There it was. The truth stripped bare.
I was an obstacle. A problem he'd solved the only way he knew how—by sinking his fangs into my neck and taking the choice away from me.
I was nothing but a burden.
I gritted my teeth. “So you attacked me and drained me until I passed out. You wanted the shard that badly?”
A long pause. His expression didn’t shift—not a twitch, not a flicker. That stillness unnerved me more than any reaction would have. He was holding himself together with nothing but willpower and the thin thread of whatever was left between us.
“Partly. But after I tasted your blood?—”
He stopped. His throat worked, like the words had lodged there, and he was fighting to either swallow them or let them out. His hands curled into fists at his sides, knuckles white, as if he was physically restraining himself from something.
I waited, my pulse thudding in my ears. The bite mark on my neck throbbed in time with my heartbeat—a phantom echo of his mouth on my skin.
His eyes found mine, and something in them changed. The guilt was still there, the exhaustion, the shame—but beneath all of it, something darker surfaced. Something raw and hungry that he’d been keeping locked behind that careful mask.
“I wanted you.”
Three words. Low. Rough. Wrecked.
They should have made me feel something good. Vindicated. Triumphant. After two years of being told I was nothing—that the bond between us meant nothing—those words should have been everything I’d been starving to hear.
Instead they twisted inside me like a knife.
Now?Now he wanted me? After I’d spent years feeling the pull of our bond like a hook buried in my chest while he pretended it didn’t exist? While he chased Rose Allen, looked at her like she was his queen and looked at me like I was dirtbeneath his shoes? He’d called me a disgrace. Walked away. Left me alone with every ache, every longing, every sleepless night spent feeling the hollow space where he should have been.
Now, because he’d tasted my blood, hewantedme?
My eyes burned. I blinked it back. I would not cry in front of him. Not over this. Not again.
“We’ve always been fated mates, Rocco. You knew that. I didn’t need to taste your blood to know what you were to me.”
He flinched like I’d hit him.
Good.
"I felt it every single day." I pressed my hand against my chest, right over the ache that had lived there for two years. "Every day you ignored me. Every day you pretended I didn't exist. I felt you right here, and you know what the worst part was? I couldn't make it stop. I couldn't turn it off. You rejected me, and the bond didn't care. It just kept pulling."
His eyes were glassy. His jaw trembled—barely, just a fraction—but I saw it.
"So don't stand there and tell me you wanted me like it's some kind of revelation." The words came out raw, scraped from somewhere deep. "I've been drowning in this for years while you ran from it. You don't get to discover it now and act like it changes everything."
The silence was suffocating.
He didn't defend himself. Just stood there, absorbing every word like a man who knew he deserved the beating.
When he finally spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. "I know."
"Do you?" I searched his face. "Do you really?"
He took a step closer. Then another. His hand lifted—slowly, like he was afraid I'd recoil—and his fingers grazed the bite mark on my neck. The touch was feather-light, barely there, but it sent a shockwave through my entire body. Every nerve ending lit up.The bond roared to life in my chest like a flame that had been waiting for oxygen.
I hated that. Hated how my body responded to him. Hated that years of rejection couldn't kill what I felt when he touched me.
His fingers lingered on the mark, his expression cracking open into something I'd never seen on his face before. Awe. Wonder. Like he was finally feeling what I'd been carrying alone all this time.
"I'm starting to," he said softly.
