Theron stared at Aveline, his hands trembling at his sides.
All night, his mind had run through a hundred terrible possibilities. He had imagined her hurt, cornered, broken. Worse. He had imagined the forest taking her from him before he could reach her.
And when he finally found her… She had thrown herself between him and one of those monsters.
She had protected it.
And then, as if that were not enough, she had looked at him and called herself a slave.
For a moment, his thoughts simply stopped.
He knew, even now, that he had crossed a line. The words he had thrown at her, that he had rescued her, taken vengeance for her, given her everything, had been ugly. Crass. Wrong. He knew that. He never did any of that to get something in return from her. He did it because he wanted to, and he turned it into something cheap.
But a slave?
Really?
Was that truly how she saw herself all this time?
Every smile she had given him. Every time she had leaned in... Every kiss…
