Jaguar:
I’m not sure if I was doing the right thing, but while I was hiding in that closet, I saw my brother brutally silence Verity.
I also noticed two things that slipped from her lips. One was Oliver’s name.
I remembered what Gigi had told me, that Verity used to have a crush on him.
But the way Verity spoke about him didn’t sound like a simple crush.
It felt like something much deeper. I just couldn’t understand why.
Why didn’t the two stories match?
Then another thought crossed my mind. What if Verity didn’t even know what her brother was doing?
Now that I think about it, she was probably only eighteen or nineteen back then.
Maybe even younger. I couldn’t be sure. She was much younger than Gigi and Justin.
So how the heck did everyone assume she knew?
She looked completely clueless.
The way she apologized to Gigi told me she was just as shocked as everyone else.
I just didn’t know what to think.
I left the house and stood outside before texting her again.
I couldn’t leave her behind.
I wasn’t Ragnar. Ragnar could be heartless. Not me.
’Well—we could be heartless when it came to someone else,’ my wolf snapped.
But Verity was Verity.
I don’t know what happened to me. Every one of her tears felt like a drop of water falling onto a hot stove inside my heart.
When I walked inside, I saw her wounds up close, and I just couldn’t understand how Ragnar had decided she shouldn’t go to the hospital.
I hugged her, and she cried against my chest, making me feel like such a horrible man for everything that had happened.
All this time, we had only seen her beauty and her composed posture. Why hadn’t we looked beyond that?
When I pulled away from the hug, instead of letting her walk on her own, I slipped my arms beneath her and carried her to the bedroom.
I laid her down as carefully as I could.
Then I cupped her face in my hands, gently brushing my thumb over the bruise on her cheek.
She winced in pain, so I softened my touch even more.
"I’ll get you help. You don’t need to stay here because someone is threatening someone."
I don’t know why those words left my lips. I couldn’t even bring myself to say Gigi’s name at that moment.
We couldn’t just ignore Verity.
That fucking monster had beaten her.
I just didn’t know what had come over me.
There was so much anger inside me that I couldn’t suppress it.
My wolf kept wanting to take over so I could find that man.
How the fuck dare he lay his hands on Verity?
"No!" Just as I was about to stand up, Verity grabbed my hand, stopping me.
"We cannot go to the hospital," Verity whispered, slowly shaking her head because she was still in pain.
"Why not?" I asked, sitting down beside her.
"Because the note said if we went to the hospital, he’ll come for—" She paused, gulped, then continued, "He’ll come for Gigi."
As soon as she said that, I felt like my heart would stop.
Not because of what the note said. I had already known that from when Ragnar was yelling at her.

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