“Feel like you were defrauded?” I chuckled, so I wouldn’t cry. “Damaged goods. I’ll go back to my room.”
Making to leave, I covered my breasts, shame staining my freckled skin. Who was I kidding? How could an alpha like him ever want someone like me?
“No.” The weight of his words rattled the pictures on the walls, his bark curling around his words and rooting me to the spot. I froze, my eyes stinging. “Who did this to you?”
Acid burned my throat, the taste metallic on my tongue. My hand splayed over the scars and burn marks, trembling. Every time I tried to speak, nothing came out. I couldn’t say it. It didn’t matter. He knew the answer.
“Please. Don’t make me say it,” I whispered, guiltmaking my voice wobble.
Too gently, Kaelen forced my watery gaze to meet his. He brushed away my tears, his lips resting on my temple as he wrapped his arms around me, holding me snugly against him.
“Please, Omega, let me. He doesn’t deserve to live.”
Venom and authority clung to every word, his face etched into a beautiful mask of destruction.
My whole world froze as Kaelen Finnegan—The Butcher of Boston—begged for my permission. Deep down, I wanted to tell him yes, to ask him to do it tonight. Sometimes I worried I would never be free of my dad.
“You can’t,” I sniffed. “My mom, she’s too fragile. If my dad died. I don’t think she’d survive the severing of their bond. She’s too weak.”
A mate bond was a powerful thing. When an alpha or omega died, the surviving mate struggled, the bond growing cold in their chest like a phantom limb. Some passed of heartache soon after the loss of their mate if they were older or ill, unable to push forward. Most recovered, but I knew my mom wouldn’t be so lucky, not in the state she was in.
And selfishly, I needed my mom.
I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
I’d suffer my father if it meant I got to keep her.
His chest rattled with a divine purr, making me cry harder as I clung to him. An alpha’s purr was a sacred thing, shared between mates. When he’d done it after giving me the courting gift, I was too stunned to appreciate it. But now, it made me feel special, treasured in a way I never thought I would be.
“Is that the only thing stopping you?” he asked, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear.
I leaned back slightly, putting enough space between us so I could see his face. Strong hands moved over my arms in confident, soothing strokes. My eyes shifted back and forth as I processed his question. No matter how long I searched, there was no love left in me for William Sterling.
“Yes. But it’s a big thing, Kaelen. I won’t waver on that.”
“I understand, Willow,” he said, drawing patterns on my arm. “If I can find a way to help her, will you allow it?”
“You don’t strike me as someone who asks anyone for permission.”
“Only from you, Omega. I told you. You own me, mo chroí.”
Blood never bothered me. Pain was a spectrum, and I wasn’t afraid to give it as much as I got.
When I was younger, I thought making myself small and quiet would get my dad to leave me alone. I was wrong. So, as I got older, I pushed him, slapped him, spit on him, anything to remind him I hated him.
A weird sensation swooped through my stomach, the image of Kaelen making William Sterling suffer even a fraction of what he made me. It would be ironic. The man he tried to sell me to win him the election, snuffing the lights from his eyes.
There was something poetic about it. In a gruesome, Viking Edda kind of way. But maybe if he did, I would finally feel some sense of peace, not always living like I was teetering on the edge of a cliff, afraid of one strong breeze blowing me over.
“If you can ensure my mom is healthy enough to handle the bond being broken, then yes. Kill him.”
“Oh, my sweet, innocent omega,” he said, capturing my lips in a possessive, claiming kiss. “I won’t just kill him. I will torture him for days until he begs me for death. And like the devil I am, I won’t grant it to him. I’ll drag out his misery until I scatter pieces of him throughout the Charles.” The backs of his knuckles traced along my collarbone. “Does that frighten you?”
His lips hovered over mine, his promise hanging in the space between us. Admitting to him I wanted my dad’s blood on his hands would push me over the edge of something I could never come back from.
I had my faults, but I never considered myself a killer.
Maybe I wasn’t as pure as everyone thought I was.
