“Don’t worry,” she mutters when she sees my look. “It feels like luxury compared to the attic.”
Aandshe scores a direct hit to my chest.
Swallowing at the reminder of just how much we have to fucking atone for, I hang back. The cream curtains hanging across the tiny window flutter in the breeze, showing glimpses of the setting sun. It’s not late, but my Soul Bonded looks too exhausted to care as she crawls beneath the covers, tugging them around her in a way that tells me she’s feeling uncomfortable.
“Where do you want me, Bonded?” I ask softly, and her head snaps up.
“Don’t call me that,” she rasps, pointing to the other end of the bed. “You can sit by there.”
I’m not sure how this Soul Bonded connection works, or how exactly my presence is supposed to help, so I follow her instructions. It’s a tight squeeze with both of us and the bed creaks dangerously as I climb on. Sienna pulls her legs up, curling them beneath the blankets to give me space as I prop myself up with my back to the wall.
Leaning my head back, I listen to the harsh sound of her breathing, the slight rattle in her lungs. Every drawn breath sounds painful, and my whole body twitches with the need to crawl up the damn bed and drag her into me.
Baby steps.
We sit in broken silence as the sun sets fully and the room grows dark. Sienna reaches out and switches on a small lamp next to the bed.
“You sleep with the light on?”
“I do now.” Her voice is quiet, and the shame of our fucking actions hits me like a wrecking ball. It keeps doing that, coming and going in never ending fucking punches.
She sleeps with a light on because of us.
“You’re not going to get a great night’s sleep, just to warn you,” she mutters.
I shake out the cramp in my arm. “Baby, I don’t plan on doing any sleeping tonight. All I’m interested in is watching you.”
If her breathing carries on like this, I’ll be counting every inhale.
“Will youstop?” She sits up, covers falling away and highlighting the frailty of her body in the dim light. “You know the first ceremony? I didn’t withdraw after Tristan because ofyou.”
My head jerks to her. “Sienna—,”
“We’d already met,” she snaps, “and I was so certain that even if the others didn’t want me, you did. So when Ollena asked me to withdraw, I didn’t. And then you did exactly the same as the rest of them, and it hurtso much, Jax.”
I shift on the bed, leaning down towards her. “Sienna.”
“Why’d you do it?” she asks, and I stop short, my hand out in mid-air. “Why’d you go along with it?”
“I…,” I search for the right words. I’ve practiced them in my head over and over, knowing this moment might come, hoping that it would, but now that we’re here and she’s looking at me with shattered eyes, it’s not enough.
It will never be enough.
“I was… cocky,” I admit. “I didn’t want to, but I figured we’d find a way out of it pretty quickly. I didn’t know it was going to be you, shortcake. I thought we’d turn up and there would be some random omega standing there, and she’d withdraw and we could work something out and I could go off and find you. I knew that whoever it was, I didn’t want them. Not when I’d already met you.”
Her eyes are wet, and I reach out, catching a tear on my finger. “And then I saw you at the Bonding Ceremony. You were everything I ever wanted,” I tell her softly. “And when it hit me that we were going to do that to you, when I watched Tristan go ahead of me and I saw your face… I will never forget it. Not for as long as I live will I forget how you looked at me.”
She looked then like she’s looking at me now. As if something precious has shattered.
“I made a choice,” I tell her hoarsely. “Trying to do what was best, for my pack, for you… and it was a shitty one. I’m so sorry, shortcake.”
And Sienna is paying the price.
“Sorry isn’t enough, Jax,” she says. She turns her face away from me, slowly laying back down. “You had so many chances,” she whispers. “And you never took a single one.”
I can see her body shaking, and I can’t fucking take it. Sienna jolts when I half crawl, half drag myself into the small space next to her. My frame swallows up most of the bed. “What are you doing?”
“You’re shaking.” Staying on top of the covers, I turn on my side and wrap my arm over her, bundled up in her blankets. She feels like all covers and no Sienna, there’s so little of her.
