Page 3 of Mated To The King’s Gamma (Lycan Luna: Abbie & Gannon #3)

T he guilt that gnaws at me as he leaves brings tears to my eyes.

He doesn’t deserve a broken mate. How he even wants me after everything is beyond me, and still, I can’t stand being touched.

Even the briefest of hugs has memories crashing into me.

I am useless to him. Tyson continues to stir, and I rub his back until he falls back into a deep sleep.

When I am sure he is out, I move off the bed and start cleaning up.

He never said anything, but I know the mess we made upset him.

Maybe if I clean the place, he will forgive me?

Some part of me knows it is because I’m inadequate, not enough for him.

I’m not even enough for myself. I’m not anything, nothing.

Never enough for anyone. My mere existence is to be used and tossed away.

The only thing I am good for because taking it is the only way he will get anything from me.

How long before he gets sick of waiting? How long before he turns out like the rest of the men who have stumbled into my life? That thought scares me and leaves me trembling as I scrub the tiles in the bathroom.

I scoure the bathroom until there are nearly no bristles left on my scrubbing brush. The sun is beginning to rise, and I look to the window when my shadow cast along the wall. I furrow my brows in confusion. How long have I been here?

It never ceases to amaze me how I can lose track of time as if on autopilot.

Shaking my head, the bathroom is so clean it almost glistens, and the bleach I spent most of the night and early morning inhaling burns my throat and nose.

It is all I can smell. Packing up my cleaning supplies, I wander back out to find the bedroom door open again.

Gannon opened it when he left, and I shut it while I cleaned only for it to open again. I thought I closed it? Walking over to it, I shut it but it is pushed inward.

“Door stays open, Abbie. I can’t hear you with it closed,” comes Liam’s voice.

Peering at the door, Liam nods once from his seat across the hall, then moves back into his room, settling into his chair and lifting a newspaper like he hasn’t just assigned himself as hallway security.

“Did Gannon ask you to babysit me?” I ask him.

“No, I offered,” he says flatly, not looking up.

I stare at him for a moment, biting the inside of my cheek, and step back into my room. Slowly. Deliberately. I push the door until it clicks shut behind me.

It slams back open so fast I flinch, the handle bouncing off the wall with a crack. Liam storms in like a hurricane in boots, eyes wild, jaw clenched, his entire body vibrating with irritation.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he growls, pointing at the door like it personally offended him.

I fold my arms, but I take a step back.

“I told you to leave it open. What part of that sentence was unclear? Should I write it for you next time? With crayon?”

“You don’t need to be an asshole,” I snap.

He laughs—sharp, cold, and utterly unamused. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m being nice.”

He steps closer, and I instinctively take another step back, my hands brushing against the edge of the dresser behind me. His eyes flick down, catching the fear that flares in mine, and something shifts behind them, his madness doesn’t soften, but it focuses.

“Gannon may tiptoe around you, may coddle you like you’ll shatter if he breathes too loud, but I won’t,” Liam says, his voice a low snarl.

“I’m not your mate. I don’t care if you’re scared of me.

Hell, you should be. Because if you pull that shit again—if you slam that door in my face after I told you not to… ”

Liam exhales through his nose, steadying himself, though his hands still twitch at his sides. “If you try to close that door again, I swear on my last bottle of whiskey. I will drag you to my room and tie your ass to a chair so I can see you with my own two eyes.”

He leans in closer, his voice dropping to a sharp whisper. “I’m not fucking around, Abbie. You might be used to people backing down when you go quiet and sweet, but I’m not them. I’ll duct tape you to the wall if I have to.”

I swallow, his words sinking into the hollow pit of guilt still gnawing at me.

“Do I make myself clear?” he asks.

My throat goes dry. I hate that I’m shaking. I hate that he notices. And I hate more that he doesn’t even pretend to feel bad about it.

“Why would you even offer to babysit me if you clearly hate me?” I spit, my voice smaller than I want it to be.

Liam tilts his head like I just asked the dumbest question he’s ever heard. “Hate you?”

He scoffs, shaking his head, running a hand down his face like I’ve worn out his last ounce of patience.

“This is tough love, sunshine. The kind you need. I’m not Gannon—I’m not gonna stroke your hair and whisper sweet nothings when you’re acting like a brat. I don’t hate you, Abbie.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” I mutter, crossing my arms.

Liam glares, steps closer, then points at me.

“If I hated you, I sure wouldn’t have helped Gannon kill the butcher for you.

I wouldn’t be sitting in this damn hallway watching you fold towels and spiral in silence.

I sure wouldn’t be standing here right now warning you not to shut the goddamn door. ”

A lump forms in my throat at his words.

“I don’t care about your tears,” he says, voice lowering again. “I care about your safety. And I can’t ensure that with the door shut.”

“You make no sense,” I snap.

