Page 80 of WitchBorn
“No,” Finn whispered.
“What?”
“I can feel you,” he said. “It’s not strong, but our link grows the closer I get. It’s not your fault.”
“You don’t know that.” While we’d never crossed paths, fate rippled like a pebble touching the water, a thousand tiny changes from one shift.
“Is it too soon, you think?” he asked.
“For what, honey?”
“To love you?”
I gasped and sank to my knees. “Finn…”
“It is too soon, right? But I feel it. My soul is begging to hold you. Like through all of this, you’re the one thing that will calm my soul, ease the pain, and give me a touch of peace.” He sucked in a large gulp of air. “Can’t really see you anymore, everything is dark, shadowed.” Frost grew in patches over his skin and I couldn’t hold back my tears at how much it must hurt. “Not really,” he said, “I’m sort of numb.”
“If I could do this for you, I would,” I told him.
“I know. You’re sweet under all those thorns.”
“Don’t ruin my reputation.”
He laughed, the sound half screech, half himself, which gave me hope there was enough left of him to make it through this nightmare.
“Your secret is safe with me.”
Finn touched the base of the statue, and was swallowed up by the still structure. I closed my eyes, head bowed to the ground and sobbed as the memory awakened for him.
Fifty-Three
FINN
Ipaced outside a small house. The pack kept their distance, feeling my disquiet. I’d been cast from the room as I’d snapped at the nurses too many times. Cassa’s omega energy calmed me enough to convince me to leave, but not further than outside.
“I should be with her,” I told Odion who now lived as Oberon. He leaned against a tree more than two dozen yards away.
“If you weren’t snarling at everyone, sure,” Oberon agreed. “Can you go in there, see her in pain, and not bite everyone’s head off?”
I couldn’t, that’s why I’d been kicked out. My wolf growled and snarled at everyone, possessive over the little omega I’d rescued more than a decade ago. A hundred alphas wandered through my pack, as we searched for her mate. I’d learned early on to keep my distance as I couldn’t control the absolute nightmare I became when another alpha got close. And yet, she wasn’t mine. Not fated at least, though in the end, she had chosen me.
Did she fear she’d never be free if she didn’t? Or perhaps she feared the dark rage that could occasionally find a way out of my firm grasp of control?
“She must hate me,” I said.
Oberon snorted. “She loves you.”
“But she’s not really mine.”
“I think that’s her choice.”
If I’d left, perhaps she’d have found her true mate. Though I shuddered to think of the damaged alphas and broken wolves I’d leave behind. The darkest portions of me thought ending them might be kinder, though most had found quiet lives under my suppression of their monsters. Without me, they’d be unleashed on the world to create chaos. A burden I grew to hate more and more every day.
Now there was Cassa. The first whom my mortal soul, my wolf, and my beast agreed to let inside my heart. Love. What a complicated mess. I loved my pack, or at least the wolf did. I loved the wild ground I’d settled, the beast hidden inside my soul adored the forest’s growth and madness of nature between subtle quiets. And my human side loved many, like Oberon, as family. But even the brother of my heart couldn’t get close to Cassa without me snarling.
“I shouldn’t have picked an omega,” I grumbled. Three beings in one, yet a world of turmoil inside. Cassa soothed them all, as long as it was only her and me.
Oberon laughed, a sound I rarely heard over the years. “You’ve never chosen the easy path, my friend. If you couldn’t have a true mate, who would fit you better than an omega?”