Author: Lora Leigh
Category: Paranormal
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/23990_13
he’s not my mate anymore.” She was grieving and she knew it. Just as she knew she had no right to grieve.
She had stayed as far away from him as possible over the past ten years, suffering, knowing he was probably suffering too. Knowing he hadn’t been just pissed her off now. She had suffered alone. Hurt alone. She had been alone, just as she always was.
“Dawn.”
She flinched as he touched her arm, then moved away from him.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked her again. “You’re not focused.”
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“I’m second command.” She shrugged. “And with Jonas’s team there, I feel more confident. I…” She swallowed tightly as she avoided his gaze. “I can’t not go.”
“Dawn, why didn’t you tell me what Dayan was doing to you?”
She flinched violently. It was so long ago. In a life she didn’t want to remember. Her pride brother, Dayan. He hadn’t been sane, but he had hid the insanity so well. He had worked them all to one degree or another. Playing Callan against the soldiers sent after him, betraying his whereabouts to them so he spent more and more time away from the home base they had established. And while Callan was gone, he had worked insidiously to destroy her and Sherra.
Sherra had been stronger though. She’d had the memories of her mate, Kane, to hold on to. Dawn had only the nightmares that Dayan had preyed upon. And the fear.
“I didn’t know what he was doing to me,” she finally whispered, lifting her head, feeling the shame that filled her as Callan’s amber eyes darkened painfully. “The Council taught him well, Callan. That wasn’t your fault. You can’t take the blame for what he did anymore.”
For how Dayan had maneuvered the men of the pride, how he had built upon her and Sherra’s fears. Sherra had her memories though; Dawn had somehow managed to repress hers, and nothing she did now revealed them.
“He didn’t rape me, Callan,” she whispered.
“Yes, he did,” he said heavily. “He raped your mind, Dawn. If I could kill him daily for the rest of my life, I would. I’d make him suffer as he never could have imagined.”
Dayan had been his pride brother. Callan had risked his life for all of them, gave his life for them in the years he had protected them. All of them. And Dayan had betrayed him at every turn.
“It doesn’t matter.” She drew in a hard, deep breath. “The heli-jet’s waiting on me. I have to go.”
“Dawn.” His voice sharpened, stopping her as she moved to jerk the duffel from her bed.
“What, Callan?” she snapped back. “What more do you want me to say?”
“He’s going to want more from you than that part of you that refuses to let him go,” he warned her harshly. “Do you understand me? Seth isn’t a monk. He won’t take vows of celibacy for you. And running to him, restarting the mating process without the clear intention of sleeping with that man is wrong. I have half a mind to order you to stay here.” He pushed his hands through his hair in frustration. “Dammit, he doesn’t deserve this any more than you do.”
“He’s mine!” The cry ripped from her throat.
“And he will demand your presence in his bed,” he snarled. “I’m a mate, Dawn, I know what the mating heat does to a man. And God’s truth, I would have committed suicide rather than do to my mate what Seth knows he’s going to do to you. Let him go.”
“Is this why you’re here?” She felt her face contort in pain, her chest tighten with it, as she waved her hand at him in agitation. “To order me away from him?”
“He’s making a life for himself. A chance to be a man, Dawn. A husband. A father.”
She froze as she read the truth in his eyes.
“He has a lover.” Her throat felt closed off, as though she were strangling on her own pain and rage.
Oh God, he was touching another woman? Sleeping with her? Holding her.
“Dawn—”
She jerked her hands up, shaking, the pain rising inside her until she was surprised it didn’t bring her to her knees, didn’t send her into an agony so intense she was screaming from it.
Her flesh, every cell in her body, was raging in denial. It couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t happen. He was her mate.
“He intends to announce his engagement during the gathering at Lawrence Island,” he told her softly. “He didn’t want to hurt you. He didn’t want to make this painful for you, Dawn. I want you to stay here. I want you to let him go.”
Callan stepped back slowly at the expression that contorted Dawn’s face, and the furious, inhuman growl that left her throat. She was shaking. He could see the muscles in her upper arms and chest twitching beneath the skin. Her upper lip curled back at one corner to flash those small, delicate canines.