Liam barks a bitter laugh. “You know what really makes no sense? That you’re pushing away the one man who would lay down his life for you without blinking. Who’s already killed for you. Who stood against the king himself because he couldn’t bear to lose you.”

I freeze.

“Gannon loves you, Abbie,” Liam growls, eyes burning into mine. “And if he loves you—I love you. Because I’ve watched that man die inside more times than I can count. I’ve watched him try to rip his own heart out. I’ve watched him spiral, unravel, destroy himself from the inside out.”

His voice shakes, barely contained.

“And then you showed up,” he says quietly. “And for the first time in years, he came back to life. You breathed life into a man I thought we’d already buried. But lately, every time I see him, he’s dying again. One piece at a time. And it’s you killing him.”

I flinch. His words hit harder than I expect.

Liam’s breathing hard, shoulders tense, jaw clenched. “So, yeah. Door stays open. Because I promised Gannon, I’d keep you safe. And I intend to do just that.”

He turns and walks out, but not before throwing one last look over his shoulder.

“And next time you shut that door, Abbie—I will tie your ass to a chair. Don’t test me.”

He leaves the door wide open. And this time, I don’t move to close it. “Your love language sucks!” I call out to him.

“So does yours, or Gannon would be watching you and not me!” he laughs, and I roll my eyes.

I shake my head, moving back into the room and over to clean washing. I start folding it and hanging everything in the closet. When I am done, I move to Gannon’s dresser and open the top drawer, rearranging it to squeeze his clothes in the drawer.

My fingers brush at something that feels like leather.

Lifting up the pile of shirts above it, I find what appears to be a diary.

I grab it out, wondering why it is in here and not on his bookshelf.

I sit it on the dresser’s edge and rearrange the drawer when I see the corner of what appears to be a picture sticking out.

After fixing the drawer, I feel something under the drawer’s lining. I move the velvet liner and find a manilla folder. I pull it out, set it with the diary, and close the drawer.

Grabbing the diary, I pull on the corner of the picture hanging out and find it is a picture of my mother.

I blink at the picture, wondering where he got it from before opening the diary to see a photo of me.

I stare at the picture, wondering when it was taken, and I glance at the book, wishing I could read it.

Picking up the folder, Gannon’s scent wafts to me, and I move toward the bed and open it, about to ask him where he found a picture of my mother, only to gasp at what I see inside the folder.

“Abbie, no!” Gannon blurts, rushing toward me, but it is too late. I have already seen what it contains. I wish I could unsee what I saw, but like everything else, it is now permanently burned into my brain.

The papers and pictures scatter on the floor as I drop them.

My hands tremble as I look down at the photographs in horror.

My parents, all bloody and torn apart, deep claw marks tore half my mother’s face off and down her chest, blood everywhere while her eyes are wide open, staring back at me vacantly, and my father’s head lay beside his body, no longer attached to him. So much blood.

Gannon grips my arms, kneeling on the pictures I can’t tear my eyes away from. “Abbie? Abbie, you know, to stay out of my drawers,”

“I just wanted to clean for you,” I murmur. Liam rushes into the room behind him and stops, seeing the pictures and papers scattered everywhere. He frantically starts picking them up.

“Why do you have those? Why?” I ask. What could he want with such horrific pictures? Why is my mother in his diary? I have so many questions, and I pull away from him. His head drops, and he curses under his breath.

“Liam, leave them, but take Tyson for me,” Gannon murmurs, and Liam sets the papers on the dresser before scooping up a sleeping Tyson from the center of the bed. I move to take him, wondering why he has to leave, but Liam rushes past me, and Gannon grips my wrist.

“He will watch him,” Gannon tells me, and I look back at him before seeing the picture from the diary of my mother smiling, looking happy. I pick it up, hoping to remove the image of her mutilated, mauled body from my memory.

“Why do you have a picture of my mother?” Gannon sighs and wipes a hand down his face.

“That is not your mother.”

“Ah, yes, it is,” I tell him.

“No, her name is Sia. And she was my mate.” of all the things he could have said, that was not on the list of reasons sifting through my head.

It’s like he punched me in the stomach. I suck in a breath, feeling winded by his words.

Sia, my aunty? I shake my head, trying to figure out what is going on.

Wait, then where is she, then?

“You know my mother’s twin?” I ask.

“You know your mother is a twin?” Gannon asks in return, looking rather shocked.

“Yes, my mother told me about her. They didn’t get along,” I had never met her before, and Mom didn’t speak much about her, but she always grew sad when I asked about her family.

“Sia was my mate,” Gannon says softly as if that would lessen the blow his words had.

“Was?” I ask. I didn’t like how he used past tense when referring to her. But his following words squeezed the air from my lungs completely as my body forgot how to function and breathe.

“I killed her, Abbie,” he murmurs, and the pained look on his face I could see bothered him as much as it did me.