Page 67 of The Delta’s Rogue (Crescent Lake #4)

Her body tenses and strains as she repeats the words over and over.

She writhes and flails. Her desperate, agitated sobs crack her voice.

Each cry is louder than the previous. Each sob punches me harder in the gut.

Her screams tear through the room until her words are unintelligible, animalistic noises.

I press her against my body. Her screaming sobs continue, body convulsing uncontrollably with each one. I scoop her up, cross to the shower in hurried strides, and stand under the flow of water while fully dressed, with her cradled to my chest.

Tears stream down both of our faces. They mix with the shower water.

While loud, heaving, unending sobs accompany Sarina’s tears, my tears are silent.

They remain silent as I crouch to my knees and set Sarina on the shower floor.

They stay silent as I carefully slice the lingerie from her body with a single claw and kick it aside into a pile in the corner.

No sounds leave me while I tip her head back to soak her hair and as I massage shampoo into her scalp and through the now shorter ends of her dark locks .

I cry without noise as I bathe her, letting the water hide my tears. I cry for my mate, for the time stolen from us, for the trauma inflicted on her that will leave invisible scars that may never fade.

Sarina cries too. She shakes with a violent ferocity as I wash her body. Her sobs grow quiet, but her tears flow freely.

My soaked suit weighs me down—a mirror of the guilt weighing on my soul—as I touch her. I know it’s so she can feel clean again, but it seems like an invasion of her privacy and a violation of her trust.

The water runs clear, no dirt or suds in sight. I run my hand through my soaked hair, tipping my head up to the ceiling. Sarina leans against me, curled on the shower floor between my legs.

I take a moment to breathe.

A moment. A second. A minute. An hour. I don’t know how long we sit under the steaming water, but neither of us moves. We let the water flow over us. We let it wash everything away, let it absolve us of our pasts and our transgressions.

When the tears stop, I turn off the shower. Then I scoop Sarina into my arms. Water sloshes in my shoes, gushing out through the seams with every step. It drips from my pants and my suit jacket and pools on the floor in asymmetrical puddles. I grab a towel to cover the slippery spots.

I set Sarina on her feet and wrap a second towel around her. She hugs it closed, and I rub her to help her keep warm before combing my fingers through her hair.

“Your suit is ruined.” Sarina’s fingers brush over a lapel.

“My suit?” I scoff and peel the sopping wet jacket from my torso.

“I can replace my suit.” The coat falls to the floor with a plop and a splash, and I cup her cheeks with my hands.

“I can’t replace you.” I kiss her forehead softly.

Then I grab my T-shirt and wrap my arm around her waist as I lead her from the bathroom. “Let’s get you in bed.”

On the foot of the bed, I’m relieved to see a pair of sweatpants for me and a pair of leggings for Sarina. I don’t know if someone brought them in while we were in the shower, or if they were here before and I overlooked them, but I am grateful either way.

I stop at the foot and face Sarina. She stares at me, her eyes once more fractured and empty. Any trace of her former self—of that sassy spark—is gone, replaced by this broken version of Sarina .

She waits for me to tell her what to do. I feel it with everything in me. She’ll follow my wishes without a second thought. If I tell her to sleep on the floor wrapped in her wet towel, she’ll curl up into a ball at the foot of the bed.

When I finally get my hands on those fuckers behind that trafficking operation, they’ll wish they were never born.

“Is it okay if I dress you?” I ask through the lump in my throat.

She releases her towel as her answer. It falls to the floor, and she waits for me to dress her, arms hanging at her sides.

I hate the ease with which she exposes her body to me.

It’s not due to a comfortable intimacy we’ve cultivated over the course of our relationship.

It’s because of the brainwashing and the manipulation, and Goddess knows what else they put her through when she was with them, so she’d be a compliant plaything for the male who bought her.

I lift the shirt over her head, and she slides her arms into the sleeves.

As the hem rolls down her body, I glimpse a series of tattoos on her ribs for a split second before the fabric hides them from my sight.

My brow furrows, but I push the curiosity away for the time being.

Instead, I grab the leggings from the bed and hold them out for her to step into.

“I’m going to change, okay?” I drape the towel over my shoulder. “It will only take me a minute.”

She nods, her fingers sliding around the waistband of the leggings as she adjusts their positioning.

I grab the sweatpants and race into the bathroom.

I strip off the soaking wet suit and rub the remaining dry towel across my body and over my hair so I can remove as much water as possible.

