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CHAPTER TWENTY

RAPHAEL

E ucalyptus and lavender are my favorite scents.

Nakoa reaches for my flask and I slap his hand away. He doesn’t ask who I’m waiting up for, who I’m getting shit faced over, because he already knows. He’s always known. I’ve always known. And no matter how much I fought, I raged, I rejected, or…

I lick the scar where Grace marked me. Yes, no matter how much I spat in the face of fate, somehow, someway, that bitch has found a way to get the last laugh.

When Leo and Grace don’t return to base camp until after dark, I want to pretend to sleep.

It only takes whiff of her to know what they’ve done.

No words can describe the sense of hollowness I feel.

But then she’s gone, and so is another article of clothing.

We haven’t said anything about it. But things have gone missing all over base camp.

Especially this camp, the one we routinely circle back to near the falls.

I follow her, wondering if this is how Leo get’s off.

Their is something intoxicating about the chase, because who know if the hunt will be succeesufl.

Guess I’ll find out, I think as I trake her to the sunlit waters, the early morning dawn casting a orange glow over the island.

Water ripples down my omega’s flushed skin, the remnants of her heat melting away.

She glows in the sunlight, and I groan with desire, my alpha instincts on fire.

She’s beautiful even when her face is a veil of righteous fury.

Sloppy thirds? I don’t care. I don’t care how much I have to debase myself anymore.

“Grace?” I ask, and

“What do you want?” she asks.

No wonder, no laughter, no hope. I knew what had to be done, and have never shied away from being the villain. But now I’m not so sure we should’ve have shown her the truth if it meant my omega would slowly fade away.

“You,” I say, mustering all the strength and courage and stupidity I have left in me. And yes, humility, the sliver still stored in my emotional bank.

“What did you say?” she asks me, getting whiplash as I shift in an instant from teasing to demanding.

“You,” I repeat, looking her dead in her eyes. And for the first time in a week, I see a fire of life flickering in them, no longer dead and glassy and despondent.

But then, she closes them, clutching her forearms as if she’s protecting herself from my desire.

And it makes me sick because it’s all my fault that Grace can’t believe me, won’t believe me, and feels as though she has to shield herself from a lie.

She lifts her hand to her forehead and rubs it in slow, concentric circles as I’m forced to wait.

Without opening her eyes, still massaging whatever migraine I induced, she asks me, “What do you really want in exchange? Money? I can get access to it. Supplies, well, I–”

I answer, “No, I want you, Grace, and only you,” before she can catch her breath.

My confession is instant, and I don’t bother to deny it.

Her breath hitches, and her eyes spring open.

We stare at each other, alone in the hot springs, only the sounds of our panting breaths, and I’m sure the thudding of my heart is audible in the air.

It’s as if the island and all its residents have disappeared, and we’re in a world where there’s only me and my omega.

“Me?” she asks as if she didn’t hear me for the fourth time.

“Yes, you. Take me to your nest, and I’ll convince them to walk on water, if you want. But first, I want you. Alone,” I elaborate the best I can without giving everything away.

She looks off in the distance for a long time, sporting Nakoa’s mating mark and now Leo’s on the right side of her neck exposed to me—something ugly and wretched claws at my heart, and my bond to my brothers breaks just a bit.

I know I’m being cruel. After everything her father’s taken from me, I thought I’d feel something even if Mother Nature took my revenge on my behalf.

But I can’t even feel shame anymore, just a cold emptiness that fans out from my soul at the thought of Faith truly being dead.

I don’t know her, but if she’s better than her sister, like Grace claims… I thought I was sentenced to hell, but maybe evil has always been inside me. To think I ever wanted Grace to crumble like this makes me physically sick.

Grace takes far too long to answer, and I shield my eyes with my hand.

Didn’t Nakoa say I’d eat my words one day?

By being so absolute that I would never mate a Wilder?

Well, I hope he’s laughing right now while he forages with Leo, because I’m choking on a banquet of regret, a five-course meal with dessert at that.

