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“You should be disgusted.” It was barely audible.
“That’s bullshit!” I couldn’t control the tremor in my voice. Tears trickled down my cheeks; I was crying again. “Emiel, do you even understand howamazing you are?”
“I’m broken,” Emiel grated, as though I hadn’t spoken. “He twisted something up inside me, and it never grew right afterward. All I’m good for is hurting people. Punching them. Kicking them.” His good eye flickered to me and immediately away, as though it pained him to look at me. “Raping them. Just like he raped me.”
“You didn’t rape me!” My voice rose to a tremulous shout. “Iassaultedyou, and—”
“Oh, my god, would you both fuckingstop.” Luca cut across my growing hysteria, cutting off the ugly flow of words. My jaw snapped shut.
Princess let out an emphatic meow that sounded suspiciously like agreement.
“Mia,” Luca continued. “This isn’t helping things right now. Emiel. I know it’s not intentional, but you’re essentially telling another sexual abuse survivor that I’m a broken, useless piece of shit to my face. So, maybe stop doing that?”
“S’different,” Emiel muttered, not meeting either of our gazes. Princess purred, butting his bruised chin with her forehead.
“Different,” Luca echoed flatly. “Because I’m an omega? Because I was older? Because they induced my heats first so I was begging for it?”
“Don’t say that!” Emiel curled forward, clenching his hands around his bare shins. His blunt fingernails dug in to the skin. One of them was torn to the quick.
I gave his shoulder a small shake. “Emiel... victims aren’t to blame for what their attackers do to them.Ever. You aren’t disgusting. I wanted you in my heat nest, long before I actually went into heat. You didn’t hurt me, and you certainly didn’t rape me. I’m so,sosorry that you ended up in that situation in the first place—but only becauseyoudidn’t want it. Not becauseIdidn’t.”
The shoulder beneath my palm shook.
“Course I wanted it!” Emiel sounded like he was on the verge of joining me in tears. “How could I not want that? You. Luca. Both of you. You’re so perfect, and I’m so...”
“Also perfect,” I finished, cutting him off. “You’re the amazing alpha who saved Luca and me from his old gang, and who works at a terrific non-profit helping kids, and who donates obscene amounts of money to animal rescues. You saved Princess!”
“You did that,” he said, and he was definitely crying now.
“Call it a team effort,” I told him magnanimously.
“Right,” Luca said. “Ditto to all the stuff that she just said. But you’re also crying in a cold basement, covered in bruises after spending four days low-key trying to commit suicide via illegal cage fight. Dude, you need to talk to someone about this. Professionally, I mean.”
“S’not that cold down here,” Emiel mumbled. “And you got no room to talk.”
I looked over at Luca, my eyes burning from too many tears. “Luca, have you ever seen someone?”
I was hoping he’d say yes... that I could turn to Emiel and tell him,look, if Luca can do it, why can’t you? But Luca was uncomfortably quiet for a long moment.
“I mean... yeah, sure. Zalen made me go to counseling after I got away from the gang,” he said eventually.
“An’ did it help?” Emiel pressed.
Luca sighed. “Not a single goddamned bit. And you know why?”
I tried to picture a teenage Luca, fresh off his unhappy childhood and four years of intense trauma. “Because you were locked up tighter than Fort Knox, and you didn’t give the counselor a single, solitary thing to work with?” I suggested.
His eyes slid down and to the side. “Might’ve been something like that, yeah.”
My heart ached for them both, so badly I feared it might shatter into razor-edged pieces.
“You know,” I said, “it doesn’t have to be like this. Not forever. Nothing can erase what was done to you both. But it doesn’t have to stay this huge shadow over your life. And, I don’t know... maybe it has to get worse for a bit before it gets better. But you’re two of the bravest people I know. I don’t want to lose either of you to your pasts, and sometimes I’m afraid Iwill.”
Heavy silence fell over us.
Princess was the one to break it, making a cute littlemeepnoise and bopping Emiel lightly on the face with a front paw.
Luca’s complexion looked pasty in the harsh, overhead lights. “I’ll consider it if he will,” he said stiffly.