“And what about our bonds with them?”
“Fuck the bonds! Fuck everything!” he yelled, his despair soaking his voice. “You could have died, and they didn’t do anything!”
His hands stayed rigid on the wheel as he sped through the streets, and my heart sank as Caspian vanished. We were left sitting in the lonely car that was filled with sour amaretto.
All the excitement he’d had when we shared our first bite had twisted into poisonous determination.
“Kai, we have to go back. We can’t do this.”
“I’m keeping you safe,” he said, his chest heaving as his acrid scent filled the car. “They aren’t good enough for you. They never were.”
“And doing this makes up for that?”
It was strange how calm I was, even though I had no idea what Kai planned to do with me.
I thought the madness was over, and that we were going to settle. I stupidly thought that I could go back to a life where I didn’t have to be scared anymore.
But was it ever going to stop?
“I’ll be your only mate now. I told you I’d take you away to a desert island, didn’t I?”
“Is that where we’re going!?” I jolted forward in my seat. “Are we leaving the country?”
Kai shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t take you away from your family like that. But we need to go somewhere where they can’t find us. At least for a little while. Caspian’s fucking company makes it harder for us to get away, but we can do it, okay?” He reached over and squeezed my hand. “We can get away from them.”
“I don’t want to get away from them!” I cried out.
I noticed it after I first met them. Even when we’d bonded, and they could feel exactly what I felt, they still thought they knew me better than I did myself.
‘You’ve just presented, so you can’t control yourself’.
‘He’s manipulating you through the bite, so what you’re feeling isn’t real’.
‘You don’t actually want to be with them. They’ve fucked with your mind’.
It was mostly Sin and Kai, but they kept saying I was their omega, but then treated me like I couldn’t think for myself.
The bite had definitely messed with my mind, and my emotions had been running high since I’d met them, but it didn’t mean I needed them to tell me how I felt.
“Just wait and see. You’ll understand what I mean when it’s just the two of us. You’ll see what I’m talking about.” Kai muttered, never taking his eyes off of the road.
Kai hissed at Sin about only wanting me because it made him feel like an alpha, but what about him? If he loved me, why wouldn’t he listen to me?
The hurt beating from Kai clenched my heart, summoning my own pain. It fought through the horror of experiencing Zania die in my hands, pushing further to reach the deep-seated shamethat was the foundation for my life. And Kai unearthed it with his own fear. His regret. His bitterness.
His alphas weren’t what he needed when all he felt was pure distress. If he needed to run away with me to face the pain that had built up in him for years, then I could do it. It was better that I stayed with him instead of watching him collapse. And that was my decision.
“Okay, Kai, we can go. But I have some conditions.”
Caspian
As soon as I couldn’t feel them, panic burst through me. I'd gone downstairs to finally do some work in my office. Sin locked the room four days ago when I was finally conscious enough to let go of Mel without snarling at him. I needed to catch up on everything I had missed at work after the sheer shit show I’d caused. But I swear, Sin was going to eat the key if I didn’t agree to rest.
But as soon as I sat down in my chair, I collapsed. I didn’t even have the strength to hold a fucking pen as I stared at the blank computer screen like that would get my mind sorted.
Being away from Mel and Kai hurt so much that I had to force myself to stay in my office and act normal so Sin couldn’t gloat.
Sin was still completely there in the bond, like he’d always been. But my alpha instincts were telling me to reject him so I could have our omegas all to myself.
