HannasHaven Read Online Free Page B

me.”
    “Christ.” He blew out a breath. “Hanna, of course we’ll help
you. No matter who you are.”
    Misery filled her eyes. “He was my friend. He helped me when
no one else would and I couldn’t give him the one thing he wanted.”
    Marcus held her tight, wanting to soothe her. At the same
time relief surged through him. She hadn’t loved him. She hadn’t mated him.
    “I owed him so much, but every time he touched me…” She
trailed off, but he filled in the pieces. She hadn’t been attracted to him in
the slightest.
    “I think, like me, he was lonely. His family wasn’t well liked
because of their gambling. But because they sometimes brought in money to the
pack accounts they were higher in the hierarchy than my father, who only ever
wasted money on booze.”
    Marcus pondered over everything she’d said. He had so many
unanswered questions, yet felt as though he were stuck in a maze. The wrong
question and he’d find a dead end.
    “Why was your family so low in the pack?”
    She looked away, embarrassed. “My father was an alcoholic.”
    Marcus was astonished. Werewolves didn’t suffer from
alcoholism. Their high metabolism made it hard for them to even get drunk.
    “He always had a bottle in his hand. I think over the years
his wolf died bit by bit. I hardly ever saw him change. The pack thought him
worthless. And he was. I have no friends, no family. The closest pack to us
would have sent me straight back and I had no way of figuring out where another
pack was or how to get there. If I’d set out on foot, they’d have tracked me.”
    The fear in her voice clawed at him, stirring his possessive
instincts.
    If he ever let himself get too close to her, he’d be the
most overprotective bastard there ever was. Hanna was young; she’d barely
lived. She deserved more than a crusty, set-in-his-ways wolf who’d want to
smother her. No, he wasn’t right for her. No matter how much his wolf demanded
he take her for his own.
    “And what would they have done once they found you?” he
asked.
    Hanna shot him a troubled glance and he immediately tamped
his rising anger. His fury would hinder his search for answers.
    She shrugged. “Lock me up, I guess.”
    “Did they ever hit you, hurt you?” Anyone who abused someone
weaker or smaller than themselves was scum as far as Marcus was concerned. When
his mother died, he and his brothers were sent by his stepfather Zachary to
live with his aunt. But his sister had been made to stay with Zachary. She was
his biological child and he had been Alpha at the time.
    No one had known the extent of the abuse he’d dished out to
her. Marcus hated that she’d been hurt by that bastard. When they had found
out, he and his brothers had helped her escape. But still, the thought of the
pain and suffering she’d endured at Zachary’s hands made him feel ill.
    The thought of someone abusing Hanna made him murderous.
    “No.” She let out a humorless laugh. “That would make me
damaged goods.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Instantly, she shut down, her face blanking. She attempted
to rise, but he held her easily.
    “I need to finish dusting, Marcus,” she complained.
    “There isn’t a speck of dust in this place. I’ve let you
avoid this for weeks, Hanna. Time’s up. You are going to tell me everything.
Now. And if not me, then it’s going to be Rye asking these questions and
believe me, he won’t be doing it so gently.”
    Rye was out of patience and Marcus had little left himself.
He’d promised to get the answers they both wanted. Although he’d choose what
exactly to tell Rye and what he’d keep to himself.
    Hanna stiffened, her fear an offensive smell he immediately
wanted to extinguish. But he needed her to talk to him. And protecting her from
Rye’s questions was not going to get her to open up.
    Hanna’s fingers drummed against her thigh. He didn’t grab
for her hand. She had a right to her nerves.
    She stared at the far wall. “They wouldn’t mark