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The bathing room is much smaller than Seven’s but still holds a deep pool, which is big enough for our needs. I hesitate at the steps, intending to let her enter alone.

“Don’t even think about it,” she says.

I grin, strip down, and join her. Her scent drives me crazy, but I keep the touch light, returning her to the foot of her nest, clean, dry, and relatively untouched. My cock is disgusted with my restraint, but this feels special being with her in her nest, and I don’t want to rush it.

She takes my hand and leads me into the center, where we settle on our sides, facing one another.

“How long are you going to punish Wolf for?” I tease.

“Days,” she says. “Maybe weeks.”

He has really fucked up. Best, the male acquaint himself with groveling lest he misses out on rutting our doe in her nest. Fine, I can admit I’m intrigued by the wolf shifter. I love seeing him with Fawn. He is dominant in a rough, animalistic way, so different from Seven, who is civilized and carries his dominance like an air of entitlement, and Nox, who is more a calculated level of depraved.

Only both men are so much more than that.

Seven, the harbinger of Justice.

Nox, without artifice and refreshingly free of prejudice, and who is uncomplicated.

Jude, I am still learning about, but as the layers peel away, I like more and more what I see… Even if he does fuck up on occasion. Still, I feel compelled to throw him a line. “I’m a gentle omega. My stag is a blood-crazed maniac. He is also me.” I shrug. “Whatever you might be thinking about your inner side, at least you’re not a killer with a taste for blood.” My smile worms its way out.

She returns the smile, but then it fades. “What happened to you, Eiden? Why was your awakening so brutal? Why did you not shift for many years?”

My heart skips a sickly beat as my mind scrambles as to how we ended up here. I knew she would ask at some point. She is naturally curious and deeply empathetic. I told myself I was ready for whatever that might be, but the truth is, I am not.

“It’s okay,” she says, her eyes searching mine. “You don’t have to tell me, now or ever. I love you.”

Her words hit me like a sucker punch to the gut, momentarily robbing me of breath. The urge to shy away from theconversation needed is strong. I don’t have to tell her, now or ever. Nox said as much that very first night she arrived when he took me so far out of my head, I couldn’t remember who I was, let alone the fears that seized me.

No matter what Nox says, there is a part of me that feels forever unworthy, that continues to wait for this perfect world to crash down, for my precious joy to be ripped away.

“I love you too, Fawn. So much. And I want to tell you. You deserve to know about the man who professes to love you. All of him, even the dark parts.”

“I won’t stop loving you,” she says, confusion clouding her eyes. “You have a good heart, Eiden. I already know that.”

“I’m not good.” I turn my face away—the mood souring.

“Eiden—”

“I killed a man—my former herd leader.”

There, it’s out, the words sucking the air from the room. Her gasp is small but telling. I brace, waiting for her horror, for her to tell me she doesn't love me anymore now she knows I’m a killer.

For her to tell me to get out of her nest.

Her brows pull together. “How did it happen?”

I have opened the door. There is no way forward but to step through. “Not all male omegas are welcomed. Some see them as an affliction, a sign of weakness in the herd.”

Her small hand presses against my chest, right over my heart, giving me the strength to carry on.

“My mother died during my birth. She was well loved within our herd. I looked like her, or so I was told. When the time came and went when I should have shifted, my father’s love for me turned to disgust. I wasn’t like my brothers with their rough and tumble. I was gentle by nature.” I cannot keep the bitterness from my tone when I add, “Then my scent revealed me as an omega, and all my failings were laid at that door. The herd leader, a fearsome warrior of renown, despised our kind.What use was a male stag who would not shift? With our lands adjoining the bears, we were in constant skirmish with them. They didn’t want or need a useless mouth to feed. They needed warriors in the field.”

My heart beats too quickly.

Her eyes glisten. But I don’t deserve her pity.

“They were cruel to you?”