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“Just talk to me first, and I’ll let you go.” I try for calm but end up sounding exasperated.

“You have an omega, so let me go.”

“Ah, see, but we’re greedy, and we’ve decided we need two.”

She stills, her cheeks turn red, her eyes spark with fury, and she leans down so we’re nose-to-nose.

“I am not someone you decide to have.”

“I know,” I admit softly.

“You don’t deserve me.”

“I know that, too.”

She opens her mouth, but I lift up, brushing our lips together. She freezes, her eyes going wide, confused and staring at me like she’s afraid I’m going to hurt her.

Most people never, ever see Selene this vulnerable, but I have. So many times. When her father beat her, I was the one who found her hiding under the porch of my house, too scared to come out.

When some guys chased her, intending on teaching the new omega how to fuck, she came straight to me, her whole body shaking with terror.

When she had nightmares or her dad was drunk and raging, smashing their house up, it was here and to me that she came to when she needed to be safe.

I remember when she started to realise that things might change and that we would leave, and she’d crawled into my bed and, in the moonlight, I’d held her just like this. How could there ever, for one second, be anyone else but her?

“Please, don’t leave me.”

The echo of her cry in this soon-to-be almost eight years ago haunts me.

I was an ass.

Selene could always be vulnerable with me, and it appears even time and all my mistakes haven’t changed that.

It is a relief that it is still true. Though that whisper has haunted me for years.

I brush a thumb across her cheek. “We should have never fallen for such an obvious trick.”

Her eyes widen, the vulnerability gets deeper. She surprises me and rolls us, her lips firming in a line of anger I’m recognising is fear.

“It was always you. We realised it as soon as we stopped for breath. We were going to come back.”

Her face goes through a flash of emotions, but, before she can tell me to get off or stop, I lean in and kiss her, this time deeper, really tasting her in ways I know would wake up from intense erotic dreams about. I pull her closer, pressing her weight on me, and, to my surprise, she encircles my waist, holding me to her.

The kiss goes on forever.

When she pulls away, I stare up at her.

“I’m not deciding that I want to have you, Selene. This is how it was always supposed to be. I simply can’t let you go. No matter how selfish or wrong I am, how can I possibly be without you?”

She growls but leans down. “Use your pretty words on other omegas. I’m not going to be fooled twice.”

My frustration is only a little flare. Can I blame her?

“You always were stubborn. What is it going to take to show you that I mean it?”

She hesitates, her eyes squeeze closed. “Have sex with me.”

What?