As I stare at her hands, clinging to me, I notice how scared they are. It looks like there are multiple scars, each settled on top of another, creating a more disturbing appearance.
Her hands are so badly calloused that her skin feels rough. Even her elbows haven’t escaped the same fate, as if she has spent a long time on a hard surface. Her knees are the same, from what I can see peeking out from under the shirt.
I lift the front of the shirt to her nose. “Does he smell good to you?” I ask her, hoping she will find something she likes in Andrei’s scent and can slowly start trusting him.
She sniffs the shirt as her eyes dart to Andrei warily. She avoids eye contact with him, her own mate, so I wonder if she wasn’t allowed to ever look into other’s eyes or chooses not to. It’s clear she has endured a lot of abuse, and that fact alone breaks my heart for her. For both of them.
Sage looks back at me and nods. I barely hold back the smile that threatens to spread. She likes his scent! It is a small step, but at least it’s a good sign. We can build off that.
She is older than me, probably about twenty or twenty-one. I glance over my shoulder at Andrei, who is staring at her, but he can’t see much besides her face. And even though he is trying to hide it, I can see the question in his eyes about how she got the scar.
“I promise my brother won’t hurt you. Do you mind if I touch you?”
“You already are?” She points out, looking at my hands holding her arms where she clutches me. I chuckle, that’s not what I mean.
“Yes, but I want to see what is hidden in your head. See where you come from. I swear, my brother won’t hurt you. He wants to help. I want to help,” I promise.
“You won’t tell?” she whispers and glances at Andrei again.
I frown. “I can’t promise that” I sigh and admit. The worst thing to do would be to make a promise and break it the next moment. She needs to trust me, that’s the only way I can convince her Andrei means no harm.
She pulls her hands from mine, pulling them to her chest, and moves away. Judging by the look of horror on her face, whatever she is hiding has to be worse than any of us can imagine ourselves.
“I will only tell him what he needs to know,” I try to convince her to listen to me.
Despite my insistence, she shakes her head, and her entire body trembles. When I place my hand on her back, she shakes, and shifts. I am right, her wolf is her coping mechanism. Her only way to protect herself from harm.
“Let me see!” I command her. I hate doing it, but if this fails, I have to kill my brother, and I don’t want it to come to that. At this point, I need to grasp anything that can help ensure I don’t have to kill him.
She whimpers, but holds her hand out, unwillingly accepting the defeat. I shake my head and instead of taking her hand, I press my fingers to her head.
Images flicker by slowly, stopping as I filter through major events in her life. She was born a rogue, her and her mother were taken by another group of rogues. Her father was killed before she reached the age of her first shift.
My breath hitches as I grasp onto the next memory. Her mother was restrained, massive, heavy chains wrapped around her legs and arms. The worst part is that so was she. Sage sat next to her mother, a pained look on her face as she tried to yank on the chains.
The rogues would torture Sage to get her mother to comply. It went on for years until she eventually died when Sage was in her mid-teens. And the cause of her mother’s death was because of what the rogues put her through. I feel sick watching her torment.
Sage’s life was tragic. She learned to shift between forms, so she wouldn’t be subjected to the things they put her mother through. However, as awful as it was, it only worked until they beat her so badly that she couldn’t defend herself or resist. They beat her until her wolf was too weak to hold on, and eventually, she’d be forced to shift back to her human form.
Bile rises in my throat as I experience her terror and pain through the memories she wanted to bury and forget. Yet, here I am, digging them up and forcing her to live through the same nightmare all over again.
The rogue men she was with tortured her in every way possible. I can’t comprehend how vile someone has to be to do the things they did to Sage and her mother. And the worst part is that the guilt that was used against her mother to force her to obey ate at her. It still does.
The next memory shows fragments of when she stumbled across her first mate. It portrays their journey and how he tried to save her from them. Her mate did everything in his power only to be slaughtered in front of her while she was chained to a tree and forced to watch. Something about her mate nags at me, he seems familiar for some reason.
A lifetime of pain, torture, and sorrow. Even the little amount of happy memories are overpowered by everything I can only describe as a nightmare.
I can see why she doesn’t trust Andrei. Any sane person wouldn’t trust a single man crossing their path after enduring everything I had just watched.
The Moon Goddess was right. Andrei would have trouble breaking her. There is nothing left to break. Her soul is shattered and haunted by everything she endured. I doubt she will ever find enough strength to heal from her past. Which doesn’t give me much hope for Andrei’s future.
Have I set Andrei up for failure and subjected this poor woman to more pain?