“I shouldn’t be going into heat,” I advise. My fingers trail towards my stomach.
He cocks a brow following the motion. “Who is your pack?”
He leans over me now, pressing me back into the cushions, his hot breath fanning my face.
I want more than anything to latch onto him, to beg for his knot, but I control myself as best I can. Only a slight whine escaping my lips to provide evidence of my dilemma.
He uses one arm to balance over me, but the other hand comes to my face. His long fingers pinching my chin as he forces me to stare directly into his eyes. “Wren said your name is Xenia Rossi. Is that true?” His tongue lashes out, wetting his lips as he leans closer and closer.
Following his movement in a trance, I gulp down my urges and offer him a soft nod. “Yes. But I’m not a part of thefamily.” I will him to believe me. Pushing as much oomph into the words as I can. “Who was Charles to you?”
He flinches at my question, shutting his eyes and breathing in and out a few times. “He’s our son.”
Their son.
Heat flushes my face, but this time it is from something else entirely.
Embarrassment.
Shame.
Grief.
Grief is a painful waltz that I have not had the ability to escape. And it has left meexhausted.
“He’s dead?” I ask in the smallest voice I can. I don’t want to hear it again, but at the same time Ineedto know. Ineedto hear it again.
There is a flash of genuine surprise across Pierce’s face, but instead of answering he uses his hold on my chin to move my head. Left to right, up and down. Examining each piece of my skin, he asks one of his own. “Who hurt you, Omega?”
The question takes every last piece of my sanity.
It delivers a crushing blow directly to my dome.
“Get off of me.” I don’t recognize the voice, but the words leave my lips.
Pierce doesn’t move. Instead, he releases my chin to grab hold of my arm, to examine that next.
I attempt to pull free, but it is clear who is stronger.
“Who hurt you,Omega?” He doesn’t bark the question, but it is simmering just beneath the surface.
“Let me go!” I scream in his face this time. My panic clawing its way to the surface. I do not know if it is his shock or my determination that allows me to physically rock him off of me.
But I don’t pause or look back to find out. I rip open the door. And then another.
And I run. My mind flickering back and forth between the past and present.
Three days of my heat have passed with Luck’s assistance. And it is on the third day that everything combusts.
My brain finally pulls me back to reality. Allows my senses to return. Reminds me that I am in this nest with an alpha.
That I have shared my body. My deepest secrets. My heart.
“He hurt you, didn’t he?” Luck whispers into my ear as he wraps fully around me. “You begged me not to. You made me promise I wouldn’t kill you. What did he do to you, Little Omega?”
It is too much. Too real. This alpha’s genuine concern and questions as I come out of a frenzied state leaves my emotions raw,frayed.
“Tony wouldn’t hurt me. He was my alpha. I loved him.” I sob into Luck’s chest.
