Chapter 18
DIANA
Well, Judge really is an efficient camping buddy.
The asshole-turned-into-my-alpha has a whole ass blanket laid out, a fire made from some wood nearby, a jug of water that we drink out of, some bread, dried meat, and three cans of beans… He eats two of them, of course.
It’s a shock to my nervous system, honestly. I went from begging a warrog to kill me, to now having a perfect evening with Judge on a beach.
And I just love the sensation of pushing my hair back behind my ears as the ocean winds playfully tug on it.
“Alright, now that you’re fed, watered, and have a nice blanket under you… tell me of you,” he says, leaning back with his jacket off, the firelight flickering across a face that I know has been the last image before many die.
"My whole life?"
"We do have to sleep,” Judge jokes, waving a hand around as I hear the ocean but can hardly see it anymore. “I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you. So talk."
“You just have a way with romance.” I cannot help but smile. It’s so uncouth, and yet it’s so him.
The waves roll in, crash against the shore, and drag back out. The rhythm is hypnotic, ancient, the kind of sound that's been happening since long before humans existed and will keep happening long after we're gone.
"I had a brother," I say, and even now, years later, the words feel like touching an open wound. "His name was Dean...”
I then go on to tell Judge about the way Dean used to sneak me extra rations when our parents weren't looking, carefully palmed packets of protein paste, stolen fruit that he'd hide in his jacket and slip to me when no one was watching.
"He was four years older than me," I continue, staring out at the hidden waves because it's easier than looking at Judge.
"But he never made me feel like a burden. Some brothers do, you know? Especially with the age gap. But Dean just... he acted like keeping me safe was his job. His purpose. It was the only time in my life someone felt like they actually cared.”
The bond between Judge and me pulses with something warm, something that feels like understanding.
"My parents used to be loving… It's like something happened. I don’t know, maybe a conversation about me. But the closer I got to twelve, the more they talked about me like I was a crate of supplies they could barter. It made the omega part of me feel so gross. So undesirable.” Judge says nothing, but I feel the low, lethal simmer of his anger like heat along my skin.
“Dean tried to argue with them," I continue, pulling my knees to my chest as sand seems to be everywhere.
"He tried to stand up for me and say it wasn't right, that I should wait until I was eighteen like the rest and be given options.
And my father..." I swallow hard. "My father hit him. Knocked him to the ground. Told him it wasn’t his business, and that since Dean was a beta, it would never be business. He had never hit us before.”
I can see Dean clear as day on the floor, blood on his lip, my mother not moving to help him.
The way my father's eyes looked when he turned to me, cold and assessing.
“Dean helped me run a few days later," I say quietly. "Got me out through a maintenance hatch, gave me what he had swiped over the days, pointed me toward a healing center six hours south, since I had already started training to become a nurse one day, since everyone worked at the bunkers. He snuck my mug into my bag, as a piece of home.” I pause, my chest aching, thinking back to how it’s still at the Enclave.
"He died when my home was attacked quite a few years back. And now I don’t even have his mug. .."
I tell Judge about how I got to the Enclave, not confirming him when he asks about the underground network of safe houses and medical stations that shelter omegas on the run.
We can be mates for thirty years, and I’ll never show him where those are.
"I was good at it," I admit, looking at my hands that still have speckles of sand on them. "Being invisible. Being useful. Making myself small enough that people forgot I was there until they needed something fixed." I shrug, a jerky motion. "It's how I survived."
At some point, my voice loses its smoothness and turns ragged, cracking on words I've never said out loud before. At some point, when I’m staring too hard and can’t even hear the ocean anymore, Judge positions himself so he’s now behind me, my shoulder against his chest as both his legs are on either side.
He doesn't interrupt. Doesn't try to solve anything or offer advice.
So I tell him about Selene.
I talk about how we met as two scared girls in a world that clicked over our sense of humor, finding each other in the chaos and deciding to survive together.
About whispered plans in the dark, dreams of freedom spoken so softly they were almost prayers.
Dreams of starting over somewhere in this world so far away, no one would ever recognize us.
I tell him how I trusted her with everything.
