A jarring, bitter jolt of excitement and loathing shot through me.
“ReBond?” I asked quietly. Jack had mentioned it, but he hadn’t had time to say much, and I’d been too miserable to research it on my own.
“Yes,” Chester said, dropping his shoulders. “I have enough influence to get you into the trial. The Bangers & Mash scientists are certain their new procedure can completely repair severed bonds. All of the damage that has been done to you could be fixed, and your life could be normal again.”
I started to shake. The only thing I’d wanted for years was to be made whole again, by some miracle. Now it seemed like the miracle was dangling in front of me.
But there was a massive catch.
“Are they certain the procedure will work?” I asked hoarsely.
“They’re definitely sure,” Chester said. “It’s already worked on a few test subjects. They need this trial phase to study everything, but they’re convinced this is the breakthrough of a lifetime.”
“And you can get me into the trial?” I asked, tears prickling behind my eyes.
I could be healed. I could be whole again. Jack and I might have a chance of bonding after all.
“Yes,” Chester said. “I can absolutely get you into the trial. If you marry me.”
The hope that had built so quickly within me crashed.
“I don’t want to marry you,” I said, panic beginning to well in me. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“But, you see, I need an omega,” Chester said. “I need to repair my image a little after all the questions that were asked after the Tech Expo. I need a story that people will get excited about so that they’ll think I’m a good guy again.”
“You aren’t agood guy,” I said, mocking those last two words. “You’re an asshole. You’re an even bigger asshole to dangle this in front of me when you know I’m in love with someone else.”
“Someone else who has moved on and doesn’t want you,” Chester said.
He might as well have driven a knife through my heart.
Jackdidwant me. He hadn’t moved on. I could see it in the online pics. He was as heartsick as I was. I had to find a way to get to him, to be with him. We were meant to be together.
Except we couldn’t be together. As long as his dad wanted to keep us apart, we would always be apart. Salisbury was behind all of this, I was sure. I just had to prove how, and….
And what? He’d already proven he could bend Jack to his will. And I was fully aware of what Chester was really saying by offering to get me into the ReBond trial if I married him.
“You’re going to let me continue to suffer for the rest of my life, suffer and probably lose my mind completely and end up in an institution someday, if I don’t agree to marry you,” I said, barely above a whisper.
Chester shrugged, completely cold and uncaring. “It’s an arrangement that benefits both of us,” he said. “You get your sever healed, I get an omega and a family.”
I wanted to puke again. It wouldn’t just be marriage. It would be all of my heats going forward. It would be me forced to bearhis children. I would never be free from Chester’s nastiness, and I would lose all hope of being with Jack ever again.
“The choice is yours,” Chester said with a shrug. “It’s not really much of a choice, if you ask me. I mean, it’s more than just healing, isn’t it. I’ve got more money than a king. I’d be perfectly happy to hand some of that over to your family. I could send all of your younger siblings to school, make sure your parents had a happy retirement. If anything ever happened to anyone, I could jump in and help out.” He shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
I hated him with the fire of a thousand suns. He’d backed me into a corner that I couldn’t get out of. It didn’t matter how in love I was, forces bigger than me and Jack had come between us, and they weren’t going to ever let up.
I had no choice.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jack
Broken. Now I knew what it felt like.
When I’d met Quincy, he’d said he was broken. Part of me was convinced that I could fix him if I just loved him enough. My inner alpha was sure of it. But now here I was, six weeks after the Tech Expo, and instead of fixing Quincy, rescuing him from all the wrongs that had been done to him, and making an amazing life with him, I felt as broken as he’d said he was.
“Here’s the brief for the Portsmouth Care Home case,” Imogen said, coming into my office with a pair of thick files. “And I’ve gone ahead and done the write-up Senator Salisbury requested for the Avalon Brothers case you finished up last week.”
