Page 103 of The Drama King
"That can't be true," she whispered, but her body was already responding to the truth her mind resisted. I could smell it: the subtle change in her scent as it aligned more perfectly with mine, the recognition happening beneath conscious thought.
"It is true," Corvus confirmed, his analytical precision lending weight to the claim. "All of us can scent it now that the claiming has taken place. You're Dorian's fated mate, with secondary compatibility to Oakley and me as pack members."
She stared at us, those green eyes wide with confusion and the first hints of something that might have been hope. "But you... you spent months breaking me," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "Tormenting me. Making my life hell."
The accusation hit with devastating accuracy, making me flinch despite my usual control. "We didn't know," I said, the words inadequate even as I spoke them. "We couldn't have known until the claiming took place, until the markers were revealed."
"Would it have mattered?" she asked, and the genuine question in her voice made my chest ache. "If you'd known from the beginning, would you have treated me differently?"
The honest answer was yes: a fated mate would never be treated with the systematic cruelty we'd inflicted on her. They were too precious, too rare, too sacrosanct in Alpha culture. But admitting that felt like confirming the wrongness of what we'd done, the unnecessary pain we'd caused.
"It would have been completely different," I admitted finally, knowing she deserved at least that much truth. "A fated mate is... beyond price. Beyond games or manipulation or dominance displays. They're..."
"Cherished," Oakley supplied when I struggled to find the right word. "Protected. Honored."
Skepticism flashed across her face, and I couldn't blame her. After months of psychological warfare, our sudden change of heart would naturally seem suspicious.
"Convenient timing," she observed, her voice gaining strength despite her vulnerable position in my luxurious bed. "Now that you've claimed me, broken me, gotten what you wanted—suddenly I'm precious and rare?"
"The fated bond was always there," Corvus explained, his analytical mind finding patterns even in chaos. "It explains our fixation on you specifically, the intensity of our response to your defiance. On some level, our biology recognized what our conscious minds couldn't know until the claiming."
She didn't look convinced, and again, I couldn't blame her. We'd spent months systematically destroying her trust, her sense of safety, her belief in her own perceptions. Rebuilding that would take time, would require consistency and patience I'd never needed to exercise before.
"I don't expect you to believe us right away," I said quietly. "Or to forgive what happened before we knew. But the truth is undeniable: you're my fated mate. Our pack's perfect Omega match."
As if to emphasize my point, another wave of heat visibly washed over her, making her gasp and curl in on herself. The scent of her arousal filled the spacious room, triggering my own response with pavlovian immediacy.
But this time, as I gathered her into my arms and prepared to help her through the next peak of her heat, something was different. The possessiveness remained, the Alpha need to claim and control, but it was tempered now with something gentler. Something that might, with time, become tenderness.
"I've got you," I murmured against her throat, breathing in the intoxicating scent of our perfect match. "We've got you."
When I pushed inside her, it was with desperate reverence rather than dominance. Every thrust was worship, every touch a promise I didn't know how to make with words. The connection between us sparked and flared with each movement, the fated bond recognizing itself and responding with overwhelming intensity.
She cried out, not in pain but in recognition—her body finally understanding what it had been craving all along. Not just any Alpha, but this Alpha. Her match. Her mate.
My knot swelled quickly, locking us with fierce possession, but even as biology claimed us both, I found myself whispering apologies against her skin. Promises. Vows I'd never thought I'd make.
"Never again," I breathed, my voice rough with emotion I barely recognized. "Never hurt you again. Mine to protect now. Mine to cherish."
The mansion around us—our territory, our domain—bore witness to the moment everything shifted. When a tormentor became a protector. When ownership became devotion.
When a game became love, whether I was ready for it or not.
thirty-seven
Oakley
Iwatchedthetransformationhappen in real time: Dorian Ashworth, ruthless pack leader and calculated tormentor, becoming something else entirely in the space of a single breath. His ice-blue eyes had gone wide with shock, then soft with a reverence I'd never seen in him before, his entire body language shifting from dominant to protective in the span of heartbeats.
All because of a scent. A perfect, impossible scent that had changed everything.
Fated mates.
Even hours later, as morning light strengthened through the windows of Dorian's suite, I was still struggling to process the implications. Fated mates were the stuff of legends, of romance novels and ancient pack lore. The kind of miracle that happened once in a generation, if that.
And we'd spent months systematically breaking her.
Guilt twisted in my gut like a living thing as I watched Vespera sleep between rounds of heat. She looked impossibly small and vulnerable curled against Dorian's chest, blonde hair spread across the pillows, claiming bites vivid against her pale skin.