Reborn

Chapter Thirty Three

SHADOW'S POV

I was officially losing it.

I was losing my damn mind. Every day spent without Violet was another day I spent becoming increasingly more desperate to find her. I had no idea what Benjamin was doing to her but knowing the things he had done in the past, I knew it couldn't be good. I was terrified for her, knowing what could happen when his anger got out of control.

We were running out of time, I knew that. Everybody was working constantly to find out where Benjamin could have taken her but we were coming up empty every single fucking time. I was going out of my damn mind worrying about her, wondering what he was putting her through. For all I fucking knew, he had claimed her as his already and I hated that, hated that I wouldn't know until it was too fucking late to stop it.

If I lost her...

"Where the fuck has he taken her?!" I yelled, kicking the table over in frustration.

"Was that really necessary?" Vince asked me, staring flatly. "You need to calm down, Shadow. Panicking is not going to get her out of there."

"It doesn't look like we're getting her out of there at all!" I glared. "Benjamin hates me. He despises me for what I did. He could be hurting her because of me for all I fucking know and you expect me to calm down?!"

"What did you do to him?" Ric asked me. He'd barely left the house since we'd brought him back, too drained to do anything. Rose stayed by his side, giving him blood bags because he couldn't even summon the energy to go hunting. He had become another victim of Benjamin's and I knew I was partly to blame.

I sighed, recalling the events that led to Benjamin's hatred for me. I hadn't even in my right mind back then. I had still been trying to recover from all the shit Viktor had put Vince and I through and I tried to forget that in any way I could. My anger consumed me; it didn't matter that Viktor was gone because everything that had happened was still ingrained in my mind. I was still the monster he'd created because I didn't know to be anything else. It haunted me constantly, no matter where I went and I just hadn't been able to handle that.

So I drank a lot, slept around and killed anyone that crossed my path. I did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted and nobody could stop me.

I came across Benjamin one night after a particularly bad day of being tortured by the memories. I could smell the blood running through his veins and even though he wasn't alone, I attacked. I killed his three friends and when I bit him, I thought nothing of it.

I didn't know he was a wolf until years later, when he stepped into a bar I'd been at with Vince. I thought the guy had died when I'd bit him and I'd had no reason to think he was a wolf.

If it hadn't been for Vince, Benjamin probably would have killed me then. Whatever had happened to Benjamin after I'd bit him, I didn't know and I didn't care, but I knew he blamed me for the fact he is now a hybrid. No amount of me telling him I couldn't turn a wolf into a hybrid made a damn bit of difference to him because in his eyes, I was to blame.

And I had drained three of his friends and carelessly let their bodies fall to the ground, so maybe he did have a valid reason to hate my guts. I just assumed he would have died that night too.

Pure and simple, he was a psychopath and he wasn't above fighting dirty if it meant getting what he wants. I'd heard the stories over the years, from people who had escaped his clutches ─ Marl included.

So to know that Violet was now with him, suffering because she'd believed there had been no other way to get Ric back, well, I wasn't happy.

Not wanting to get into it again, I merely shook my head. Alec had already made it perfectly clear what he thought about what I'd done to Benjamin and his friends and truthfully, I couldn't blame him for being disgusted, but he just didn't understand. He had been lucky not to have known Viktor.