Once Upon A Pack (Royalverse #1)

Chapter 22

twenty-two

His Highness doesn’t suffer well.

He isn’t used to it, the poor bastard. Apparently, no one ever put the future ruler of Crenmore in timeout; let alone anything more brutal.

Asher wasn’t bred for this shit. The tedium of waiting for your punishment, the stoicism one cultivates when pain becomes so common, it’s boring .

He paces while we wait outside his bedroom, restless and visibly agitated. Meanwhile, I’ve been training my whole life for this moment—my final, most epic fuck up. Feeling resigned, I sit slumped on the floor with my back to the sofa, replaying every cruel thing I’ve ever said to Ivy.

Our mate .

In this case, I’ll take the punishment. In fact, I’m going to seek out more .

Unlike all the beatings my father liked to dole out, I deserve this. And, you know what? I’m going to fucking sit in it.

Shutting my eyes, I let the truth sting me again and again.

She’s afraid of me.

I hurt her feelings. Scared her. Made her feel worthless—like an object.

I took advantage of her position.

And I never apologized .

The rest of it is distressing, but that last one? I hate myself most for that. The fact that I knew I’d fucked up and hid from it every day.

That disgusts me now.

Maybe it has this whole time. And the loathing I felt whenever she looked at me with trepidation? Maybe that was me hating myself for not having the balls to give her the amends she deserved.

Jesus . I am way too sober for this.

Asher finally halts on one of his many turns, snapping his attention to me. “How can you just sit there?” he growls. “I’m going out of my goddamned mind!”

I shrug, sighing up at the chandelier. Did she have to clean that? It looks like a bitch. Would it have killed us to use recessed lighting like normal people?

“I’m marinating,” I tell him.

“In?” he demands.

Remorse.Regret. Resignation .

“Reality.”

That takes the wind out of His Highness’ sails. His shoulders fall as he exhales hard. “I’m afraid if I start, I’ll never stop.”

I nod slowly. “That’s sort of the point. Do you think anything either of us feels right now compares to whatever she’s lived with after you sent her away? Or how she’s felt coming to work every day, knowing she would have to see me ?”

Asher’s jaw works. “What did you do to her?”

I sense his anger, but there’s a sharp bitterness to his bergamot scent, too. Fear, I think. The worry that I’ve done something we won’t be able to come back from.

Which is a feeling I can really fucking relate to right now.

It takes work to swallow. Then I rasp, “I scared her. Badly, I think.”

Asher seems so stiff, it’s a wonder his joints don’t creak as he lowers himself onto the settee across from me. Solemn judgment presses between my shoulders as his heavy gaze locks on mine. “Tell me.”

And then I’ll decide if you can stay.

He doesn’t say that last part, but he doesn’t need to. It’s unspoken. And exactly what I would say if the tables were turned.

But they aren’t. Of course. Because no matter how much Asher may have messed up, I’ll always be worse.

It’s like a law of nature.

Tipping my head back, I blow a slow breath toward the stupid, perfectly clean chandelier.

“It was maybe a month after we got here,” I start. “Right around the time—” I swallow. “The time her mom died. I didn’t know that, then, but still. One night, we had one of those fucking disastrous dinners. With that omega Bast sorta liked—Countess Something?”

In my periphery, Asher nods, waiting. My fingers spasm against the Persian rug beneath me. “I ruined it, of course. Made some joke about her father fucking his horse, I think? I don’t remember. Either way, you had to face a lecture from His Majesty because of me—and Bast was pissed .”

I recall being surprised by that. In all the years we’d been a pack, Sebastian had never gotten angry with either of us. He got annoyed, sometimes, or exasperated.

It wasn’t even about that other omega, really. I think he was just fed up with me starting fires he knew he’d have to put out. And his fury made me feel… bad .

Guilty. Full of self-directed rage.

And hopeless, too—because, hell, I couldn’t help myself .

“I wound up at some crappy bar in town,” I admit aloud. I’m fully braced when his scent darkens further—I knew he’d be upset about me getting sloshed in public. It’s against basically all of our royal rules.

Which makes this next confession awkward.

“I got in a fight, somehow. I don’t even know why. But they kicked me out of the bar when I knocked a table over.”

Asher growls quietly. “Christ.”

I sigh. “Yeah, I would have been fucked if anyone had taken a video. But after they kicked me out, I wound up sitting in an alley while I waited for my nose to stop bleeding. Someone walking past noticed me… and it was Ivy.”

I can still picture her—wide blue eyes and blonde wisps poking out of her bun, catching the glow of the nearest streetlight like a halo. She’d been walking home from another long shift, up to the collection of dodgy apartments at the far side of the village. As soon as she recognized me, she came flying to my side, paying no mind to the street sludge that soaked into her frumpy gray skirt.

Our gazes connected in the darkness, and something in me snapped. Now, it makes sense—but at the time? I couldn’t understand why my blood felt thicker and my lungs wouldn’t work right.

“Your Grace,” she’d said, running her soft little fingers down my sleeve. “You’re hurt.”

I was.

I had been for a long time.

For a second, I thought Ivy had seen through all the ink and anger, to the wreckage hidden in the darkest parts of me. But next, she reached up and touched the edge of some stinging wound slashed across my cheek. When I flinched in pain, my chest heaving as the street melted into a drunken blur, she took pity on me.

Of course she did.

She does the same thing with the mice who live in the basement.

“She could tell I was out of my mind, and I guess she figured that if she left me on my own, someone else would probably see the duke passed out in a gutter. So she walked me back to the manor and snuck me into my room. Tried to help me patch myself up… but I made a pass at her instead.”

Shh, little dove.

Would you really say no to a duke?

And when she started to back away, anxious in the face of my pushy attempts to draw her closer: Don’t leave me. Please.

That last word stopped her. She wavered, not sure if she should walk out on such a pathetic creature. Because that’s what I was that night. And what I have been every day since, alternating between ignoring and antagonizing her.

Asher’s low snarl brings me back to the present. I sit up and let him see the regret written all over my features. “I didn’t hurt her,” I tell him. “I don’t even think I meant to scare her. My Alpha just wanted her so damn badly, and she was there, and I was fucked up.”

I remember waking up with a mouth full of cotton the next morning, convincing myself it had all been a drunken dream. Until I ran into Ivy Addison, in a clean gray uniform with her same messy bangs, setting a breakfast tray laden with bottled water right in front of my door.

The way she gazed up at me with so much fear and uncertainty… I knew it hadn’t been a dream at all.

“She’s been skittish around me ever since,” I finish. “And I’ve been a dick every time I’ve seen her because I hated remembering that night and what I did.”

Asher’s fingers drum against the side of his leg, his brows snapping low over his glasses. He opens his mouth, probably to lay into me?—

But the scent of charred shortbread explodes through the common room.

And we both leap up.