Page 4 (2/2)

It was Talin who had dishonored their silent bargain, Talin who had been too broken to dare dance with a leopard That failure haunted her every day of her life "There washerself past the sharp blade of loss "I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I went back and researched it"

"They wanted to put me down Like an animal"

"Yes" She dropped her arht of a world without Clay "But the Child Protection Agency intervened They were forced to after someone leaked the truth about Orrinand what he’d been doing to th nurtured by a sojourn through hell itself

She couldn’t erase the past, her eidetic ht herself to think past the darkness "It becaed you with a lesser offense, put you in juvie until you turned eighteen"

"I was there I knohat happened toto tell you!" She squared her shoulders in the face of his doht Take your time I’m here for your convenience"

"Sarcasm doesn’t suit you" He was too raw, too earthy, too of the wild

"You don’t know me"

No, she accepted with another starburst of pain, she didn’t She had given up all rights to him the day she’d let him believe that she’d been crushed to death in a car wreck "Because of the media attention," she continued, "lots of people came forith offers to adopt me"

"I know - it was in the papers"

She nodded "My old social worker was fired after the a" With the very lives he had been entrusted to protect "The new guy - Zeke - had a little girl e He went above and beyond, personally vetted all the applicants"

Clay was silent but his eyes had gone cat, perilous in the extreme And she remembered - it was Zeke who had lied to him about her death

She met the eyes of the leopard who stood opposite her, afraid, bewildered, stupidly needy So Clay "He placed me with the Larkspur fareen, the constant supply of food, it had been a severe shock to her system "You’d like it at the Nest - that’s what the Larkspurs call the farm Plenty of space to run, to play"

It seeressive "They were good to you?"

She nodded, biting down hard on her tongue before she could give in and beg his had been before the day everything shattered Orrin had split her lip, broken her ribs, but it was seeing Clay being hauled out the door that had destroyed her "I was daed even before Orrin died That just pushed e in e me, tried to make me a part of the family I suddenly had two older brothers, one older sister, and one younger sister"

"Sounds like too much to handle"

"For a while, it was" Overwhel family, she had curled up in corners and hidden "Then one day, I realized I’d been there for a year and no one had hurt me By the ti fairly well" Night out at school less and less

"So you decided to leave h "Why the hell not?"

"No It wasn’t like that" She reached out to hi her hand in midtouch when he withdrew even deeper into the darkness "I just - " How could she possibly explain the tortured confusion that had driven her? She’d known she wasn’t yet strong enough to stand up to Clay, to face the horrors of the past, but she had worried for him, too

"I stole four years of your freedom I was determined not to be a burden on you for the rest of your life" Barely twelve years old and she’d known he would give up everything to keep her safe "I didn’t want to force you into bondage, into caring for me because I was too weak to care forthat for Isla" That fact had twisted the relationship between mother and child, turned it into that of caretaker and patient The thought of Clay putting her into the saht It still did

"Don’t lie to"You were scared so you ran"

"I’ the truth" She sed "But yes, I was scared, too You didn’t see what I saw, Clay That day in Orrin’s bedroom, you turned into someone I didn’t know, someone more vicious than anyone I’d ever known" She waited for him to say that he’d done it for her, but he didn’t Her guilt intensified "Why don’t you blame me? It would make this so much easier Blale" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>