“Alek, stop. Don’t hurt them.” She peered over Kingston’s shoulder, but all I saw was someone who needed me to take her. I wanted to hear her scream my name. To feel her nails clawing down my back as I drove inside her.
Reaching for Kingston’s shoulder, I snarled deep in warning. “I can make it quick.”
Fire raced through my scalp as something gripped my hair hard enough to pull it out. “No, son. You’ll do no such thing.”
I twisted around, finding my fury mirrored in my father’s eyes. “She is mine.”
His brows lifted. “I’m glad you finally seem to realize that. Does this mean you remember her?”
I couldn’t answer the question. Not only because I was in a full-blown berserker’s rage, but because I didn’t. Not even a little. I wasn’t sure of anything except that I needed to be inside her more than I needed my next breath, and I was prepared to kill anyone that tried to stop me.
I struggled in his hold, the shackles he’d clamped around my wrists without my knowledge stronger than they should have been. “Release me.”
“No.”
I lunged forward, and I noted the resignation in my father’s eyes as he grasped my face in his hands.
“Why do you always insist on making me hurt you?”
“You couldn’t hurt me, old man. You traded in your balls long ago.”
Fury burned in the back of his ice-blue irises as he snarled. “Thank you, son. That makes this so much easier.”
Then he snapped his head forward, and the last thing I remembered was an explosion of pain.
“Do not makeme ask you again, Satori.”
My mother’s voice was the first thing I heard as I slowly regained consciousness. I blinked a few times to clear my vision. Glass walls. A plain, nearly empty space. Imprisoned again, then.
“Oh, it’s Satori now,Cuska?” Aunt Quinn stood with my father, uncle, and mother, her posture defensive.
“Answer the fucking question, or you’ll have another berserker to deal with,” my mother spat, the anger pouring off her surpassing that of my father’s.
My uncle wrapped his hand around the back of Quinn’s neck, pulling the choker she always wore a little tighter. “They deserve the truth, princess.”
“Fine. Yes. I took them.”
Took them? What did she take?
“Quinn,” Uncle Finley said, the disappointment in his voice unmistakable. “How could you? After everything we went through, you’d really do that to someone else?”
She spun out of his hold, her eyes filled with lavender fire. “I did what I had to do. When those boys were born, I swore I’d do anything to keep them safe. I kept my vow when no one else wanted to step up to the plate.”
My mother took a step closer to her. “Quinn, no. Not like that. You promised never to interfere with our memories again.”
Her finger shook as she leveled it at my mother. “I never made you that promise. Only him.” She pointed to my uncle. “The boys were never part of the arrangement.”
“You took Alek’s memories?” Father asked. “She is his mate, Satori. No wonder he slipped into the bloodlust. A berserker deprived of their mate is more dangerous than anything else in existence.”
So that’s what this emptiness inside me was. She’d taken away my memories of Sunday. My mate. Anger and grief clashed within me. How could she do that to me?
Quinn snorted. “You haven’t seen Finley’s reaction to a scratched hood on one of his precious cars, then.”
“Not the time for jokes, sweetheart,” Finley said, his expression grim. “Have you already forgotten what it did to me when you took away my memory of you?”
Her shoulders sagged, but her expression remained fierce. “You know I can’t forget anything.”
“Then you, better than anyone, know that coming between mates is the worst thing you could ever do. Death would be kinder than ripping out a man’s soul. Give them back, Quinn. Right now.”