Healed: True Mates Book 3 (Wolf Shifter) (A Craggstone Paranormal Romance) by Olivia Arran Page B

his skin burning into mine, the roughness of calluses at the tips of his fingers like sandpaper, rubbing and smoothing.
    I coughed, clearing my throat, forcing my mind to go back to that horrible day. I didn’t want to tell him, but maybe it might help. Make him understand why he had to move on. “We were young, only teenagers. I had known Max all my life, had grown up with him, had known from when we were kids that we were destined to be together, that we were true mates. We’d snuck out, it was a warm evening, and we were just…discovering each other, exploring the world and each other, together. We ran as wolves in the forest, not too far from here. Max was larking around, as usual—he was such a fun loving guy, easy going and kind. I lost sight of him, thought he was messing with me, so I started trying to track him. You’ve got to remember, I was only fifteen—I didn’t know what I was doing!”
    I swallowed, forcing myself to continue.
    “I was going round in circles, all the time thinking that Max must be having a good laugh at me from wherever he was hiding. I mean, at the time, I couldn’t track a slug’s trail in moonlight! I must have gotten turned around because when I eventually gave up, I was miles from home, deep in the forest. I howled for him, not sure whether to go home or keep looking. I couldn’t understand why he had just disappeared like that. But he didn’t answer.”
    Large fingers gently wiped away the tears that were coursing down my cheeks, then cupped my face, offering silent support.
    “He didn’t come home. Not that night, not ever.” I shook as wracking sobs tore from my chest. If I hadn’t suggested we sneak out, if we’d stayed home that night? Would he still be with me? Would we have a family of our own? Would he have been the one supporting me, comforting me? Loving me?
    Tarq pulled me to his broad chest, absorbing my sounds of anguish into the warm cotton. “What happened to him?” His voice rumbled against my ear.
    “His mom and dad found him the next day. All the bones in his body had been shattered, his skin shredded. He was dead.”
    “But—? You would have heard something!”
    I nodded, expecting the question. “Everyone thought that, too. But I didn’t! And no one believed me. They thought I’d run away and left him to die.”
    “If you didn’t hear anything, then he must have been silenced until you were clear and out of the way.”
    He believed me! Just like that. No questions, no reproachful looks. “That’s the conclusion I finally came to, but it didn’t matter. Everyone blamed me, and I did, too. If I’d just been able to keep up, track better, I could have saved him.”
    “You don’t know that, you could have been killed, too. It wasn’t your fault, none of it was. You were fifteen, for fuck’s sake! Just a kid!”
    “We left Smithrock, Mom and Dad took me away to start fresh where nobody knew. They told me that I couldn’t tell anyone, that if I did, people would start talking again, that everyone would blame me—”
    “Sounds like they blamed you, too—”
    “They did what was best for me, for us, as a family. But they had loved Max like a son. They were devastated when he died.”
    “So, they let their daughter believe she was to blame for something she had no control over. While the real culprits—?”
    “Never found. It had rained overnight, diluting any scent markers that could have led us to them.”
    “Convenient.”
    I pulled away and looked up at him. What did he mean by that?
    He caught my look, expanding on his one word comment. “If you were fifteen, then Eric and his friends would have been in their twenties. The Alpha’s son? I would imagine something so violently against pack law would have been covered up, and quickly.”
    I blinked, mulling his words over in my mind. “But—? How—? Is there anyway of—?”
    “I doubt it. Eric is dead now, and I don’t imagine paperwork was kept…”
    Any new hope that