Chapter Twenty
Catherine laid on the kitchen table, sobbing into her hands long after he’d left her. Through the glass doors he’d slammed shut and cracked with the impact, she could hear a beast howling. The howling sounded agonized, as if it had experienced the worst betrayal imaginable. She couldn’t stop seeing the look of pain and unfiltered hurt on his face when he’d glimpsed the teeth marks along her thigh. She couldn’t remember how she’d managed to let him get so far without telling him the truth. She wanted to tell him about it moments before he’d started touching her. She’d lost control and now… she’d probably lost
him.
Memories of the night she’d gotten his mark breached the gates she’d erected. They flowed around her, drowning her. She suddenly remembered his hands, the cold look in his eyes, the feel of him pressed between her legs. Catherine stood up from the table and went to the sink. She searched under the sink until she found something she could use.
Not caring about her naked state, she walked through the house and into the shower. She turned the heat up and sat down. She opened her legs and started to use the scouring pad to scrub her skin. She glared down at the mark on the fleshy inner part of her thigh. Tears continued to blur her vision as she started to scrub the mark. Sobs broke through the sound of the shower as the familiar pain came. Her muddled vision picked up on the introduction of red to the water swirling down the drain.
Catherine kept scrubbing for, she didn’t know how long. She didn’t stop until the water had long since turned cold. She stood and limped out of the shower. She used a black towel to dab at the blood streaking down her leg. She wiped away where she’d been scrubbing and a broken sob left her mouth. Her skin had already started healing. The scar stitched itself back together, as it always did. A blatant reminder of how weak she was.
Catherine walked to her bed and curled into a ball. She hugged her legs to her chest and watched the clock, listening for when her mate would return home. The clock showed 2 am before she succumbed to sleep’s pull.
A soft tickle brushed across her hip. Catherine brushed it away. A moment later the tickle returned and she tried to roll over only to realize her hips were pinned down. Panic surged through her body and she jolted awake. Her heart rate slowed when she recognized the smooth dark reddish brown hair laying across her pubic bone. Catherine couldn’t see his eyes but she knew he was awake and she knew what he was looking at.
She stiffened when his fingers traced the mark on her thigh. She noticed the soft light coming through the window and checked the clock to see it was nearly 6 in the morning. Graham smelled like his usual apple cider with a mixture of freshly turned soil and pine. He must have returned quite recently.
“I didn’t notice it before… the dark bruising surrounding the mark,” Graham mused, brushing his knuckles against the unmarked skin of her lower thigh. Catherine tried to dissect his tone but could not tell exactly how he was feeling.
“I’m sorry.” It’s all she could think to say.
His knuckles stilled along her skin and he shifted his head on her stomach to look up at her. His eyes were filled with a saddened curiosity. He sighed and gave her a nod before looking back at her leg. “You didn’t want it.”
“No,” she answered firmly. “When it happened, I was… I didn’t know if…”
Graham tightened his grip on her thigh, making her whimper. “Stop. I can’t. I can’t hear about it.” Catherine nodded. Tears filled her eyes but she refused to let them fall. He was here, holding her. She didn’t want to ruin it with the full truth of what happened. He looked up at her and the intensity in his eyes made her gasp. “Did you mark him too?” Catherine shook her head. His shoulders seemed to relax infinitesimally. “You’re mine,” he growled, seemingly more to himself than her. Catherine nodded sharply in agreement. His brow furrowed in slight surprise. Had he expected her to fight him on it? He sat up on his elbow, allowing her to see his expression as he continued to inspect her thigh. He turned it slightly and tilted his head as he thought. Finally he let out a decisive sigh. “I will have to remove it.”
“Yes, please,” Catherine breathed, perhaps too eagerly as she opened her legs more for him to do what he will.
He eyed her speculatively. “It won’t be like marking you on your neck. It will hurt. On top of that my venom will burn through the other…” He snarled. “It will burn out the rival venom in your system. It will be excruciating.”
“I don’t care,” Catherine said with as much conviction as she could allow in her voice. She reached out tentatively to stroke his cheek. She let out a relieved sob as he closed his eyes and leaned into her palm. “I’m yours, Graham. I’m only yours. Please, take it away.”
He nodded once in agreement and maneuvered his half-naked body over hers. He positioned her thigh for him to access the spot with his teeth. He glared down at in concentration. The mark on her skin was made by someone with a smaller jaw than Graham but she knew his bigger teeth might help cover the original scar there. She watched his canines slip over his lips and his eyes blacken. He glanced up at her.
“I need you to try to stay still. Grab hold of something,” he ordered.
Catherine let her head fall back on the pillow and bunched the bed sheets into her fists. She felt Graham get himself into his final position with his torso
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Chapter Twenty
over her left leg and his left arm pinning her waist down. She tried to stay calm. She knew the more tense she became, the worse it would be. She felt the prick of his teeth puncturing her skin and relaxed as the pain was minimal. Graham’s grip on her tightened and he sunk them in deeper.
Catherine clenched the sheets, twisting them as her muscles tightened against the mounting pressure. She felt his venom start to leech into her system. As she prepared herself for the frying of her system, his teeth pulled inward, slicing her skin and removing the visual reminder of the scar. She cried out at the deep laceration and the sickly warm feeling of her blood flowing down the inside of her thigh to puddle beneath her leg. Her body instinctively wrenched away but his iron grip on her waist kept her lower half pinned.
Graham pulled away slowly, easing his teeth from her skin. He licked the wound, sealing it closed. Catherine was breathing heavily. She could feel his gaze on her but while the pain from his bite was subsiding, something even worse was starting to make itself known. Catherine’s back lurched off the bed. Her toes curled beneath her and she bucked sideways as the venom started to burn every nerve ending within her.
Sweat coated every inch of her skin, she shivered against the cold and her head pounded. Waves of searing pain shot from her thigh and coursed through her body. Her air was caught in her lungs, unable to escape due to the pain keeping her brain from communicating with her muscles. Blood in her veins turned to molten lava, boiling her from the inside. The world around her ceased to exist. There was only pain. There was only the cruel joke that was her life. She was going to die. She knew there was no surviving this. She couldn’t take it anymore. As the pain overtook her body and mind, Catherine opened her mouth and let out a soul-curdling scream.
Surrendering to Destiny
