Page 37 of Cold Foot King
“No. No, he didn’t. I’m the one who hurts everyone. You know. You know that’s what I do.” She needed to stop talking and escape to the woods, but now the words were just tumbling out of her. “I fuck everything up, Silver. I have since we were friends. God! That feels like a hundred years ago, and in that hundred years, I haven’t done a single thing right!”
Silver’s eyes were blazing the gold of her lioness now, but screw it. If Silver Changed and fought her, it would make perfect sense.
“I messed it up with you because I thought Rook was so special. I thought I had a right to him, and do you know, he turned out to be exactly what you told me he was. You warned me, and I hurt you. And now look at us.” She pointed her finger at her face scar, that matched Silver’s. Both carved by the same hand—Rook’s. “Both traitors. Except you landed where you were supposed to land. You found the Fastlanders, and I made the decision to stay loyal to Rook. Bad decision. I chose to follow him into war with a fresh traitor mark on my cheek, Silver. Bad decision. Got burned alive by Wreck, then brought back to life with his awful green fire, and now I can’t stop dreaming about the pain, because of my bad decisions. I can’t fucking sleep, because it’s terrifying to let my body go unconscious when I don’t know who has bad intentions for me. Went to prison, thought I finally had some time to myself to think, and maybe figure out who the hell I am, but one day a guard came to me and explained that I would be a breeder. Do you know what happens to breeders? They have to turn their hearts off and sleep with a man they don’t know until it takes, and then they grow a child, and that baby is taken before I would ever get to hold her, and God, Silver. I had dreams that I would have a baby girl, and I was terrified because I knew I wasn’t going to be okay. I wanted the family so bad, I did awful things to secure it, and now karma is taking her pound of flesh, right? And I did it. I went through my first cycle. Had no choice. They pumped us full of drugs that made it impossible to stay away from each other. And I could tell he didn’t want me, and I didn’t want him like that, but this sick part of me liked it. At the end, when he was taking care of me, I liked it. How fucked up is that?” she whispered. “He was holding me and making sure I enjoyed it as much as I could in that moment, and I got lost. It was so nice to have a rutting man try his best to not hurt me. A stranger. I hated him for it, and it’s clear something inside of him hates me for it too, and I can’t do or say anything right, Silver. It was never my strength. I like him, and I shouldn’t. It’s too messy, too complicated, and I’m setting myself up for rejection, but that’s my type, right?” The tears were streaming down her cheeks now. “I’m so…” She shook her head helplessly. “So messed up. I’m so freaking sorry for not listening to you, and for the way I treated you. You were the best friend I ever had. It’s easiest to see that when everything gets taken away.”
Silver’s eyes were rimmed with tears that Katrina didn’t understand. It was her turn to press the back of her gloved hand against her cheek to absorb the stream of emotion. She inhaled deep, and when she exhaled, her breath shook. “When did Rook give you the traitor scar?”
“You know when.” She didn’t want to talk about it. The memory still felt very fresh.
“After you warned me? After that night at the rodeo, when you told me I should stay with the Fastlanders? When you warned me Rook was planning a war?”
Katrina swallowed audibly. “Yes.”
“He figured out you warned me?”
“Yes. The scar was done in front of the Pride, just like how it happened to you, and then I was put on the front line of the war with your Fastlanders. He wanted me and everyone I cared about to know how expendable I was. Some Queen, right?”
“Fuck Rook. He was always a low-value man. We both got tricked.”
She huffed an emotional laugh. It actually felt good to talk crap about him with someone else who had reason to hate him.
“Why did you save the croc shifter?”
“What?” she asked, confused by the turn of conversation.
“Raynah. You were protecting her. Why?”
“The baby. Raynah is tough, but she’s good.”
“You made sure she made it out of there to escape the breeding program?”
“I didn’t want her baby being taken from her. She wants it. That would’ve broken her, same as it would’ve broken me. If one of us made it out, I needed it to be her.”
Silver nodded. “And King is angry now, why?”
Katrina hung her head and kicked at the snow with the toe of her boot. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Tell me. For old times’ sake, tell me your boy problems.”
“I asked him to breed me again. I thought it would be sexy if I asked like that.” She shrugged miserably. “I told you, I make all the wrong decisions.”
“It’s not wrong.”
Katrina frowned and dared a look up at Silver. “It’s not?”
“You’ve made mistakes, Kat. We all have. I was sent to the Fastlanders to betray them, and for a while I tried. I say the wrong things all the time with my mate, but he’s forgiving, and do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m honest with how it was with Rook, and where I’m coming from, and I am also open with trying. I’m a tryer now.” She huffed a soft laugh. “I’m also a mess. Probably every lioness coming out of the Holland Pride is going to be recovering for years. You still have good in you. I can see it. Why the hell do you think I’m here?”
“I honestly have no clue.”
“You were my best friend, too. I knew you were in that prison. I knew Wreck burned you. I also found out there was a possibility that you were being filtered into that breeding program. Damon’s been planning on busting that place open for a year. He hates shifters being experimented on, even if they’ve done wrong. You didn’t deserve that. You saving the croc and her baby are proof of that.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “The Kat I know is still in there. And that…that’s why I’m here.”
“If you’re trying to get me close to sobbing, you’re doing a bang-up job,” she said with a thick laugh.
“Look, as far as King goes, here’s how it is for him right now. He’s on day one of being revived by the green fire, and good gah, it’s a recovery process from Wreck’s power. Wreck told us King’s headache is bad. I’m surprised he’s upright. Wreck got pissed at Owen a couple months ago and unalived him, and Timber made him bring Owen back, and Owen was down for a week. I’m talking no lights allowed around him, and he’s a tough son of a gun. King is walking around here trying to make sure you’re good. Add to that, you’re both working long-term shifter-suppressant medicine out of your systems. How long has it been since you Changed?”