Maisie

"We need to fix this," Cole said, voice strained.

"We?" I echoed, turning to face him with a cold, empty stare. "From where I’m standing, this is your problem. Not mine. The same way my suffering was never yours."

I turned to leave.

His hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.

Big mistake.

I slammed him against the wall before I even realized I’d moved. The impact cracked the plaster. Cole’s eyes widened in shock as I pinned him there effortlessly with one hand, my new Lycan strength making it laughably easy.

"The next time you touch me is the day you die, mutt," my Lycan said through me.

I blinked, forcing the red haze from my eyes, and stepped back. "Don’t approach me. Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me. Go pray to the Goddess for mercy, Cole, because I have none left for you."

I started walking away again when his broken voice stopped me. "Is it true you’re getting a divorce?"

I paused and turned slowly. How did he know that? We were keeping it quiet until everything was finalized.

Cole pushed off the wall. "I know everything about you, Maisie. Every little detail." He took a step forward. "If you’re getting a divorce, then we can be together. Come back to me. Tell me how long I need to endure this pain for and I will. Just... come back."

I stared at him for a long moment.

Then I laughed. It came out harsh and humorless. "There is nothing you have that I want," I said flatly. "There is no part of me that wants to be yours, Cole. None. And even if I had no other options left in this world, I’d rather become a priestess than ever let you touch me again."

I stepped closer, looking him dead in the eyes so he could see exactly how little I felt for him.

"You didn’t care when I was dying. You slept with other women to dig the knife deeper. And now I’m supposed to care that you’re in pain?"

His face crumpled. The last shred of careful pleading gave way to raw panic.

Cole Hayes dropped to his knees in front of me.

My breath caught as I stared down at him.

Cole Hayes, future Alpha, on his knees in a school hallway, looking up at me with a face stripped bare by fear.

"Maisie, please," he said hoarsely. He swallowed hard and lifted a hand, like he wanted to touch me and had only just remembered he no longer had the right.

"I’m sorry. I was a dick. I shouldn’t have rejected you. I shouldn’t have asked you to be my mistress. I shouldn’t have done a lot of things. I hurt you. I get it. I’m sorry."

I looked around. There were people staring. Cameras clicking. Goddess, why did trouble simply follow me everywhere?

"Get up. You’re embarrassing yourself," I hissed sharply.

His green eyes were focused only on me. "I’ll do anything. I’ll grovel. I’ll wait. Just don’t leave me like this."

For a second, something almost like pity flickered in my chest.

Then I realized the only reason he was doing this was for himself. If he was really this scared of dying, he could’ve petitioned the Queen. He was not in the same helpless, shit position I had been in all those months ago.

He could get the bond broken. But he wasn’t doing that. Instead, he was here on his knees, begging me to leave the Lycans, just so I could come back to him.

So he could lick his wounds and stoke his pride. I could imagine what it would be like for him, then. Having not just a Lycan for a mate, but having a Lycan who walked out on four princes to be with him.

It was a social climb. It was a high he would never come down from.

Cole Hayes hadn’t changed. He was still a bastard, and I was still property to him. The only difference was that I’d gone from the status of being something he wanted to hide and fuck behind closed doors to a trophy he could possess and flaunt to stoke his injured pride.

It was without anger that or hate that I said, "No. We’re through, Cole."

The words hit him hard. I watched it happen. I expected it. I’d seen enough of Cole by now to understand his patterns.

His shoulders went rigid. His face darkened with a flash of anger that made the air around us change.

There it was. There he was. The real Cole.

Not the boy kneeling and begging. The boy who expected the world to bend because he wanted it to. The boy who broke things because he couldn’t have them.

His straightened, voice going low. "You are mine."

I went very still. It wasn’t the words he’d spoken over and over again that sent a chill down my spine. It was that for all the discord that existed between us since we were children, Cole had never looked at me like that. With such ugly hate.

There was hate and there was that. I felt it all the way to my soul. It was the kind of loathing that left a mark.

"You always were. If you won’t be mine then I’ll ruin you for everyone else," he said, and I knew he was going to reach for me. I prepared for the strike. But Cole didn’t strike at me.

He threw something at me.

My Lycan roared in alarm, but I moved too late and it was already in motion. It was liquid. And it gleamed like silver and looked like ash.

No. It was ash.

The kind that was lethal to Lycans. It was liquid ash, whatever that was. Cole didn’t mean to just hurt me. He meant to ruin me. Scar me.

At the last second, a body slammed hard into mine, shielding me completely, and I stared in horror as Soren’s face contorted with pain as a sizzling sound and the stench of burning flesh filled the air.