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“How could you possibly be in love with me?” I ask, shaking my head at him sadly as I look down at him. “Being fated isn’t the same as being in love, Augustus.”

Licking his lips when I say his name, Augustus stares up at me with desperate, dark eyes. The kind of deep brown irises that make him look bottomless, his entire face boyish even with the sharp cut of his jaw.

“I know that, because I didn’t always love you.” The sound of that rips through me, stupidly, even as I’m the one walking out on our wedding. “I didn’t love you when I met you in that club. In fact, I hated you.”

A hurt noise bubbles out from my throat. Tears push at the backs of my eyes. One of his friends coughs from the front of the chairs. If this is all some elaborate plan to bury the knife into the hilt, he’s doing a great job.

“It wasn’t love that made me save you at the festival. It was goddesses themselves. They decided, at some point, that you and I were meant for each other. Dahlia, Suki, Lunara, Mondale—they divined a plan for me and you.”

I take a step back. This is the last thing I want to hear.

Augustus doesn’t reach for me. He just continues to talk.

“But you’ve never been one to follow plans, have you, Mylah?” Augustus asks, the right side of his mouth curling up in a smile. “Tell you to stay, and you go. Tell you to go, and you come swinging right back. I wasn’t in love with you when I brought you here, but I fell for you when I saw your strength. The tenacity to keep getting out of the enclosure I erroneously placed around you.”

I go still, brain not quite processing what he’s saying. Tears rise again, my throat thick, my eyes hot.

Shaking his head slightly, Augustus raises a hand and musses his perfectly styled hair. “Mylah, I fell in love with you when I caught you in the woods. When you wouldn’t let me kill that bear for coming after you. The moment I realized you were thinking about that cub, and how it wouldn’t grow up with a mother.”

He doesn’t say the words, but I hear them. Just like you.

Everything I told him, sharing with him so openly during my heat. About my life, my background. My mother’s death and my father’s cold attitude.

“I fell in love with you when I saw who you were,” Augustus explains, his voice softening. I haven’t even realized I’ve taken a step toward him until his face tips up, his eyes holding mine. “A woman who can pick a lock. A woman obsessed with learning everything she can from books. A woman not afraid to run into the middle of a blizzard if it means keeping her freedom.”

This time, a sob really does rise up inside me, and I cover my mouth with my hand.

I want to tell Augustus all the lovely things about him, too. I want to tell him that I’m in love with him, too. For being strong, for going against what his father always did. For his laughter and his poise and for doing an impossible job with such grace.

For leaving me painkillers and a glass of water, even as he was trying to avoid me.

More caring than he would ever let anyone see.

Anyone but me.

“Mylah, you’ve made me realize so much about the world. About how badly it mistreats omegas, and how I’m a part of that.”

There’s a ripple of gasps through the crowd, and my heart swoops. It’s not even half as radical as the messaging in the book Aurora gave me, and yet it’s more than any other alpha king has ever said.

To go from being openly cruel to omegas, sacrificing them and treating them as less than human, to admitting in such a public way that we’re mistreated? It’s almost unreal.

“I want a life with you,” Augustus says, lowering his gaze to the floor as he rises from his knee and takes a step toward me. “Mylah, I want a life with you. I never should have treated you the way I did, and I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. You’ll have free roam of whatever you want. You’ll have whatever you want, I promise you that.”

Slowly, carefully, he holds his hands out, palm up. An offer for me to take them.

My heart hammers in my chest as he looks at me again, his gaze bouncing from my arms to my hair to my lips, then finally to my eyes.

“I want a life with you, with our children. You are not just my mate, Mylah. You’re the love of my life, and I’ll make it clear to everyone across Kault that I will choose you. That I will continue to choose you every day for the rest of my life.”

I start to lift my hands, then stop. My mind is racing, heart pattering so quick in my chest I feel like a rabbit. I’ve made so many mistakes, trusted him before—how do I really know that this is going to be different?

“I meant all that when I said it to you before,” he explains, “at your bedside. I’ve asked you to marry me every day this week. Every time you said yes. But I’ll keep asking, if that’s what you want. I’ll ask forever. I’ll never stop trying to be a better man for you. And, if you will do me the pleasure, I would love to marry you here. Today. Right now.”

He already asked me.

Like a click in my head, the hazy dream of him at my bedside snaps into place, and I remember it. Me saying no the first time. Him coming again. Talking about everything. Him kissing my knuckles and brushing his hand over my hair.

I look past him, searching for Aurora. The only other person I really know here.