Taken Over (The Ravening #2)(48)
Author: Erica Stevens

I glared defiantly back at him as I struggled to break free of his tight hold. “I am not going to hurt you,” he snarled.

“How do I know that?” I demanded breathlessly. “How can I believe anything that you say, anything that you do!?”

He watched me for a moment longer before he released me suddenly. Holding up his hands, he walked a couple of steps away. “Because I have never hurt you before, and I never will.”

I blinked at him in surprise, torn by what he was saying, and everything I had just witnessed. What I had just seen. He’d lied to me repeatedly, he’d pretended to be something he wasn’t. He’d pretended to be human. I was filled with the heartbreaking certainty that I didn’t know him at all. “You’ve lied to me repeatedly. I have no idea who or what you are.”

Anger filtered over his features, though the black did not return to his face, I could sense it lurking just beneath the surface. “You know exactly who I am. I’m the person that’s kept you alive. I’m the person you claimed to love.”

“But you’re not a person,” I breathed.

He recoiled as if he’d been slapped. For a moment guilt and uncertainty flared hotly through me. I was ashamed of myself. I didn’t know who he was, I wasn’t entirely certain what he was, but he had saved my life. Many many times he had saved my life, and no matter how betrayed and deceived I felt I still loved him, I always would. Even if he tried to kill me. I didn’t want to cause him any hurt, I didn’t want him to feel like I felt right now, but I couldn’t stop myself from striking out at him.

Couldn’t stop myself for inflicting some measure of hurt on him, because I was so unbelievably hurt by him.

“No,” he agreed. “I’m not.”

The blunt admission was like a cold blast of water against my heated skin. I had known it, I had seen it, but I hadn’t truly believed it until that moment. Hadn’t fully understood it until he confirmed every horrible thought, emotion, and fear that tangled within me. “What did they do to you?” I breathed. Even as I asked the question I knew that I was wrong. This hadn’t been done to him.

He looked at me over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed as he scowled. There was so much anger in him, so much murderous rage still lingering beneath the surface that I found myself taking an instinctive step away from him. I didn’t know him, not anymore, but I was strangely certain that he still wouldn’t hurt me. “They didn’t do anything to me. I was born this way.”

My mouth dropped, my legs began to shake as he confirmed what I had suspected. I thought I was going to fall, thought I was going to melt into a puddle of boneless goop right there on the forest floor. How could I have been so wrong about everything? “How… how is that possible? I’ve known you…”

My voice trailed off, I leaned heavily against the tree behind me. Cade had been five when his family had moved to town. Cade’s family had been wealthy; his father a prominent lawyer whose own father had once been a congressman. Mr. Marshall had been intending to run for office himself when he was killed. Cade’s mother had been a teacher in our elementary school and had enrolled Cade there. She’d been a sweet woman who always smelled of raisin cookies and Play-Doh.

Cade and Aiden had been in kindergarten together. A year behind them, I was not yet in school when Aiden brought Cade home for the first time. I remembered that day vividly, I always would. I could recall him standing there, skinny and disheveled, as he’d played catch listlessly with Aiden. I remembered being struck by the fact that he seemed to take no joy in the act of playing as other children would, as Aiden did. Cade had been wearing a spider-man shirt and jeans, and his face had been emotionless, until he’d seen me. I hadn’t known it at the time, I was too young I couldn’t have, but the shocked look and wide eyes that had transformed his face would forever be in my heart. Forever be a part of me.

Aiden had tried to shoo me away from them, annoyed to have his little sister trying to interrupt his time with his new friend. Cade had insisted that I stay and play with them; he had in fact taught me how to throw the football the best he could with my small hands and uncoordinated movements. He’d come as Aiden’s friend, but there had been an instantaneous bond between us. He had never treated me as Aiden’s annoying younger sister, he’d always been kind, patient and gentle with me in a way that neither Aiden, nor any of his other friends, ever had been. I hadn’t known what love was then, but I did now, and I recognized the fact that I had loved him even then. Had loved him from the moment my eyes landed on him in his comic book gear.

Cade spent the next three years at our home nearly every weekend, and at least a few days a week after school, he would come over. If Aiden went to his house, I would also be invited along, though I wasn’t allowed to spend the night when Aiden did. Cade had stopped coming over immediately after his parents were killed in a botched home robbery. He had pretty much faded from my life after that. Though he was placed into foster care, we had continued to go to the same school, but where he had once been a constant presence in my life, a steady friend, he barely spoke to me again. I had been hurt by his abrupt dismissal of me, but I had been a child, and I had moved on. Until the night of my father’s funeral, when Cade had come back to me, comforted me and allowed me to cry when I would not cry in front of the others. And then he had disappeared from my life again afterward.

Cade had gone out of his way to avoid me until the attack began, though I’d often caught him watching me in the halls or in class. I hadn’t known how to approach him again, hadn’t known what to say to him. The older he got the more intimidated I became by his good looks, and the aloof air that set him aside from a lot of the other boys in school. And then there had been Bret, and though I had been acutely aware of Cade still watching me, I had tried to move on with a life that had not included him in almost ten years.

Then The Freezing had occurred, and he hadn’t left my side until they had taken him from me. I’d thought they’d killed him, that they were torturing him. Instead they had just brought him home. They had just taken him back to where he belonged, and it was not here, it was not amongst us. It was not with me.

“Lies. All of it, everything. It’s all been lies.” My voice was choked, hoarse. I could barely think straight let alone speak well as my head spun with the implications. “Oh shit,” I moaned, closing my eyes as waves of anguish washed over me. “Oh hell.”