A Long Walk Home Ch. 09

Still she let him do it and they both knew it. She could have easily moved out of the way but she let him hurt her, let him do what he'd been craving to do from the first moment she had touched him in his gallery.

Calmly, Freya reached up and removed the knife from her neck. She kept her gaze fixed on his, watched the emotions running unchecked across his face before he closed down again behind his hard mask. There was horror there, guilt laced with satisfaction, disbelief warring with pleasure. Part of him was glad he'd hurt her but another part of him, the real part of him loathed what he'd just done.

He was a protector not an assassin. The very core of him as a man was to shield, to protect; to die for those under his care. It had been a calculated gamble to reach that part of him, to bring it to the surface in the cruellest way imaginable. Only by targeting the one thing he held dearest could she rip down his barriers, lay him totally bare to the emotions within him.

He would hate her for eternity or however long he lived but he needed it, his soul cried out for it. And it appeared fate had placed her in the role to help him find it. It was almost ironic that her last act would be to save the soul of a damaged wolf, to drag him kicking and screaming to find the inner peace he so denied himself. It was fitting too that she would learn humility at the end of it all, that she would learn to care about something other than herself.

Because Freya Eriksson did care. She'd cared from the very first moment that she'd tasted his blood against her lips, when she placed her lips against his and tasted the one man that had the power to steal her heart and hold it forever.

It was almost liberating to finally admit it to herself. She had been denying it for days now but there was no hiding from it anymore. Dayton Alexander had done the impossible, he had stolen the one thing she had never dreamed could be stolen from her.

It was too late for her now but it was comforting to know that at the end she'd learned what it was like to love, to truly love someone so much that she would do anything, be anything he needed her to be so he could heal.

Dayton Alexander wasn't meant to be hers but there was someone out there, someone who could reap the benefits of her last acts, who could know the love that he had to give when he finally let Faith rest in peace and walked back into living as he was meant to.

"I'll get you a fresh knife," she said coolly, rising from the table to head into the kitchen.

To be continued...