I take a few more bites, considering my response without smooshing his face in my plate of yummy food. “Well let’s start at how you think I felt waking up and not knowing where you were. After the time we’d spent together, how close we’d grown, how would you have felt?”
Instantly the mood drops so much, the warmth of the room drops too. But I ignore it and focus on eating while he gets his emotions under control. In truth, I also take the chance to lock down my own growing need to soothe his pain.
“You would have been terrified.”
“I was,” I admit almost immediately. “I thought you’d sold me out or you’d left me. Once I got over the rush of panic, how I was feeling morphed and then I felt guilty because I instantly jumped to that conclusion while I also started freaking out that one or all of you had been injured.”
His breathing gets choppy, his orange scent thickens. It’s his natural responses kicking into gear to my distress.
“I ran around the house first. Checking every room. I couldn’t figure out why I was so sick either, not then. But it didn’t stop me looking for you.”
He stills. He locks up tight. And I imagine he’s actually visualising what happened.
“I was terrified. Pretty much frantic, Ramses. You’d all been leading me along a certain path, and then it was like I was shoved in the back before getting kicked in the face. It hurt. It was brutal, and it’s left marks on me that I’m not sure I’ll be able to get over.”
“I understand,” he says, and I turn to look at him. His eyes are closed not in relief but in his own hurt.
“It’s not about me wanting to hurt you. I’m trying to share with you how it felt. You were all I’d ever dreamed of in a pack, and in a family. I felt like I fit in with you all too. And the best part, for once in my life, I was starting to trust my feelings, because you kept doing and saying trust us. A few hours later you pretty much pissed on all my dreams.”
I turn to him. “All that was really fucking shit, but the worst was finding that letter from Verdune because in my mind, everything you had done made sense at that point. I was a job, nothing more nothing less. Pretty much exactly like what happened last time.”
Everything pours out, and since I know he and his brothers have already become the new lowest point in my life, becoming a deeper scar than Ayden and my attack, I don’t hold anything back. It seems pointless to hide in shame at how vulnerable they made me. Or it might be that I’m just that tired of all this that it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Ayden was my scent-matched Alpha. The night I got attacked, everyone decided to let me in on the fact he was a Verdune employee. He was my bodyguard and had been the whole time I thought he was my boyfriend. I think one of the worst parts was, I nearly told Margot about him that night. It would have killed her.”
“Oh Jesus, Heidi.” He squeezes his eyes shut before rubbing his hands over his face.
I think for a moment he’s going to run; he looks poised to burst into action. And he does, but instead of going, he wraps me up in one of his hugs.
His purr echoes through the room, it vibrates through my ear pressed to his chest. Ramses stress makes him scent up so much I can barely breathe. His touches and his orange scent let me know how sorry he is.
“I need you to understand why I’m messed up so bad by what you did. Drugging me was one thing. If it was just that I might have reacted differently, but the combination of that, waking up alone, and finding out you were paid to look after me was devastating.”
“That part about us being paid to look after you is not true at all. Not even the auction money has been returned. Someone is trying to fuck us up before we could do it ourselves. I will show you every account we have, Heidi, we haven’t accepted a dime and we never would.”
“Yeah, Kai said the same thing. But since you guys weren’t there to explain, you kind of understand how I leapt to the conclusion I did?”
I really do need them to understand. Or we will never be able to move forward in any way.
He lets me go, but his hands wrap around my face, and he looks at me. I’ve never seen a more serious look on a person’s face. “I will never make it up to you, but I will never stop trying to show you, or to explain to you, how fucking sorry I am, Heidi. So fucking sorry.”
ChapterThirty-Nine
RAMSES
After her revelation and me confirming to myself what an asshole I am, I have little choice but to hold her. It’s a physical ache that feels a lot like a cramp deep inside my gut, and the only cure is Heidi. The alternative is I lose my shit and my Alpha takes command, driving me away from her to hunt down Ayden. In time that’s going to be an unavoidable consequence. Without doubt, my brothers will be equally incensed on her behalf and will join me when we pay him a visit. But not before we have our Omega tucked away safely, hopefully claimed as the Omega of Denali Pack. And understanding how much we adore her.
My hands won’t let go, and I know I should force them off her, but my Alpha is insistent she’s the only thing keeping us from falling apart completely. She’s holding back the tsunami brewing inside, keeping me from storming the Verdune castle and literally painting the place red.
“Cuddles are nice, and I know it’s your Alpha,” Heidi says, able to say what I should have before I locked her against me again. “I’m ready to listen. To try to get why you acted the way you did.”
I’d like to tell her it’s not just my Alpha wanting to hold her. It’s not an insatiable need to comfort her—it’s also because I want to. So goddamn much.
She continues to foster away some of the rage my Alpha is struggling with by sinking further into my hold. Her sweet apple scent settles over me and it’s a good reminder she’s here and she’s already survived.
Heidi sits up and grabs the food distracting me in a way, before leaning back against me casually. And for the rest of my days, I want to be in this same situation, but with her wanting to be here.
I push her up. “Sorry,” I mumble as I go to climb out from behind her.
