Page 14

That heavy, awful silence settled again, and this time, Luca let it deepen until it was suffocating. Princess weaved back andforth, rubbing her body against Emiel’s legs. I wasn’t sure he was even aware of her.
“It was my Ma’s boyfriend.” The words sounded like they’d been spoken by someone much younger than the towering, musclebound alpha in front of us.Heartbreakinglyyounger.
Neither of us moved a muscle.
“Dunno how old I was in the beginning. Too young to remember, I guess.” Emiel hugged his knees. “I was eight when he left.”
When he left. Not ‘when my mother left him.’ The slow-burning rage rose higher in my stomach, churning like acid.
“He was an alpha?” Luca asked quietly.
Emiel gave a single, slow nod.
“He and Ma fought a lot. He’d get drunk afterward, sometimes. Come into my room at night. ‘Don’t try to pretend, boy,’he’d say. ‘I can tell you want it’.” Emiel’s voice sounded far away, disconnected.
I wanted to say something.Neededto say something. But before I could, Emiel looked up, pinning me with his gaze.
“When you were in heat, I could tell you wanted it.”
My throat closed up. I forced the words out anyway, desperate to get them into the world. “That was completely different. There’s no conceivable way it could be anymoredifferent.”
“I almost bit you,” he said.
“But you didn’t!” I told him.
“I would have,” he shot back. “Only I heard his voice in my head, and I remembered.”
“And so you didn’t,” I said again. “Emiel, you’re the victim here. You didn’t do anything wrong.Idid.”
“You were in heat, Mia,” Luca said, sounding unutterably tired. “Emiel, she’s right. You didn’t do anything wrong. Thinking about biting someone isn’t the same as doing it. Miawasn’t responsible for her actions while she was in heat. Her husband might be an asshole, but he was within his rights to come here and make sure she was okay. Zalen made a reasonable assumption that the dampeners would make it safe for you to take her down to see him.”
I closed my eyes, trying to calm my racing heartbeat. After a moment, I opened them. “I don’t think anyone’s really to blame for what we did together. It just... happened. I was on birth control. There aren’t going to be any bad consequences, although I guess it would be smart for both of us to get tested for STDs at some point, since I’ve been sexually active, and we didn’t use a condom.”
“Correction,” Luca said, his voice hardening again. “Therewouldn’thave been any bad consequences... exceptsomeonespiraled and then decided that the best way to deal with that was to go beat the shit out of people and get beaten up in turn. Which brings us back to the part where your terrible decision-making almost led my old gang straight to me.”
Emiel’s unnatural stillness began to crumble. First with a nearly imperceptible tremor, which grew into a full-body shudder, and finally into silent, wracking sobs. He folded at the waist, his forehead coming to rest on his knees. Princess yowled in distress.
I was crying, too—unsure when I’d started. Luca, by contrast, was dry-eyed and grim.
“Emiel,” I said, my voice a pathetic quaver. “Please let me hug you. I... I won’t make you if you don’t want it, but I really need it. I’m coming over. Shake your head no if you want me to stop.”
Emiel didn’t acknowledge the words at all, and I wasn’t sure if this was a terrible, cruel thing to do, or a good thing. But the sight of this alpha I’d come to care about silently breaking intopieces was too much for my omega instincts, and my body was drawn to his as if by a magnet.
I stumbled over, watching his head carefully for movement through a blurry veil of tears. I half fell to my knees next to him. He flinched hard at the first touch of my fingertips on his shoulder, but he didn’t move away. It was hard to find places to put my hands that weren’t bruised, but I carefully sidled close until my body was curled against his. The concrete floor was cold and unforgiving beneath me. I barely felt it.
When Emiel’s trembling tension broke, accepting my presence inside his personal space, I looked up at Luca pleadingly. He appeared torn, his green eyes wide and wary, but after a moment he slowly approached and lowered himself on Emiel’s other side. When Emiel didn’t shake him off, he settled tentatively into place, bracketing the alpha between us.
Princess climbed onto my lap so she could wriggle her head and shoulders beneath Emiel’s arm, which still encircled his bent knees. Too tired to fight the emotion, I let the tears come as they would, my breath hitching and catching in counterpoint to Emiel’s silent sobs. Luca’s arm crept around Emiel’s back until his fingers rested on my shoulder, a grounding touch.
Emiel was the first to succumb to exhaustion, his body going limp and pliant by degrees until his breathing settled into a congested snore. Princess’s soft purr vibrated against us in gentle counterpoint.
My head and body ached, sore from emotion and my recent heat. When Luca murmured, “Go on, I’ll keep watch,” it took only moments for sleep to claim me. When my dreams came, they were full of two young boys, alpha and omega, dark-skinned and light, clinging together for comfort against the threatening shadows beyond.