"I'm not saying I will. I haven't started anything. I just, I needed you to know I'm not yours by default anymore."
"I know."
She finally lets herself fall against me. I hold her.
The lock finally releases. She makes a small sound. I shift us, careful as glass, and pull the sheet up over her bare back. The pillowcase is ruined. So is the floor. So is most of what either of us thought we knew about how this would go.
I don't speak for a long time. When I do, it's not a speech. "Tell me what you need." It's the first time I've ever contemplated that question.What does my omega need?
She's quiet. Long enough that I think she's asleep. Then, "To be the most important thing in your life." The simplicity of it cuts. "Not one of the things. Not part of a list.Thething."
"You are."
"I'm not." Her cheek is still on my chest. She doesn't lift her head. Somehow that's worse. "If I were, you'd have walked out oftheiroffices. The contract. The merger. Your father's ghost. You'd have set the whole pile on fire before you let me stand on that shop floor watching the door close."
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
She isn't finished. "Don't sayI came back.Coming back is what happens after you've left."
I sit up. She lifts off and wraps the sheet under her arms, sitting cross-legged in the wreckage of the nest. She is the most beautiful and the most furious thing I have ever seen.
I can't lose her. So I tell her the truth. "My father." Her eyes change. "You know about him. How he stopped eating. Stopped being a father. My brothers and I watched him empty himself bit by bit. By the time we buried him, he'd been gone for years. He chose her over us a thousand times after she was already dead. I built every part of my life around not being him." She doesn't move. "The control. The merger. Bethany. A penthouse where nothing has a smell. I built a man who couldn't be unmade by an omega because I watched what unmaking does. Then you walked into the back of a flower shop, and it started. The unmaking. And I—" I stop.
"You ran."
"I ran." I cup her face. " Not from you. From him. From the version of me that ends up in a chair next to your bed waiting for a scent to fade. I told myself I was being responsible. I toldmyself I was honoring the contract. I told myself a hundred things that weren'tLiam, you're a coward."
The word sits there. She doesn't argue with it. "You're not done. Keep going."
She is sitting in the wreckage of a nest she built to mourn me, and she is asking me to finish the worst sentence I've ever started. I keep going. "I flew to Singapore to end it. In person. Not a phone call. Not a press release. I owed her that much—"
"You owedher."
"Star—"
"Of course you did."
"Listen." She closes her mouth. "I owed her the truth in person because I'd told her a lie in person. That's the only reason I got on a plane. And you weren't—you were not out of my head for a single mile of it. Not on the runway. Not at thirty thousand feet. Not for a minute. Every mile away from you gotlouder,Star. Not quieter." Her eyes have gone very still. "By the time I landed, I couldn't remember why I'd thought breaking the bond was the responsible thing. By the time I sat down across from her, I knew. I'd done everything to protect myself when I should have protected you. I didn't want to be hurt, and you were hurt instead. Now, I'm here saying I will lay down my life so you never get hurt again. I'm your alpha, I'll always be your alpha. If you go to a thousand clinics, you wouldn't get rid of me. You're mine, I know that now."
"Know what?"
"That leaving you wasn't going to break the bond. It was going to breakme.There is no version of my life where I survive walking out of yours."
"Liam."
"I told her with words I don't remember. Bethany asked me to wait two weeks before announcing you as my mate. I told her I would, only if you didn't get hurt. Bethany and I were always,only on paper. I lost that merger, and didn't give a fuck. I only remember being relieved.
She released that story, and I don't know if it's real or fake. I only know that this is real. I walked out of the meeting and started thinking about a fairy tale."
Her breath catches. "Mine?"
"Yours. I've never believed in them, but now it's all I want. And I only want it with you." She closes her eyes. "You said it in the back of the shop. First night. You were laughing. You were embarrassed that you said it. Your grandmother read them to you, and you never grew out of them. You knew it was stupid, but you wanted the whole thing. The slipper. The carriage. Thefit."
"You remember that?"
"I remember everything you've ever said to me, Star." She makes a small wet sound, but doesn’t speak. "You wanted the perfect prince."
"Liam—"
