Page 104 of Eclipse Sector

“I’m right here, love,” I told her. Yet she didn’t seem to hear me. She was too lost in her thoughts, her past experiences replaying loudly through her mind.

“Ivana, I’m right here,” I tried again as Kieran said my name.

Sorry, can you repeat that?I asked him, my gaze on Ivana’s tear-stained face. She seemed to be looking right through me, not at me.

I have Lorcan on the phone—two of the Omegas in Night Sector just went into heat as well.

I frowned.Two candidates?

Yeah. A small group decided to shadow back to their respective nests rather than stay in Blood Sector.

They don’t trust us,I translated.

No, they don’t. And this isn’t helping,he muttered.We need?—

He abruptly stopped talking, making me stiffen.Kieran?

No response, causing me to sink deeper into his mind.

Where I learned right along with him that another Omega candidate had just gone into heat in Night Sector.

“Fuck,” I breathed, only for Ivana to still beneath me.

“C-Cillian?” she whispered, her eyes seeming to clear for a moment.

But that moment was short-lived, because in the next instant, she was back in the darkness of her past, her thoughts instantly telling her not to hope.He never comes,she told herself for the thousandth time.Stars, henevercomes.

“Iv—”

She shadowed out from beneath me to clumsily land on the floor beside the bed, her ability short-circuiting due to her vulnerable state. Omegas often lost control of their talents while in estrus; all their bodies wanted to do wasbreed.

Ivana yanked open the drawer on her nightstand, her hand curling around a thick dildo that she promptly pulled toward her slick cunt.

I growled as she shoved it inside herself without so much as a warm-up, her entire body curling onto her side on the bare floor as sobs racked her body.

“Fuck, Ivana,” I whispered, seeing her come undone in a way Ineverwanted to witness again.

But I couldn’t help gaping at her for a prolonged period of time as the reality of what I was seeing—what I waslearning—slashed right through my heart.

Thiswas how she endured her heat cycles. How she’dalwaysendured them.

Because I’d never come.

I’d left her to this fate.

Left her in this agonized state.

For six fucking years.

Cillian!Kieran shouted into my mind, clearly having tried to grasp my attention for however many minutes had passed. He said something now about Alpha Carlos—the former leader of what used to be Bariloche Sector—drawing me slightly into his thoughts, only for Ivana’s pained mewl to draw me right back out.

“Gods, macushla…” She sounded so distraught and broken. So unlike the Omega I knew and loved.

I shadowed off the bed to the floor and scooped her up into my arms, my chest instantly igniting with a deep, resounding purr.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m so fucking sorry.” I pulled her back into her nest, my body wrapping around hers as she continued using that damn thing between her legs while furiously stroking her clit with her thumb.

Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.The words were a chant in her head.