Words meant as weapons. True words, for she knew with one glance at his anguished face that he was not lying.
She’d prepared herself for his anger, his rebukes, even punishment for disobedience. All those things she would accept as her due, because she’d made her choice.
But not this.
He’d wanted her. Wanted her body, the way men wanted Isabelle and paid for her services. But he obeyed at least some of the rules of human society—and he believed in duty. So he married her—not for love, or even friendship, but because she was worthless to his Cause. Of no use for anything but to relieve his needs in his bed, doing just what he told her to do for the rest of their lives, believing as he believed.
Only she was not his shadow, bound to agree with everything he thought was right and wrong. She’d acted on her conscience, knowing he would disapprove, confident that he would forgive because he loved her. He had never said it, but she had been so certain, so absolutely sure.
She remembered Isabelle’s voice, relating a story she could not accept: of a love that had changed and become jealousy, of imprisonment and tragedy. And Braden’s part in Milena’s death.
“It’s because of Milena, isn’t it?” she said, choking on the words. “You loved her too much, and then she—”
“Loved her?” He laughed. “Is that what you thought? Rowena would not have told you that. She always believed I hated my wife.”
But Rowena had told her, if not in so many words. The real truth lay in Braden’s face.
“You hated Milena,” she whispered. “Because of what she did with that other man—”
“She was my mate in the Cause. Nothing more. She failed to serve her purpose.”
“But you… desired her.”
“She was beautiful,” he said, hard as stone. “She could awaken lust in any man.”
Lust. Lust was all he’d ever felt, for Milena or his new wife.
“And you were jealous,” Cassidy said. “You kept her prisoner, like Rowena—”
“Yes.” He let Cassidy go. “I kept her here, to serve the Cause. She would not accept my authority. She—” He turned his head.
“Why did she go to that other man?” Cassidy said. But she knew the answer to that question. “He made her life a misery,” Isabelle had said, reading from the letter. Without any hope of love from her husband, was she so wrong to seek it elsewhere? If he could not give her children, denying her even that small happiness…
“You didn’t love Milena,” she said. “Everyone else loved her, but you couldn’t. And if you couldn’t love someone like her, you could never love me.”
Some last, fading hope within her waited in mute desperation for a single word, a single motion from him that would prove her wrong. But Braden remained completely immobile, neither looking toward her nor touching her. And so he answered.
She’d made a terrible mistake.
She felt as if a veil were lifted from her eyes, letting her see clearly for the first time—see Braden as he truly was, and herself as she had always been. Foolish, stupid, wanting so badly to belong and to be loved that she ignored the realities that Isabelle had tried to teach her.
She backed away from Braden, choking on unshed tears. She might have gone on for years fooling herself, living in her own childish dreams. She’d always seen the possibilities and the doors opening one by one before her, not the limitations and the high stone walls people—werewolf or human—built to make their world seem safe.
The Cause was Braden’s unassailable barricade, made not only to protect himself but to trap and hold and crush anyone within his grasp. He wouldn’t even look inside those walls to see who or what he destroyed.
Her Tyger turned on her with teeth and claws bared to devour faith and love and everything she had become.
“Now you know,” Braden said, allowing her no respite. “You deceived me as well, Lady Greyburn. Your apparent innocence hides a natural skill for duplicity that I failed to recognize. It seems that I was the naive one.” He gave her a smile grotesque in its desolation. “Our marriage cannot be undone. You have my name, my wealth, and my protection. Seek your happiness elsewhere, Cassidy. You shall never find it with me.”