Pausing beside my bedroom, I slumped against the wall. Exhaustion weakened my shoulders, but I couldn’t let myself lose it, too. Elias wasn’t fully with us, almost in a comatose state. It’d been a few days now since he’d left his room.
We were all torn up over Briar, but I couldn’t let this burn in my gut take me down, not when I needed to keep the Omega fed and make sure she didn’t try to hurt herself again. Another wave of nausea wracked me. At the very least, she was still eating, but only after I left her alone.
Kyan and I had been rotating watching her, refusing to leave her alone for too long. While one of us was with her, the other tried to sleep.
Still, neither of us was getting much of it.
Doubt began to creep in, so insistently that I couldn’t breathe.What if she never forgives us?Usually, my little ‘moments’ happened at night.
I thought I was done with fear. As a child, I’d watched my parents take their last breath, while branches speared through their chests and blood dripped off them, trickling onto my cheek. That was when I stopped feeling anything soft.
After the accident took my parents, I was sent to live with Jennifer because she was my closest kin. A cousin twice removed. A thick wrap seemed to cling to me, not allowing anything through. Even when she had first slithered into my bedroom, I watched dispassionately as she began touching me.
That was when I discovered fucking. For a split moment, lust broke through the cocoon. Sex was a way to forget. Tofeelmyself come and the pleasure that wracked through me was my release.
It was the only time IthoughtI could feel anything.
Today showed me how wrong I was.Briarshowed me how wrong I was.
I shouldn’t have given her that razor.
All this bloody shit was my fault. I had a part in driving her to this point.
I ground my molars.
That situation had gone wrong in every way possible. And Elias . . . Bloody Elias.
He was losing it.
If he continued on this spiral, he would push her away until we couldn’t retrieve her.
Not going to happen. I shoved off the wall and shouldered into Elias’ room.
He didn’t turn from where he was crouched, near his bed, his head lowered. His hands were in his hair, his whole body shaking.
“What’s wrong with me?” Elias croaked.
I’d known Elias since childhood, and the bloody man never lost his mind. His emotions pierced through, adding to my pain.
“Block yourself,” I spat, grunting. Each day, he was losing more and more control. A wave of my anger snuffed out his agony.
“You’re blaming me?” he hissed. “Aren’t you the fuck that had two Betas all over him? Something thatshesaw?”
I tilted my head back and barked out a laugh. “You had two cunts on you, too.”
“I didn’t touch them.” He slammed his palms into my chest.It was on.
I squeezed my hand into a hard fist.
“You two, lower your voices,” Kyan ordered, coming in, dressed.
“Where did you go?” I scowled. He’d been bumming it around in sweats recently.
“The documentation is ready.” Kyan held the folder up. “I had to go pick it up.”
Elias snatched them from his hand and tore them down the middle. Torn-up paper fluttered to the ground.
“What the hell?”
