Andrei hesitates, one hand on my hips, his thumb slowly circling the skin there. I can’t bring myself to remove anything from myself. I don’t want him to see what’s been done to me, so I make another decision.
I reach for his belt.
My hand shakes as he wraps his fingers around my wrists and grips them, making me look at him. “I can leave them on,” Andrei whispers.
“I don’t want to be the only one naked,” I admit, sounding as uncomfortable as I feel.
Andrei raises an eyebrow at me, but he loosens his grip on my wrists and pulls his hands away from me as he allows me to undo his pants.
I pull his belt off and slowly undo the button on his jeans. No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop my hands from shaking, so eventually, Andrei stops my misery and undoes his pants himself.
He lets his pants fall to the floor and quickly grips my chin to tilt my face up. Our eyes meet. “We don’t have to do anything, Sage. I would never force you to do anything you don’t want to do,” Andrei repeats the words I have already heard from him before.
I’m unsure of the reaction he expects to see, so I nod and chew my lip. My eyes dart everywhere, but at him, as I thought of the possibilities and near future. He has seen the top half of me, but what I truly fear is his reaction after he sees more.
I’m afraid of when his lips will curl with disgust. He treats me gently now, but he’s about to find out that I’m little more than used goods. I’ve been tainted in the most visual ways, the scars they’ve left me with were inflicted with the intent of driving away any man that would dare want to touch me.
They made sure that night they jammed the wolfsbane into me over and over, thrusting it until I bled, that I would never have children, that I would be useless except for being their toy. I was never a person to them, just a hole they could sink into when the need arose.
Which scars will make Andrei give up and reject me? Will it be the ones pressed into my hips? Or the ones on my thighs? No, once he sees what they’ve done, there’s no way he will keep up this gentle nature.
He’s an Alpha and if I ever was to be his mate, my job will be to give him an heir, and I can never do that. They ruined me beyond any possibility of repair and nothing would fix it.
“What’s wrong? I can go,” Andrei’s soft voice breaks through once again, pulling me out of the dreadful thoughts. He has to be suspicious and already wondering what might be going on, since I still don’t move.
“He won’t care, Sage,” Sierra tries to reassure me, even though her words do nothing but raise another unwanted wave of panic to surge through me.
“Did you tell Donnie?” I ask her, and she shakes her head.
I have a feeling that Sierra fears the same thing. The disappointment in her mate’s eyes once he sees me and the things they did to me. As soon as Donnie learns of our inability to fulfill our primary responsibility as a mate, who knows how the wolf will react.
“Well, if he rejects us, he will probably let us go, so it won’t matter,” Sierra mutters under her breath. She is trying to hide the sadness that resonates in her words, but she can’t hide it from me.
She doesn’t want to leave. She likes it here. But it isn’t up to us, once he realizes we can’t even perform what we are made for, he’ll let us go.
I force down the lump forming in my throat. I don’t want to leave, either.
I have grown used to this place and even when Andrei came to me earlier, when I thought he had some random rogue in the basement. I never thought about how I would get out. Instead, I focused on how I would get them out. I had no intention of leaving.
But now, after I finally admit that to myself, Andrei and Donnie can change their minds. They can decide they want to get rid of us.
Andrei reaches for my pants, undoes the button, and stops. I stand, letting him continue. My heart rate skips as I watch him kneel in front of me and tug my pants down.
I clench my eyes shut, refusing to see the disgust on his face. His breath hitches, then, a strangled noise leaves him, before a loud, angry growl echoes off the bathroom walls.
I flinch at the angry sound, bracing myself to be ready to receive his wrath.
Andrei grips my hips and holds me still. I fear the thoughts that run through his mind, and the ideas he might have now.
His soft lips caress my stomach. My eyes fly open and I stare down at him. Out of all of the outcomes I envisioned, this is not one of them. He moves his nose across my skin, stopping where my ovaries are meant to be.
Another reminder of why I won’t allow him to mark me.
Sierra thinks going into the heat will be horrific since I can’t bear children, yet the wolf part of me will demand I mate, even if it is pointless.
“Do the scars still hurt?” Andrei murmurs, moving his hands down the outside of my thighs, over the rough flesh, marred by the wolfsbane. “Do you have nerve damage?” he adds, making me look at him.
“Pardon?” I stare as if he just magically turned into a different person. None of this is right. Maybe I’d damaged my hearing or I’d slipped into a vivid daydream, desperate to not face his true reaction.
Andrei continues to study my legs, his touch gentle but there’s no disgust in his eyes. All of this is too much, I look away, I can’t meet his eyes when he sees the worst of the damage. I have always hated these scars, and it is so much worse since he is now seeing the damage.