Once I’m dry, I practically jump into the sweatpants, hang up the towels, turn off the lights, then rush out of the bathroom.

Sarina sits in the center of the king-sized bed, hugging her legs to her chest and resting her chin on her knees. She stares straight ahead, eyes vacant and exhausted, but her tension is persistent. Ingrained.

Goddess only knows how long it will take for it to lessen.

I crouch down next to the foot of the bed, bringing my gaze level with hers. “Are you ready to go to bed? ”

She blinks, and her eyes dart around the room, landing on various spots before they meet mine. A strand of tension unwinds from the rope tying her into tight knots, and she scoots towards the pillows.

I rise and follow her, walking along the edge of the bed. We grab the top of the comforter at the same time, and I help her pull it down so she can slide beneath the covers.

“Will you hold me?” She stares at me from the bed, the blankets tucked beneath her chin and her damp hair fanning out behind her on the pillow. The fragile earnestness with which she asks me tugs at my heart.

My lycan whimpers. His soul aches in tandem with mine. Our worry for her weaves together, magnifying what we each feel separately.

Her brokenness and exhaustion permeate into my bones. A fatigue unlike anything I’ve known before settles into my being. It’s a fatigue that will only ease with time and care. A fatigue we can only relieve from each other.

“Of course I’ll hold you.” I turn the lamp on the nightstand off, then climb into the bed.

Our bodies drift together. We meet in the center, unable to be kept apart, and our arms wrap around each other. She clings to me, fingers linking behind me, and I rub her back in long strokes while my nose presses into the top of her head.

“I’m afraid to fall asleep,” Sarina confesses in a hoarse whisper, her voice betraying her emotions and her exhaustion. “What if you’re gone when I wake up?”

With a kiss to her hair, I shake my head. “I promise that won’t happen. I promise I will always be here when you wake up.”

She snuggles further into my embrace. Her cheek rests against my chest, and her hold on me tightens. To an observer, she’d seem relaxed, but her heart pounds and her muscles strain, hinting at the anxiety lingering within her.

“You didn’t have those tattoos on your ribs before,” I say, hoping the discussion will distract her from her fear. My fingers trace along her spine, up and down, coaxing her heart and her breathing to slow.

“Brenna hid them. She must have removed the spell. Or maybe the magic wore off since we’re so far away now.”

“No, I mean before before. When we were together. Before you left. You spent a lot of time without…” I clear my throat. “I would remember tattoos. ”

“I got them after I left. To help me remember.”

My hand slides to her side, on top of her ribs, right where the tattoos are. “What do they say?”

“ Nosotros somos las estrellas. Prometo que te encontraré. Te amo .”

I translate the words in my mind as she repeats them to me from memory. We are the stars. I promise I will find you. I love you.

My throat tightens, my eyes itch, and I blow out a breath through my lips.

“They’re the words you said to me during our last night together,” she adds before I can say anything to her, before I can compose myself enough to proclaim what it means to have my words inked into her skin.

“I know,” I choke out. “I remember everything about that night. Every touch, every moment, every word. But I never said…”

I swallow back my protest. I didn’t say “ te amo ” to her, but I did say it. I said it in my mind when I realized she was my mate. I pushed the words to her through time and space, even though I knew she wouldn’t hear them.

Maybe, somehow, she did.

She takes my face in her hands and, with her thumb, swipes away the lone tear falling down my cheek.

“I imagined you saying those words countless times. I heard you say them to me in my dreams, like a star dancing through the galaxies or a grain of sand that’s traveled the world.

But no dream will ever compare to hearing you say them to me in person.

” Her fingertips travel over my face, leaving trails of stardust in their wake.

“I still can’t believe you found me. That you’re here and that this is all real. ”

“I know. But I promise I’m real. That this is all real.”

Her lips split into a brief, tiny smile. Her hands drift away from my face, stopping next to her cheek where she rests it right above my heart. With each beat, the weights on my eyelids grow heavier. With each breath, my body sinks further into the mattress.

“ Sebastián? ” she says into the quiet room, yanking me from near sleep.

“Yes?”

“I love you too.” Her voice is as quiet as a leaf falling from a tree to the forest floor.

Everything in me rejoices at her confession. Infinite are the times I’ve pretended my fantasies of her confessing her love to me were more than illusions.

She’s right.

Nothing will ever compare to the real thing.