I got out the first chance I could for my sake, and she’s looking at me like I’m in the wrong. Like I don’t know exactly what she’s talking about.
Maybe I won’t ever understand her thinking, but I do know I’m not letting her walk back into that hell without a fight, even if she hates me for it.
Chapter 4 - Naia
I should have known this is how it would go. I’m trapped all over again, but rather than with restraints or on a stage, I’m stuck with someone self-righteous enough to assume he has all the answers.
The walls may be different, and my life isn’t being directly threatened, but it’s the same outcome.
Zane’s place is as plain as I expected it to be, but too stuffy for my liking. I never pictured him staying in an apartment, given how I was used to seeing him out in the woods, belonging there just like I did.
While the place certainly smells like him, there’s no sign of anything personal. There’s no soul either, like it’s merely an afterthought.
Strangely enough, it fits the version of him standing in front of me now.
I pace the length of the living room, back and forth, but the motion barely takes the edge off the storm raging inside me. My skin still prickles with the lingering effects of the suppressant, keeping my wolf restless beneath the surface and pressing against something it can’t break through.
I hate it, and I hate this.
Most of all, I hate him.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” Zane says from behind me, his voice calm in that infuriating way of his. I found it endearing once, but not anymore. Not after the auction, and being holed up in his apartment like something fragile.
I stop and slowly turn to face him. “I’d rather do that than sit here while you decide what to do with me. Or decide what’s good for me.”
His jaw clenches, but he doesn’t react with anger. Instead, he stays annoyingly still and impassive. “I’m not deciding what to do with you.”
“Really? Because it looks like you already have.”
His gaze hardens, yet he doesn’t move from the sofa. “You’re here because it’s the safest option. You need to recuperate and to think.”
“Safe,” I repeat with a disbelieving tone. “It doesn’t matter how many times you frame it like that; it won’t make me feel that way.”
“It should.”
“It doesn’t.”
The silence stretches, tight and coiled, but neither of us says a word. It’s somehow even more aggravating.
I can feel it building again…that pressure between us, the clash of two completely different worlds colliding in one place. It didn’t use to be that way, but now, it’s unavoidable.
“You don’t get it,” I snap, turning away again because looking at him makes it worse. “I don’t want safe.”
“No,” he mutters behind me. “You want to run straight back into the fire.”
“I want what I’ve earned, and what I know I’m capable of.”
The answer is immediate and absolute, leaving no room for debate. It doesn’t matter what he said about starting over when that’s where I belong. That’s where I have to belong.
“You don’t need them,” he says, far too easily and with more certainty than he deserves to use.
Everything in me reacts to that at once as anger flares hot and fast in my chest. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I’m not deciding anything,” he fires back. “I’m pointing out the obvious, and what I know to be true.”
“The obvious?” I repeat, like the notion is ridiculous. “The ‘obvious’ is that my pack needs to see where I stand.”
“Given your status, they’ve already decided where you stand. Seldom do omegas ever climb the ranks,” Zane returns, not unkindly, but not gently either. “As I said, they don’t value you. Why go back?”
