Page 71 of The Delta’s Rogue (Crescent Lake #4)

My hand loosens around Sarina’s. I lean away from her, staring straight ahead but not seeing her or anything else. All I see is my best laid plans fall apart, unraveled by the thread of fate that links my soul to Sarina’s.

I spent all this time avoiding the prospect of running my own pack.

I reassured Wesley many times that I had no plans to leave Crescent Lake to take over or start one somewhere else.

They suggested me as an option for the temporary alpha position at Silver Ridge after Dominic left to join the royal guard, but I turned that down too.

Only to find out my mate will rule over not just one pack but all of them.

Every single one.

An entire kingdom of packs. All led by her.

And me.

I was ready to leave with her once we found her.

Ready to follow her and join her on her journeys, working undercover for the king and helping packs in need.

I’d already told Wesley I’d be following her once we found her, once we saved her, and that he’d need to find a new delta for Crescent Lake.

My bags were packed, my body more than ready to reunite with my heart.

But this…

“No.” I shake my head. “No.”

Sarina reaches for me, but I yank my hand from her grasp. She winces at my physical rejection, and her reaction stings like a slap to the face, reminding me that I’m supposed to be helping her heal, not pushing her away when she seeks me out .

But this recent development is overwhelming. It’s flipping my world upside down, forcing me to question everything.

“Sebastian—”

“No. I’m sorry, but no. Just no.”

I shove my chair away from the table and rush towards the exit. The chair topples to the floor behind me, but I continue on my path.

My meager meal curdles in my stomach. It bubbles and gurgles like molten lava on the brink of an eruption. My legs are as sturdy as jello, and I stumble, catching myself on the doorway between the dining area and the living room.

Sarina’s feet shuffle on the floor as she follows me, dancing in a rhythm with King Malachi’s heavier footsteps.

I launch myself from the archway before she reaches me, crossing the room in bounding strides to reach the house’s grand entrance with its sweeping double staircase.

“Sebastian, please—”

She snatches my hand. I round on her, glaring down at her.

“I don’t want to be an alpha, and I definitely don’t want to be the king!” I rip my hand from hers and back away, taking a step closer to the front door with each word I throw at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The pain my outburst causes her shoots down the bond like poisoned darts. It reflects in her eyes, in the tears that before fell because of the cruelty she experienced in that hellhole but now fall because of me.

She stands tall, however, enduring the adversity, reminding me exactly how strong she is. How strong she always has been. How strong she needs to be because of who she is and who she will become.

“I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t.”

Her voice whispers across my skin. I grit my teeth, resisting the way it urges me to fall to my knees at her feet and take back everything I’ve done and said since her dad walked into the room.

“Bullshit.” I spit the word through my teeth, and she flinches, but I continue to push, even though the words burn like acid as they cross my tongue. “If I’d come with you, if I’d left Crescent Lake with you four years ago, would you have told me? ”

She sets her jaw and lifts her chin, a spark of confrontation flaring to life from deep within her. “Would it have made a difference? You didn’t want to be an alpha back then either.”

Another, more recent memory—one that wasn’t trapped behind a mental wall by magic—flashes across my mind, tugged to the forefront by her words.

We were in the office above Moonlighters after I’d killed Lou, and she was asking me questions. Questions that seemed innocent at the time, but now…

“You knew, didn’t you?”

Her heart skips a beat, and she lowers her eyes to her hands clasped in front of her stomach. She says nothing, but her silence is all the answer I need.

“You did.” I scoff. “You knew I was your mate. All those questions about my… experiences … All that talk about my lycan and my rank…” I pace the entry, my steps so hurried and heavy I may burn a trench into the marble floor.

“‘You’re still an alpha. You could start your own pack. You’d be good at it. You have the instincts.’”

I throw her words from the past in her face, her cowering posture doing nothing to staunch the explosion from me.

The others—both her pack members and mine—trickle in from various areas of the house, lingering on the staircase and in the doorways.

They teeter on the edge of intervening, but Wesley holds his hand out, gesturing at them to stay back.

“It wasn’t curiosity. It wasn’t casual conversation. You knew . You knew I was your mate, and you were…what? Trying to feel me out? Trying to give me a hint about who you were? Who we were to each other?”

“Yes. I knew,” she murmurs.

My pacing finally stops, and I face her. “How?”

Her eyes meet mine as her throat bobs, and her voice catches. “I’ve always known what you are to me.”

“That doesn’t answer my question!”

My voice echoes around the entry, followed by a pulse of my aura. The light fixtures rattle, and my friends flinch. I’m unsure if those are by-products of the volume and intensity of my voice or the force of my aura .

“Sebastian?” Wesley takes a careful step forward, glancing between King Malachi, Sarina, and me several times. His aura reaches out for me, trying to subdue me, but it has no effect on me.

Because my rank is higher than his now.

“What is going on?” Wes asks. “Why are you yelling and—”

“He is her dad.” I point at King Malachi, then swing my finger towards Sarina. “She is the future queen. And I am her mate.”

I brace my hands on my hips. The room spins as I try to fill my lungs with oxygen. I swallow and lift my chin to meet Wesley’s gaze. The interior of my mouth is as dry as a desert, and my tongue sticks to the roof of it, but I force my weakening voice to speak.

“I am her mate, which means I— Which means I am…”

“Sarina is his daughter?” Reid shakes his head with a chuckle. “Sarina is a rogue.”

I laugh too, but there’s no humor in it. “She’s not a rogue.”

“Nomad,” Reid says with a wave of his hand. “Potayto, potahto.”

“She’s not a nomad.” I whirl on King Malachi again. “Tell them. Tell them who she is.” I spin and face Sarina, an edge to my voice that’s as sharp as an executioner’s blade. “Tell them who you are. Tell them.”

My chest and shoulders heave more with every unsteady breath I take as Sarina and I stare each other down.

King Malachi’s voice breaks the silence. “She is Sara Anaís Goodrich Cisneros. She is my daughter, and she is the future queen.”

I feel the shift in the room as the pieces click into place for my friends, as her name unlocks their memories from our first and only visit to the palace, where we met her and her brother. Realization hits them one by one, and their eyes bore into the side of my face.

“Well, fuck,” Reid says. “What does that make Sebastian?”

“The future king,” King Malachi replies. “Sarina will be the alpha, but they will be the queen and the king.”

Future king.

My friends all speak at once, but the only thing I hear is that phrase over and over again.

It repeats in my mind like a cursed mantra.

It turns my skin inside out. Like sand flowing from the top half of an hourglass, it piles on me, burying me with the burden of each grain until I’m suffocating beneath the weight .

“I need some air.”

I whirl on my heel and rush to the door. Sarina follows me, her tear-filled voice calling my name and tearing an oozing, bleeding gash in my heart with her sorrow.

But I’m already sprinting through the trees, leaving the only thing I’ve ever wanted in a crumpled, sobbing heap on the front steps.