Chapter Twenty-One #2
“After leaving the Den, I . . . monitored you, but whoever was responsible for abducting Minseo was devising their plot around the same time. I found out after meeting you again that they’d hacked into my systems, ensured my surveillance only displayed the dull bits—clips of you walking down the street, seemingly coping well.
Safe. Contented. I wasn’t aware you’d showed up at the Den again.
I didn’t know you had my child, didn’t know you were destitute.
It infuriated me because from the moment we first met, you were a distraction.
I’d thought you were the reason I didn’t catch on quick enough.
My guard had lowered, and I’d been taken for a fool for two whole years.
” His fist slammed against the mantlepiece.
“It was my failure, not yours. I should’ve been able to protect you both sooner, and I’d taken it out on you. ”
Fuck. Me.
I didn’t know where to start.
“So, that’s how you know so much about me? About my past?” I remarked, recalling how he’d known about my parents’ death, though I’d never told him. Then all the rest in between. “Because you’d stalked me for two years?”
His teeth ground at the word choice, but he didn’t correct it. “Yes.”
I rolled my eyes. “Mafia will be mafia.”
“I’m not the mafia.”
“Glorified gangster, then.” I bit into my tongue, fighting down the impulse to berate him. This wasn’t about that. “You don’t know who took Minnie?”
“No,” he admitted, reluctantly. My nails dug into my palm, even through the layers of bedsheets. “I kept it from you so you wouldn’t try to get involved, but that was wrong of me. They will be taken care of, I assure you, but it’s . . . complicated.”
“Because of the treaty?” His gaze snapped to me, his brow creasing slightly as if I’d unveiled his deepest darkest secret.
I scoffed. “I’m not as clueless as you like to believe I am.
I realised there had to be some form of accord or code you all abide by when the elite packs showed up for our mating.
If there wasn’t, it would have been a bloodbath.
I went digging and found out about the treaty. A death for a death.”
He nodded gravely. “Believe me, I would have razed the city to the ground for what they did, but I couldn’t risk making the first move. Until they give us justification in blood, or solid, undeniable proof of their identity, my hands are tied.”
I was aware of a bigger scheme, that Minnie’s kidnapping was only a small part of the puzzle.
It was the main reason I’d signed the contract.
The chance it could happen again, or worse, was more than enough to persuade me.
However, I’d assumed the culprit was either dead in that warehouse, or on Caine’s radar.
The fact he didn’t know at all and the bastard was still out there, roaming, was terrifying, but . . .
“I won’t pretend I agree with it,” I declared, giving him a pointed look.
“But for now, Minnie is safe, and I want it to stay that way. Civil war doesn’t guarantee that.
” It was my turn to be uncomfortable. “So, I will have to trust you, and your judgment. Though as soon as you find the fucker, all bets are off.”
“Agreed.”
“You should have told me,” I added, holding his gaze. “And if you ever hide anything this important from me again, I will cut your dick off, do you understand?”
His eye glinted with heat. “I understand.”
I exhaled a composing breath. It wasn’t ideal, but Minnie was in the safest position she could be in. I truly believed that. If they tried again, they’d have the full force of Caine’s power to contend with, and it was enough of a reassurance for now.
A stretch of silence fell between us, and I started to doubt what the point of this was.
What was his goal? He’d said he wanted me at his side, that he should have stayed, but in what capacity?
To ease his guilt? As a salve for his loneliness?
He was dancing around it, avoiding the conversation he really needed to air.
I needed to know what he was feeling—what had been on his mind when he came to my door.
I needed to know if I was the only one prepared to cave.
My lips parted to speak, to ask him for his motives, but Caine beat me to the mic.
“I started showing signs of my affliction when I was fourteen,” he said, and the rawness, the authenticity in his typically monotone voice had my impatience dissipating.
I remained silent. “My mother was the only omega I could bear. The doctors believed I’d grow out of it once I presented, after I spent the night with an omega in heat.
They don’t know what triggered it. My father kept me out of the public eye as much as possible during those years, shipping me off to an all-Alpha boarding school, training me harder to become a leader. I was his greatest disappointment.”
