Eternal Rider - Larissa Ione [118]
“What did he do to you?” His voice was flayed raw. “Before he brought you into the cell.”
“It’s not important, Ares.” At his smoky growl, her heart skidded to a stop. “Oh… you think he raped me.”
“Did he?” Still raw, as if his throat was bleeding.
“Would it matter?”
“Yes.” This time, his voice was dead.
She shivered. Even though the men who broke into their house hadn’t gotten the chance to rape her, Jackson could never see past what might have happened. Though he’d never said it, not outright, anyway, he’d viewed her as damaged goods. As ruined. Spoiled. When she’d touched him, he’d shrunk away, found some way to avoid intimacy with her. They hadn’t made love even once after that night.
“So… if he raped me, would you think differently of me?”
Ares’s head snapped back as if he’d been sucker punched. “No. Never.” He regarded her from under the forbidding line of his dark brows, his gaze steely. “It matters because Pestilence tormented you while I was helpless to protect you. He knew exactly where to hit me, knowing I’d been through it once before with my wife. If he violated you on top of all that, I couldn’t live with myself.”
“He didn’t, Ares.” God, her heart was breaking for him, and she didn’t know how to help except to reassure him. “I swear. He was too concerned with capturing you so you could watch.”
Closing his eyes, he let out a long, relieved breath. But he still backed away when she reached for him.
“Ares, don’t. Please don’t pull away from me.” This was Jackson all over again, but this time, it was much worse. Afraid of how Jackson would respond to knowing about her ability, she’d never given herself fully to him, had always held a part of herself away. But she’d bared everything to Ares. He’d made her stronger, while Jackson had only dragged her down.
He said nothing. Wouldn’t even look at her. Not even as he strode from the room.
“You are a selfish piece of shit.”
Ares jerked to a halt just inside his walled garden. “Excuse me?”
Limos came around from behind him and parked herself in his path. “Cara was tormented at the hands of our brother—”
“You think I don’t know that?” Every single second of it was replaying in his head, and the only breaks he got in the show were when memories of Torrent popped in.
After Vulgrim and his mate, Sireth, Ares had been the first to hold Torr after his birth. Ares had watched the little guy learn to walk, had nearly come out of his skin while watching him negotiate rocky cliffs, had taught him to spar.
Vulgrim’s pain now was Ares’s, and for someone who had sworn to not allow emotion into his life, it felt as if Ares was drowning in it.
“Yeah, and you’re making what Pestilence did about you. You, not her.” Limos jammed her hands on her hips. “You feel helpless, impotent, because you couldn’t protect your female. So to punish yourself for your guilt or your inadequacy or whatever, you’re pulling away from her. Pestilence tortured her, but you aren’t a hell of a lot better, because you’re doing the same damned thing.”
He wanted to tell Limos to go fuck herself, but she was right. He’d been convinced that Jackson was an asshole for how he’d treated Cara, and then Ares had gone and repeated one of the most painful times of her life.
The stone path that wound through the gardens became his racetrack as he started walking. Could he outrun his asshole self? Not likely.
The slap of Limos’s bare feet fell into a steady beat behind him. “Hey, I’m sorry about Torrent.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him to a halt. “I know how much you cared for him. Is there anything I can do?”
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Watch over Vulgrim and Rath. Pestilence knows how to hurt me.” Overhead, a hawk drifted on a thermal, looking for prey. “Our brother is stronger than ever. He caught me off guard and bested me after I got myself free of the war. How did you get away from the starvation camps?”
“I alerted the media. Once they got wind of it, it was all over. I have a love-hate relationship with modern times, but today is true love.”
“Where’s Thanatos?”
“Gathering intel