it still left a nasty taste in my mouth. I wondered if that was because I was so used to getting meat from the supermarket and being removed from the whole murder process that I was blind to the crueler ways of the world.

That could be said for Kas, too.

He’d felt cruelty. He’d lived it for years. We had nothing in common in that respect.

Thanks to my charmed life, I found it difficult to sympathize with someone who’d been abused ever since his childhood. For all my attempts at understanding him, my upbringing demanded respect and decency. Our society had no gray areas for forgiveness if someone messed up. Empathy, it seemed, only went so far.