I was already slipping away. Mel’s gentle sleep and Sin’s stable aura enveloped me like bubble wrap that popped every time I moved, plunging me further into sleep.
There was a sudden bang from the loft door, but my eyes were already closed.
Kai suddenly burst to life through the bond, finally dropping the wall between us, but it was too late.
“What did you do?” he yelled as Sin released me.
“Kai, just wait,” Sin said in his ‘calm the hell down’ voice.
“What did you fucking do!?” he screeched, but my alpha’s aura had already got me, and I drifted off to the sound of Kai’s shrill voice.
Melanie
Igroaned as I stretched out my body. My stomach still hurt from the kick Caspian’s dad gave me, but everything else was so light and good. It was the same way I felt after fucking them for the first time, and I’d snuggled up with Sin and Kai…before everything else.
I was surrounded by a cloud of warmth that rocked like a boat on the waves, and I wiggled closer to the source. I’d never felt so safe, like nothing bad could ever happen to me.
Except, instead of the softness I thought was floating around me, my left ear pressed against hard muscle, and Caspian’s faint heartbeat pulsed in my ear.
I didn’t want to open my eyes as the memories flickered through me. Of what had happened. Of what we’d done.
It had been like that since the restaurant. I’d wake up, and my body would remember, and I needed their warmth to stop the horror of it from taking me over.
We’d stayed in Kai’s nest the whole time, just holding onto Caspian to keep him calm with both conventional and unconventional methods.
I couldn’t be away from Caspian for more than a minute without panicking, and every part of me needed him. If I stopped touching him, I’d still desperately reach for him through the bond. Kai promised I’d be embarrassed about it once it wore off, but I couldn’t think that far in the future when everything was so intense.
Pressing harder against the warmth, I hoped it would wrap itself around me like a blanket that could protect me from the world. If it was so hard and muscular, it could be a shield that could keep me safe from the memories attacking me.
I squeezed my eyes closed, bending my body, rubbing my nose against the deep scent of caramel that instantly calmed me.
But my hands balled into fists, and my back bowed as I whimpered. I curled in on myself, shaking, desperately pushing away the shock of Zania’s face and her screams as I—
“Pssst.”
I jumped, my eyes snapping open.
Kai threw me a wink, a chuckle winding out from him and instantly settling me.
He was cosied up on Caspian’s left side, both of us closing our alpha in. He lay on Caspian’s left pec, and I was on the right, watching each other as love flowed around us.
“Kai! What are you—” but he cut me off, putting his finger to his lips with a wicked grin.
Caspian’s chest slowly rose and fell with his every breath, gentle rumbling, like a mix between a growl and a purr.
I instantly relaxed into him because my alpha’s aura was so calm that he had to be asleep. I never imagined Caspian could be so peaceful, or that I’d ever see him asleep in the first place.
Kai was teaching me how to use my aura so I could help Caspian, but us smothering him in love couldn’t take away what he’d done to Zania, even if he didn’t remember it.
It was even harder when Kai was pretending he wasn’t furious with them. Caspian and I had taken days to heal, so Kai and Sin probably thought I couldn’t hear or sense them arguing.
My omega instincts wouldn’t let me focus on anything else except for Caspian. He was the still point of my life, and everything else circled around him. But Kai kept doing everything he could to drag me out of it.
I arched my neck, looking up at Caspian’s sleeping face, and softened at how relaxed he looked compared to yesterday.
Until my gaze followed the lines of his arms, which were strung up, still chained to the bed frame so he couldn’t lash out, even though all he’d done was snarl and growl.
His biceps pressed against his ears, and sturdy leather handcuffs and chains, Kai said he “just happened” to have in his closet. The tightness of them echoed on my own skin and Caspian’s numb muscles, but thankfully, his whole body had stopped screaming.
