Page 121 of His Stolen Omega

“Do you have any idea how invasive this is?” He motioned to the multi-slate. “You’re just going to what? Stare at my vitals whenever we’re apart to be sure I’m not running, or—”

“It’ll show temperature fluctuations so I can predict when your heat might arrive,” the alpha said. He dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a napkin and held Elm’s gaze unflinchingly.

Like he truly believed everything he was saying, everything he’d done, was normal.

“You’re obsessed with me,” Elm surmised, “aren’t you.”

“Very much so.”

“The same way you were with your rabbit?” The story had made him sad when he’d heard it, but now he was forced to acknowledge the other dark aspect of the tale. How Levi had been so clearly consumed with “caring” for his pet that he’d overlooked everything else, to the point it’d enraged his father.

“Wishing you could run again?”

“Alpha.” He licked his lips. “You’re scaring me.”

Levi sighed. “It was either this or I really do resort to locking you up for safe keeping for the rest of our lives. My anxiety won’t settle for less. At least here, at the lodge, I can handle being on separate floors, but anywhere else, if I couldn’t keep you in my line of sight…”

Elm frowned. “That isn’t healthy.”

“Some will say the same about the trauma bond you’ve developed with me.”

“I…” Hadn’t expected the alpha to admit it. “You sound way too comfortable about that.”

“I’m not ashamed of it. I’ve done worse.”

“Worse than make a man dependent on you through pheromones and false kindness?”

“Where was it false?” He clicked his tongue. “Nothing has been fake between us, omega. Even if I manipulated you into loving me, how is that any different than any other relationship? People fib and pretend to like things they don’t all the time to come off more relatable. They play up their strengths and hide their weaknesses. They show their intended mate what they want them to see. That’s all I’ve done here. I’ve been the man you wanted me to be. And I’ve done so without lies, unlike most. Yet I’m the one at fault?”

“I don’t love you.” Logically, Elm understood everything the alpha was saying was incredibly fucked up. That he was talking about both emotional and physical manipulation to the extreme, and that wasn’t entirely wrong in his assessment of Elm’s draw to him. But for some reason, he got hung up on the L-word. “I wouldn’t have run away if I loved you.”

Levi tilted his head. “You woke up bound to your brother’s greatest enemy, still partially open from taking my knot for weeks on end. You felt the connection between us, the permanency, and you panicked. You’re right. I’ve known we were inevitable for some time now. I was given the space to come to terms with it. I was trying to afford you the same, but my rut came early for the first time since I was seventeen, and well…You know the rest.”

“I have six claiming bites,” Elm reminded. “That’s five more than was necessary to form a bond. You can’t blame this entirely on your rut. Especially not when you were always going to have to force me to accept you. I never would have agreed, no matter how much time you took to wear me down.”

“I don’t believe you,” Levi stated. “More importantly, I don’t think you even believe yourself.”

“If I don’t,” and he wasn’t saying he didn’t, “that’s only because you’ve made me this way!”

“I love you,” the alpha said, pausing when Elm froze, as though to give him a second to process that revelation. “Are you also planning on taking responsibility? I can count on one finger the number of times this has ever happened. Even the rabbit from my childhood was a mere obsession. You? You’re something else. Something more.”

Elm shook his head dumbly. “You don’t. You can’t.”

“I don’t blame you for thinking that. Before meeting you, I believed the same.”

“Everyone knows you aren’t capable of love, Leviathan.”

“Everyone is wrong.”

“No.” Elm vehemently shook his head. “No, they aren’t.”

“You would prefer an alpha who doesn’t love you then?”

“Stop,” he threw up a hand and closed his eyes, trying to center himself while his mind continued to spiral, “saying that word.”

Elm had yet to wrap his head around the claiming bites, and now he was being told he had to accept the alpha’s supposed affections on top of it? He couldn’t. He could handle a lot, but this was apparently where his limits reached.

A wave of seductive pheromones hit him square in the chest then and his eyes popped open as his body swayed. He toppled against the counter, gasping for air as more of that scent cloyed at his senses and his body was forced to react accordingly. His muscles tightened around the plug, causing him to whine when his prostate was rubbed against, and his dick lengthened and brushed against the cool edge of the granite tabletop.