The words hit like a slap, and for a moment I can't breathe around the pain of them.
"I'm not them," I manage.
"No. You're not." He's close enough now that I can see the tension carved into every line of his body, the way he's holding himself still through sheer force of will. "You're stronger than any of them. Fiercer. More likely to survive whatever the curse throws at you. And I still couldn't take the risk. Because losing you would destroy me in ways that three hundred years of loneliness never could."
"That's not fair."
"None of this is fair." His voice roughens, cracks at the edges. "You think I wanted to lie to you? You think I enjoyed watching you drink that tea every night, knowing what it was doing, hating myself more with every cup? I wanted to tell you. Every single day, I wanted to tell you. But every time I opened my mouth, all I could see was your name carved into that wall next to forty-seven others, and I couldn't—I couldn't?—"
He stops. Swallows hard. And for the first time, I see the cracks in his composure—real cracks, not the careful controlled grief he's been showing me. This is raw. This is bleeding. This is a man who's been tearing himself apart for months and hiding it behind a mask of calm.
The bond—weak as it is, damaged as he's made it—still pulls at me. Still wants me to go to him, to smooth the pain from his face, to tell him I understand even though I don't. Even though I can't.
But it doesn't change what he did.
"You should have told me," I say, and my voice shakes despite my efforts to keep it steady. "You should have explained your fears and let me decide. Instead you took that away from me. Drugged me. Lied to me. Made me think I was going crazy, made me think something was wrong with the bond, when it was you all along."
"I know."
"That's not good enough."
"No," he agrees quietly. "It's not."
The anger is still there, burning in my chest like dragonfire. But underneath it, something else is breaking—something that loved him, that trusted him, that thought maybe for the first time in her life she'd found someone who would never lie to her.
That was stupid.
Everyone lies.
"I need to go," I finally manage, and my voice sounds like it belongs to a stranger. "I can't be here right now. I can't look at you."
Even as I say it, part of me is screaming to stay. To let him explain more. To fall into his arms and pretend none of this happened, pretend we can go back to yesterday when I still believed he was the one person who would never hurt me.
"Where will you go?"
"Anywhere that isn't here." I back toward the door, keeping my eyes on him—on the man I love, the man who betrayed me, the man whose child is growing inside me right now. "Don't follow me. If you have any respect for me at all—if any part of what you said was real—you'll give me space to think."
His jaw tightens. I can see the war playing out behind his eyes—the alpha instinct to follow, to protect, to refuse to let his pregnant mate walk away from him into danger. But he stays where he is. Forces himself still.
"I'll be here," he says quietly. "When you're ready to talk. Or scream. Or tell me you're leaving forever. I'll be here."
I don't answer.
I just turn and walk out.
And I don't look back.
23
Kess
I don't makeit far.
The corridor stretches before me like a throat, stone walls pressing close, torchlight throwing shadows that flicker across my path like living things. My feet carry me forward without conscious direction—away from him, away from his study and his careful logic and the devastating explanations I can't shake loose from my skull.
At what point does trust become stupidity?
The words echo through me, refusing to fade. He wasn't wrong—that's the worst part. Forty-seven omegas trusted they could survive, and forty-seven omegas died screaming in his arms. His fear isn't irrational. It's earned. Paid for in blood and carved names and three centuries of loss.
