Fire And Ice

Chapter 91 - Retribution: Origin and Demise

Natalia's P. O. V

Barely ten minutes out of the shed, the whole thing was up in flames. I continued walking, only pausing to look back when the boom of an explosion shot through the air.

'How could you?' Candy finally cried, her voice cracking, 'How could you just leave him there?'

'What? Did you want me to carry him out?'

'I don't know, maybe not set the place on fire!' Her retorting screech had me staggering and holding my head, 'He didn't deserve to die in flames and you know it!'

"He's not dead." I said out loud, hating the way my voice sounded like I wasn't just trying to convince her.

'How would you know, when you left him bleeding out and chained to the floor?'

'I gave him the key.'

She wasn't having it, 'He looked awful when you left him! He wanted nothing more than your forgiveness and you brutalized him, how do you expect him to have the strength to get himself out?'

'He left me brutalized and in pain when he rejected me! He wasn't any better than the others, I was just returning the favour.'

She went mute. When I thought the topic was done, moisture dampened my cheeks and I raised a hand to feel the tears pouring from my eyes. Tears that were not my own.

'He was better than them, Nat.' She said finally, her voice empty, 'You went too far and you know it. He just wanted to love you but you couldn't have that, could you? Even if you didn't get back together, the very idea of someone alive willing to spend his life with you must feel so wrong to you. You tried to push Hailey away but romantic love is just too much so you had to burn it- burn him.'

By the time she was done, the tears on my face were mine too. Her words cut me deep, opening a chasm within me so deep that it brought me to my knees in the middle of the empty street.

Hurt stabbed through me, fuelled by the fact that she would even say that to me at all. After everything she'd seen me through, how could she turn on me? How could she bear to say such things? All because of Callum?

Then fear and self-loathing began to trickle in.

What if she was right? I knew I'd resigned myself to the absence of romance, but what if that was born not out of my lack of desire, but a lack of anything in me worth loving?

What if deep down, I knew it too?

I didn't notice when the familiar light blue van pulled up in front of me, till Kirstin had touched my shoulder, only to recoil with a hiss of pain.

"Alpha? You're practically on fire, what's wrong? Did they do something to you?"

I shook my head and looked up at her. The soft concern in her eyes told me she hadn't seen Harry yet. I wondered how she'd look at me if she knew what I'd done to him. It was certainly more than she'd likely intended, but what choice did I have? He'd threatened me first, with a horror I never wanted to experience, one she'd been a victim of herself.

"I dropped them off at the pack house." She informed me, "Nobody was around, they must still be at the training grounds. We should hurry, Hailey and Tim have already secured him in his basement."

The very suggestion of him sent my blood rushing in my ears, forcing all my emotions and uncertainty aside for a singular, murderous intent. Everything I'd done would come down to this final act of retribution.

This was it.

I got to my feet and climbed into the van with Kirstin. She drove as inconspicuously as she could and parked some yards away from his home. We left the van and made our way to the house, unseen from the effects of the necklaces we wore. The closer we got, the more my heart felt like it would burst out of my chest.