Chapter Nineteen #4
“Leave,” I commanded, forcing my attention to the correspondence on my desk, refusing—unable—to look at him. I couldn’t think. “I have work to do.”
He stalled, swaying on his feet in my periphery. His scent had soured with anxiousness, and I set my jaw, teeth creaking. Go, before I say something worse.
He inched forward. I tensed.
A wet, dejected sigh drifted toward my ear, and he left.
The door snicking shut triggered my breath to escape my nose in a rush. I leaned over my desk, bracing my forehead in my hand. I didn’t know how long I sat there, blank, uncertain, yet it was clearly long enough for what I suspected was guilt to emerge.
It was my fault.
If I’d paid more attention, noticed I was being taken for a fool, he never would’ve known helplessness. He wouldn’t be living in constant fear of our daughter being taken from him again. He wouldn’t feel compelled to keep her so close.
He might not know the specifics, but he was intelligent, perceptive.
He’d proven it time and time again. The threat hadn’t been dealt with, I hadn’t wiped them from existence and ensured what had happened to Minseo would never happen again.
It . . . pained me. To entertain the notion he felt unsafe.
I’d bitten back against his opposition, defending my ego because he was right, and it stung to admit I’d been failing them. Why did it haunt me?
I relished our sparring. It was once the solution to this entire arrangement becoming bearable, but what he’d said was a knife to the gut.
My reaction was unfamiliar. If he’d cursed me with it the day he arrived, I would have tossed an equally cutting remark back with no effect, but now .
. . His acidic scent in my nose, I’d felt a compulsion to draw him into my lap, to prove he was secure.
Protected. To reassure him I would never direct my violent nature toward him or our child.
I wasn’t my father.
Was I?
I’d forced him to leave since the answer to that question hadn’t materialised. My guard had risen, hardening deliberately, the bitterness in his eyes enough to invoke my destruction. When did his judgement become significant?
When did I become so obsessed with him needing me?
Dylan could take care of himself. He’d done so for two years.
Even longer. His entire existence revolved around our daughter, and it was commendable.
He combated injustice. He refused to submit to the conventional dynamic.
He was argumentative, he obeyed when it suited him.
He wasn’t spineless, he fought for his beliefs, and I admired that in him.
Though part of me craved his reliance, for him to perceive me as a haven, even if only for respite from managing it all on his own.
Wasn’t that a reason I’d disputed this prospect in the first place?
No desire for a needy omega. Disinclined to be used for my assets and power.
Reluctant to endure fabricated sentiment because I loathed the idea of surrendering without a choice.
In the end, none of it mattered. There was no winning.
An attachment had taken root and there was nothing more I could do to defy it. I had to accept defeat.
Although, despite my lack of experience with the concept, I didn’t feel defeated.
Dylan detested how his biology commanded his actions, how it dictated the world’s opinion of him.
Even in heat, he challenged it, refusing to be persuaded unless he allowed it.
If he could resist, if he could scorn the pull even with his instincts at their height, what if I had too?
What if the attraction, this undeniable tether, wasn’t the product of an Alpha and an omega tolerating nature? Perhaps it was . . . more.
He’d already established my stance on omegas as a whole was misguided.
Was everything else a fable also?
A familiar notification lit up my phone screen, and I broke my word.
I snatched the device from my desk, my aim not to verify his safety.
It was to watch him, to encounter his emotion, his reaction.
He trod listlessly toward his bed, where we’d spent twenty-four hours entangled with one another, taking pleasure and relief, dismissing our commitments to savour it.
He paused, staring down at the rumpled sheets as if recalling a similar perspective.
He lowered himself to the floor, back flush against the frame as he folded his knees to his chest, embracing them tight.
There were tears gathering in his despondent eyes, glistening, threatening to fall.
He bowed his head forward, obscuring his fragility before I could witness it. As if he sensed my attention.
Or was this just how he cried whenever he was alone?
A deep ache snarled in my gut, an impulse to console him overriding my senses. Intense. Excruciating. I rose from my desk, advancing on the door. My fingers curled around the handle to wrench it open, but I wavered. Hesitating. The recognition of inadequacy severing my determination.
My hand fell.
I wouldn’t know what to say.