“Fine,” she whispers so softly that I mistake it for a whisper of air at first. “Fine, you can have me all to yourself tonight, yeah? But don’t bite.”

It’s the best offer I get, and I take it without looking back.

Grace allows me to hold her hand as she leads me back to camp.

At the entrance, she forces me to wait. So I do, wet, craving another more sickly sweet dampness on my skin.

When she comes back, her face is flush despite her tan, and she peers up at me through her long eyelashes.

“Don’t laugh, bastard. This is what you asked for, and I don’t have much to work with right now.”

I don’t know what she means until she leads me all the way to the back, near the dying fire. I freeze as she falls to her knees in a sea of white, naked, wet, and looks up at me over her shoulder with expectations etched all over her heart-shaped face.

“This,” I whisper, pain constricting my scarred chest, “is your nest?”

She nods softly, gathering a quilt and more pillows into a bed of sorts around her.

They’re not fit for her, the barely clean fabrics, nor the dim cave we call home as we trek across our sector.

My bond brothers and I have been tainted by this place.

We belong to its filth. But our omega shines so brightly, it’s blinding, as she continues to gaze up at me through her thick, black eyelashes that flutter ever so softly.

“Do you like it?” she whispers, and it’s like a caress.

I clench my jaw and then my fists, desire flooding my veins, and my burn scars ache. I should hate her nest. I should hate her. After all the unforgivable shit her father has done means she can’t be mine. To worship? To protect? To father a family with?

Nonsense!

It’s simply too cruel a fate to fall for the daughter of my worst enemy.

But, as light streams through the cave mouth, she looks divine under the glow.

Like the traces of starlight I used to cling to in my prison cell at night, imagining a better world.

The beauty silenced my nightmares and kept me sane when I escaped onto the island proper with Nakoa and Leo.

And for once, I don’t see my little white rabbit as prey.

I don’t see her father in those soulful brown eyes, like smoky quartz.

No, all I see is her, my precious omega.

Mine!

“I love it,” I say, marching over to her, crossing the threshold of our nest, as I lower my body overtop her warm, soft, golden-brown tanned skin.

I can give her only this, my body, in exchange for quelling the rebellion brewing inside me. I’ll give her the world if she lets me inside of her one more time.

Never my heart. Never my love. Despite the words ‘I love you,’ clawing at my throat, desperate to come out.

All my devotion threatens to come flooding out as I claim my omega with the force of the raging storm that just passed us by.

Even if she hates me, I need her to, “Look at me.”

There’s something so intoxicating about her scent.

So much so that it drives me to the brink of going feral.

A tremor of lust coils in my gut before it strikes my cock like a bolt of lightning as my omega rolls her hips to meet me, my hands digging into her thin hips.

Too thin. I’ll feed her well after I fuck her senseless tonight.

I’m thankful now that I followed Nakoa and Leo’s advice to tote the pillows over the mountaintop so Grace has a bit of comfort while we’re forced to make camp at this base or that.

It’s a gift to be offered anything by her, especially an invitation to her nest.

“Raphi,” she whimpers, my nickname, my balls swollen, my first knot already inside her. “Will you knot me properly tonight?”

“Yes,” I whisper as I kiss her forehead. “Yes, of course, my little white rabbit.”

The shoreline has been the edge of the world for me. But now I know that’s false. Grace is my whole world, my universe. And now, if only to myself, I’ll worship her as the goddess of my very existence.

“Raphael?” She whispers, and my name is like a prayer on his pillowy lips, so soft as they melt against mine. I grip her roughly, unable to quell my insatiable hunger. A kiss won’t sate me, and yet I’m still filled with bliss.

“You’ll take all of me tonight,” I murmur against her lips, as I shove my cock right where it always belonged.

Grace jerks, clawing my ass and squeezing my hips with her legs, as I shove past her resistance. It’s coming. My knot. My second knot. I’m already thick and swollen, and I’m not sure she’s slick enough to take both.

I still, fearful I hurt her, but the next sound she makes almost makes me cum too soon.

“Please, don’t stop.”