I registered his voice but couldn’t move from my self-inflicted catatonic state. Nothing hurt here. All pain was gone in favor of the abyss.
In favor of sweet nothing.
I registered that he’d picked me up from where I’d fallen in front of the couch, but his touch was neither warm nor cold.
“How could you let her find out?” he hissed.
“I apologize, sir, but it’s all over the news.”
I registered movement next. “I want that thing gone now. All screens—I want them out!”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
“Shh,” came what was attempting to be a calming sound. It felt like glass in my ears. “Oh my darling, it’s not what you think.”
A door closed. My body was laid down.
“Look at you, you’re beautiful, darling. I knew you would look perfect in this—the bride of my dreams.”
Hands slid inside my underwear, and then they stopped.
“Sage? Sage, your slick, it’s… what happened to your heat?”
Heat? How could I go into heat? My mate, my alpha… I couldn’t trust him. He wasn’t safe. My body had completely shut down all vulnerability, instinctively knowing I could not make a baby with this man.
“Come on, Sage, snap out of this. Come to me, your alpha commands it.”
He could command anything he wanted, but it wouldn’t change anything.
“Sage… Sage I need to come back to me, darling.”
My body vibrated from his purr, but if gave me no comfort.
“All night, all I thought about was you. I wished it was you standing next to me at Sanguiel’s altar. Believe me, Sage.”
His words meant less than nothing. His promises already false. The one whom the universe had provided to protect me had broken my heart.
I guess I’d always been destined to be defective.
Hands on my shoulders shook me. “Sage! Sage!Wake up!”
I screamed. My body convulsed, contorted, seized, and I screamed again. The emotion and anguish and despair rushing back through my veins.
Rolling away from him, I sobbed, grabbing a pillow and bringing it into my chest as raw agony continued to pour out of me.
“Sage, please, I’m sorry. It’s really not what you think, I don’t love her.”
I couldn’t form words, only wild, animalistic howls of unfathomable grief.
Victor had finally destroyed me.
22
Unfamiliar Territory
One Week Later
“Sage…”
