Page 101 of Sigma

“Very good. We’ll all meet soon, then, won’t we?” Apollo ends the call and pockets the phone.

I go to the window which overlooks the vineyard, the spot he so recently vacated—I can see the road from here, the approach which one might term a driveway.

Far in the distance, I now see two small figures. Mom and Dad.

“Our little…game, as you called it…is almost over.”

“And then what?” I take a step toward him. “You’ll have my parents. Then what, Apollo? Torture them? Put them in the dungeon and go down there occasionally and beat my father? Rape my mother?”

He stands up. “I thought you understood me, Corinna. All that talk…I thought you’d come to know me better than that.”

“And yet you continue on with this idiotic scheme!” Another step. He tenses—because he feels my proximity every bit as much as I feel his.

“What is it youwantfrom me, Corinna?”

“The real you.” I take another step, and he takes another back—a dance.

He glowers at me. “The real me? You’ve seen the real me, Corinna.Thisis the real me.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s not.”

He shakes his head. “Then…what is, according to you?”

I step closer again and he dances backward. “The Apollo who kissed me. The Apollo who held me in his arms.”

He shakes his head. “Thatwas the game, Corinna. Just a game.”

“Bullshit.”

He whirls away from me. “Say what you like. Believe what you like.”

I tiptoe up behind him. I know he hears me, anyway. I see it in the tension in his body. “You’re lying to yourself. But you can’t lie to me.”

“You know nothing, Corinna Roth.”

I touch him, just my hands resting gently on his shoulders, but he flinches as if struck. “Try the truth, Apollo. Just once. Out loud, where both of us can hear it.”

“What truth?”

“Any truth. Tell me one true thing, no matter how hard it is to say.”

A long, long silence. “I saw you standing there at the window, and I know you were watching your parents approach.” He lifts his chin, but his eyes darken, narrow. “I know it means you’re considering your impending freedom from me. And I…” he swallows hard. “And I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like what? My freedom from you?” I laugh and move closer to him yet again—he’s got nowhere to go, now. His back is to the window. “Try again. I’ll let you rephrase that, if you want.”

“You’ll let me.”

“Yes, I’ll let you.” I close the distance again, so now there’s no space between us. “It’s not what you meant. Say it a better way.”

“I didn’t like…the thought of you…of you being gone.” He swells, jaw hardening. The Alpha is back. But then, he’s not really an alpha, is he? More of a sigma, I think. “I don’t want to let you go.”

“What if you—”

“Speak plainly goddammit,” he snarls over me. “No more riddles. No more what if. Say what you fucking mean, Corinna Roth.”

“You don’t have to let me go.” I whisper it.

“Just like that? You’d just…stay?”