My Alpha's Betrayal: Burning in the Flames of His Vengeance novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Her Name

The Stonebrook healer was sober by dawn, and Odessa stood over him with a wooden spoon until he stayed that way.

He stitched Bryn's shoulder in the clinic off the guard kitchen.

She held my hand the whole time and said very little.

When the last stitch was in, he gave her something for the pain, and she was asleep in two minutes.

Odessa tucked a quilt around her chin.

"I'll sit with her," she said. "Go on. Say what you've got to say to him."

Tobias was waiting in the hall, leaning on the wall with his arms crossed.

There was dried blood on his shirt and a long scratch down his jaw.

"Thea," he said.

It was the first time he had said it.

My name in his mouth went through me.

"Yes."

"Your cousin called you that."

"It's my name," I said. "Lena was a lie. I'm sorry."

"Why?"

I had known this moment was coming.

I'd rehearsed it for six weeks in the dark.

I had the whole story ready.

I couldn't make myself pick it up.

I looked at the scratch on his jaw, and the tired set of his shoulders, and the way he had held Bryn's belt tight against her skin.

"I'm Redcliff-born," I said. "I left years ago. Bryn's my cousin, and she lives with a human aunt, and I have nobody else. Crane is hunting her because she's a witness. She saw his men on the night of the fire."

All of it was true except the part about leaving.

It was the shape of a lie that I had built out of truth.

"A witness," he said slowly.

"Yes."

"Why not tell me?"

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