“I’m sorry,” I offered, unable to remain quiet under such a confession. Whatever my sympathy was worth, he had it. “I can’t imagine what that was like.”
He nodded in acknowledgement. “My whole life I’ve been told I’d be mated to an omega one day—to carry on our lineage.
It was tradition.” The word was spat into the air like a curse.
“But every single one paraded in front of me smelled wrong. They made me physically sick, my body fighting to expel the scent, and I learned quickly that none of them gave a single shit. They wanted me for my status and wealth. They’d spread their legs for any rich Alpha because they didn’t want me, they wanted my name, and every advantage with it. ”
The vehemence in his voice raised my hackles, but I let him speak.
Let him feel.
“Once my father realised my presentation hadn’t miraculously fixed me, and worse, I couldn’t even knot an omega, he was livid.
” His expression darkened. “I couldn’t continue the bloodline, so he was forced to find a “cure.” I was a test subject, as no specialist in the city was familiar with the condition.
They fed me pills, injected me with whatever concoctions they brewed until one stuck.
It wasn’t a cure, but to him it was enough.
He couldn’t have his heir not conforming. Or showing weakness.”
“No wonder you hate hospitals,” I bit out, furious on his behalf.
Was it not enough to mutilate him? To treat him as nothing more than a puppet to bend and shape, he had to add “lab rat” to the list?
The rage in me was damn near impossible to temper, imagining what Caine had endured, all that pain with no one there to lend a kind word or comforting gesture. I swallowed roughly. “Sadistic fuck.”
Caine eyed me with a peculiar interest, but didn’t comment on my reaction.
“After his death, I decided I’d have nothing to do with omegas.
Or mating. By that point, I resented the natural order.
I wanted to punish him like he’d punished me, all of us, for so many years.
I still take the medication because without it the symptoms are debilitating, and rival packs figuring it out would be a headache we don’t need, but I swore not to follow tradition. Not until it became an issue at least.”
Then he met me.
“Then I met you,” he parroted, and his gaze seemed far away.
Vaguely reminiscent. “An omega unlike any I’d known before.
You smelled heavenly. I could knot you, be in your presence and accept your touch without my skin crawling.
I detested it, succumbing to the trick of nature everyone harped on about.
It’s why I left, and for two years I thought it was just an experience I’d never have again.
But then you reappeared out of thin air, demanding my assets, and my initial assumption was that you were exactly the same as all the others he had flaunted in front of me. ”
His words stung, though I couldn’t exactly blame him, not when I’d spent those same two years assuming he’d abandoned me.
Not with knowing firsthand how easy it was for an impression to take root and spread like a disease, warping and manipulating until the hatred was resolute and it was impossible to see anything else.
It wasn’t wholly his fault.
As it wasn’t mine.
“I offered the arrangement out of obligation, but also for selfish reasons,” he expressed, his focus narrowing in on me.
I matched it, my pulse quickening. “Having you close soothed my pain. Your scent acted as a balm, and I was addicted. I’d planned to use you as I believed you were using me, but .
. . you intrigued me. You have from the beginning.
The fight in you.” He huffed a short laugh.
It sounded impressed. “You stood toe to toe with me, uncaring of our designations or my reputation, and gradually it dawned on me that you weren’t what I’d painted you as. ”
Caine forced his gaze away again, glancing toward the far side of the room, his lips twitching with a muted smirk. As if whatever thoughts were running through his mind amused him. Or they’d made him realise he’d been the world’s biggest idiot.
His attention returned to me.
“You buried yourself in my soul, and not a day went by I didn’t think of you.
” My fingers tightened in the sheets almost painfully, the intensity behind his stare heating my skin, but I refused to back down.
“I was determined to keep my distance. The yearning I felt for you wasn’t what I’d wanted.
I’d deemed it false, that it had to be instinct, because how could anyone feel natural love in an arrangement like this? ”
“You’ve said those words before,” I recounted absently. “In your study.”
“Hm, because I’d accepted them as the truth.”
“And now?”