I didn’t let him. I held his face firmly and touched my forehead to his.

“Don’t look away from me. It wasn’t your fault,” I whispered, stroking the lines of his face with my fingers. “Stop blaming yourself.”

“But it wasn’t right,” he said, his voice cracking. “It wasn’t about survival—it wasn’t an honorable fight. It was murder. They wanted a fighter, but I was a killer.”

I pulled his head to my chest and stroked my fingers through his hair. “Shhh. I had no idea. Ben may be the gambler, but you’re the one who wears the poker face. All that anger hiding a man in pain. You deserve so much more than you think.”

Wheeler would never admit the truth to Austin. There was honor in a man who fought for his life, but Wheeler had become suicidal, and men who lost the fear of death were capable of unconscionable crimes. But that wasn’t the case here, not really. No matter how you sliced it, Wheeler was still a victim. Despite how he’d won his battles, the only choices he’d had were to live or die. The animals that trusted him died at his hands, and I wondered if maybe that wasn’t the most humane thing to do.

It made me think of the animals in the shelters that were euthanized. I’d donated money to make more room in those cages because I didn’t want them to die. But which was the real hell for them: living in a cage or death?

My heart shattered as I held this broken man. Wheeler had fought his entire life for his brother, for his family, and for his life. But not one person had ever fought for him.

“They wanted to die,” I whispered, threading my fingers through the tufts of his brown hair.

His glassy eyes rose to mine—detached and filled with disbelief. “What?”

“No one subjected to that level of torture wants to survive. You gave up; what makes you think they hadn’t already given up? What those men did to you was unforgivable, cruel, and karma will come back and slap them on the ass someday. Don’t let them win, Wheeler. Your chains are gone, but now you’ve become your own tormentor.” I brushed his tangled hair back and ran my finger over his thick eyebrow. “You’re not a killer. You were their angel of mercy.”

“I was their angel of death,” he said despondently, sitting back on his legs.

“You’ve turned trust into a sinister word because someone trusting you meant their death.”

He sprang to his feet and headed toward the door. “You’re right.”

I leapt up and hurried after him. “Don’t you dare turn your back on me,” I hissed.

Wheeler placed both hands on the door and leaned forward, lowering his head out of sight. “The carnage I left behind, the screams in my head, the blood in my mouth, the looks on those faces—those things are etched in my mind forever.”

I touched the dragon on his back. “Your wolf’s mind, not yours. You had no control over your animal.”