“I’m sorry for everything I’ve put you through. I can never express how deeply I will regret not treating you as you should have been from the moment you entered our lives.” He licked his lips again. “Your softness, your heart. You are everything we’ve always needed and didn’t know.”
He pressed his hands onto the carpet I’d rolled out across the wood floors before everything had been moved around. Dorian lowered until I could see his scarred shoulders.
“It’s fair that you take out your anger on me.” Then it clicked what he was saying. What he was offering. I turned my hand andlooked at the wooden rod, then at him. Some of the scars on his back were shaped like it.
At the hotel, Cade said I could hit him.
Emotion swelled in my throat.
All they had known was pain, and he wanted to prove himself to me by offering this? My hand went limp, and the rod clattered on the floor. Dorian’s shoulders jerked at the sound.
I could never hurt him. Dropping to my knees, I scooted forward and sank my fingers into his thick, silky hair.
“Dorian,” I chastised, sliding my arms around his shoulders and tucking myself closer until his head pressed against my belly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, arms winding around my waist. “I’m so sorry.”
He leaned harder against me, sliding lower and lower until his head rested on my lap. Tenderness filled my chest. His vulnerability battered my senses.
I held him tight in my arms, rubbing his textured back in circles. All the pain they’d experienced, I couldn’t imagine how hard all of this had been for them.
Damn their upbringing. Damn the adults that failed them at that damn orphanage.
Chapter 43
Sitting in the backseat of the car I’d ordered, I swiped through my messages. My Alphas had been quick to replace my cheaper cell phone with a needlessly expensive one and put me on their unlimited plan. I hadn’t had much of a choice. I tapped the screen to send my response to a commission request on the new art account I’d made.
The driver rolled up to the dilapidated building. “Are you sure this is the spot?” she murmured, eyeing the sprawling structure.
I wanted to see where they’d grown up. The place that had hidden so much pain in my Scent Matches.
“Yes.” I pushed open the car door. “Thank you.” I shut the door, ended the car service via my phone, and tipped the driver. Then I shoved it back in my pocket.
Overgrown foliage sprouted from the dirt. Dry leaves crunched on my way up the stone path to the wooden door.I climbed the stairs and stopped, eyeing the looming structure that my Alphas had grown up in. The only place they ever remembered living in as children.
I yanked the yellow caution tape, ripping it off the door, and nudged open the door as wide as it could go so sunlight spilled inside. An old grandfather clock lay on its side with glass shattered around it. Spiderwebs clung to almost every surface, and a tree seemed to be growing through a large shattered window. I rubbed my arms.
It was everything I would expect an abandoned place to look like.
The same floorboard that I’d stepped on upon entering creaked. I closed my eyes and sighed. Of course they’d called my bluff when I told them I was going to visit Sonia to thank her for her help.
They were going to be so pissed.
I didn’t turn around.
“I know, I know, I should have told you I was coming,” I grumbled. “But I knew you’d tell me no.” I stopped talking. There was a creak, then the sound of the door slamming shut, which cut off most of the light source.
Familiarcloying cologne reached my nose. I whirled, but I was too late. Father gripped the back of my hair. I yelped, grabbing his wrist as if I could force him to soften himself.
Father squeezed even harder, and I stopped fighting to get free.
My breath sawed from my lips with painful gasps. “Let me go,” I cried out.
Father looked at me with disappointed eyes. “They let you have such freedom,” he tsked. “You have those fools wrapped around your finger.”
“You’ve been watching me?” The words were all I could force out of my too tight throat.
“Watch you?” he retorted with a sneer. “As if I have nothing better to do.”