How we were supposed to stick together no matter what.
How she was the closest thing to family I had after Dean, and how she had lost her own family, too.
How they kicked her out when rations got too thin.
"She must've been so scared," I say eventually, my voice raw and scraped thin. “To leave me like that.
"It doesn’t fucking matter what she felt," Judge says quietly, tension coiling between us as it’s clear he’s being very careful with his words. It almost feels like he knows something.
“Please tell me why you won’t tell me.”
“Later, sweetheart. It doesn’t affect anything right now. I promise we can talk about it back at the castle.”
I don’t ask further, the waves crashing and withdrawing, crashing and withdrawing, crashing and withdrawing.
I turn my head to look at him, really look, taking in the details I usually try to ignore.
The hard lines of his face, exhaustion, and something gentler bleeding through the mask he usually wears.
He looks less like the untouchable alpha of Dominion and more like a man who's been through too many storms and is still, somehow, standing.
"You're very annoyingly good at this," I mutter.
A very intrigued brow quirks. "At what?"
"Listening." I gesture vaguely. "The whole... supportive presence thing. I’m not used to it.”
Greed comes to life in his eyes, and all it does is comfort me. "I'm trying to be better at it."
“Really?”
His gaze drops briefly to my mouth before returning to my eyes, and the weight of that glance makes my breath catch. "I want you to stay."
My lips part as I taste the salt of the ocean, my head and heart begging to get away quickly before I fall back into his orbit… but his scent mixes in, and the warmth of his body… those words hit me.
My god, do they hit me.
A warm ripple spreads through my chest and outward until I feel it in my fingertips. Something tightly wound inside of me loosens.
The more I stare at his face that the fire flickers over, the more my body aches for him. It’s something related to the way we’re made, and admittedly more. Once the desire to have Judge builds, I can’t tune it out.
I lean in without fully deciding to, my body moving before my mind catches up.
My hand lifts, fingers brushing the rough line of his jaw, tracing the stubble that's grown in over the past few days, as if finally acknowledging he’s really here.
I find the scar cutting through his lower lip and trace that too, feeling the raised tissue beneath my fingertips.
His eyes darken, pupils expanding, swallowing the paleness. His scent thickens around me to something deeper, muskier, and unmistakably want.
I actually want to kiss him.
Your alpha brings you comfort…
Comfort. Yes, he owes me, right? The way he lets me touch him, like he’d never turn me away, burns through what barriers I have because I need this. I need to feel like I matter to someone.
“Lean down so I can kiss you,” I mutter.
It's not urgent as he obliges. Not at first. It's slow, questioning, my lips pressing against his in a firm, searching motion. For a moment, he holds perfectly still, like he's afraid any reaction will scare me off.
His warm, musky exhale through his nose lands on my cheeks, and I feel it all the way down to my bones. I press harder, the softness of his scarred lips melting away absolutely everything.
His mouth is familiar in a way that makes my chest ache. His palm slides to the back of my neck, fingers threading through my hair, anchoring me to him without forcing anything. Just holding…
My whole body melts into him, heat flaring where we touch. I arch my back, pressing my chest against his, feeling the hard planes of his body through our clothes as our teeth gently clash at times.
The ocean roars behind us, drowning out my gasp when his teeth graze my lower lip.
I swing a leg over his lap, settling against him, the sudden shift in dynamics making him stiffen.
My knees sink into the sand through the blanket on either side of his hips, and his hands slide possessively down my waist to my thighs, fingers digging in just enough to make me want more.
My back aches, but whatever was put on it earlier is clearly doing something that none of the healing centers ever had. The longing in our touches drowns out any discomfort that’s there, pulses of need bleeding through the bond from him, mixing with mine until I can't tell whose desire is whose.
For once, I don't feel hidden. I don't feel used, or manipulated, or cornered by my own biology. I am choosing this because I need it, not my heat, not desperation, not the bond pulling my strings.
Just me.
Judge breaks the kiss first, pulling back just enough, holding onto my hair so I can’t close the distance back. That intensity that I’ve grown to associate with him is back, his eyes aggressively moving to take me in. “Your back?”