Chapter 120: 120. Jericho II
Maisie
His hands had a slight tremor on my skin but his expression otherwise remained dull and empty. I fought the urge to touch him.
"The humans stood outside and cheered. They cheered while my family burned alive. I remembered looking back and seeing my Da trapped beneath a beam. My brothers screaming. My mother shoved me out the window in time for everything to explode."
My stomach twisted with horror and I didn’t know when my fingers threaded through his. Or when my throat clogged. Or when tears brimmed in my eyes.
His gaze drifted somewhere far away and his lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "I shifted for the first time that night and I killed every human I could find."
There was no pride in his voice. No remorse either. "I don’t remember most of it. Only blood. Fear. Running. They caught me eventually."
Cold. My chest felt so cold. His fingers felt like ice.
"They kept me in a cage because they didn’t know how to kill me. So they experimented." Another tremor ran along his shoulders. "They burned and branded me. But in that form, it did nothing. They drowned me. They tried cutting pieces off me but could never come close enough. They buried me."
He shuddered. I didn’t think I was breathing any more. I felt sick.
"They poisoned me. Somewhere, they figured aconite, your wolfsbane, made me queasy. Somewhere they realized the reason the cage held me at all was because there were traces of silver metal in it. They poisoned me with the mix. But it didn’t kill me. So they starved me."
The horror must have shown on my face because Jericho’s gaze softened. "I don’t remember all of it.
He paused. "I remember being hungry." His voice cracked slightly. "For years, I remember being hungry."
"Jer..." I exhaled softly.
It was as though calling his name pulled him out of the memory, because he blinked twice and the glazed look was gone from his eyes. "The Queen found me after seven years."
He had been thirteen. A child.
"She walked into the cage and sat beside me. She talked to me, even as I tried to rip her head off. And when she hand fed me and healed my wounds, I felt warmer than I had in seven years." He exhaled. "’You’re safe now, Ivashkov. Let me take you home. You must be exhausted.’"
His amber eyes rose to mine. "When you are drowning, malyshka, you don’t care who tosses you a rope. You take it."
Understanding began creeping in slowly.
"I followed her," Jericho said with a silent laugh. "I would have followed her anywhere. I did follow her everywhere. She fed me. She helped me shift back. Taught me how to speak again. How to behave. How to live among people. And I grew attached to her. She became my entire world, all that mattered, all that I lost. I would’ve done anything for her if she so asked for it. And for years, I did. I wanted to please her. It was all I lived for. There was no other purpose to my being."
My breaths had grown shallow.
"When I grew older, things changed." I already knew where this was going. "I was sixteen when I realized people looked at me differently. They no longer saw a feral beast or the Queen’s weapon. They saw a man." His lips pursed. "At seventeen, the Queen noticed me, too."
He glanced away. "One night, she summoned me. I’d been with other women at the time, but it was the first time I’d watched her with her mates. In hindsight, I thought she wanted me to see her that way. She had an assignment for me but even days after, I couldn’t get the image out of my head.
"I remembered feeling angry. I didn’t understand why. I only knew I belonged to her. And she should’ve belonged to me, too." He licked the scar on his lip. "Somewhere in the last few years, I’d convinced myself into believing she was mine and I was possessive.
"So when the Hunt came around, I thought this was the chance I needed to make her see I was no longer a child. By Lycan standards, I hadn’t been a child since I was thirteen anyway." A pause and the next words came out slightly embarrassed. "I thought I was in love with her. And so, I fought and I won the Hunt, and after our night together, she asked me to be her sixth."
Something lodged in my throat.
He swallowed. "I accepted. I thought it was everything I’d ever wanted."
My fingers curled inwards as something uncomfortable settled in my chest.
"But it failed. The convergence wouldn’t take me. The priestess didn’t understand it. I was stronger than her mates, even at that age, and a perfect fit. I didn’t understand it, either. I didn’t understand it either, until I found you."
I knew why he was explaining this to me. I understood that he was trying to tell me that it was a trauma bond. Dependency. That a child had taken the first hand that had shown him kindness and latched onto it.
I felt so sad for him.
But something hot burned in my chest anyway, a tangle of complicated feelings I didn’t know what to do with.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like I could... measure up to that. I’d previously thought it was just sex, but now that I understood the depth of it, I couldn’t breathe right.
It felt like... I wasn’t his first choice. And I didn’t know why that mattered when I shouldn’t have cared what I meant to them anymore.
All I could think of was, "If the convergence bond had snapped into place for him, would he have chosen me at all?"
I didn’t realize I had blurted out the wretched thought until Jericho’s hand found my face, his thumb nudging my chin. "It could never have snapped into place because I wasn’t hers, and my soul recognized that way before even I understood it. And the emptiness, the hole I had been looking to fill... it had always been you."
My lips quivered. There was a heaviness sitting on my chest. "Stop it. Stop... talking."
He leaned into me, brushing his nose against mine, our foreheads touching. "You are my light, malyshka. Take all the time you need, but I do not—cannot and will not—exist without you, and so you must forgive whatever dubious means I choose to adopt to ensure you don’t leave me."
I drew away from him, breaths rushing out of me, but he caught me, holding me firmly, his thumb tugging down my bottom lip as he caught my upper lip and pulled it in a slow, teasing kiss.
Warmth pooled in my chest, spreading like liquid fire. My heart raced so fast it made me dizzy, the bond humming between us like a live wire.
But he pulled away then and kissed the top of my head, causing me to shiver, and when he shut the door behind, my body mourned at the loss.
I realized I was screwed. How, exactly, was I supposed to remain strong for an entire year?
