Chapter Twenty-One #3
His expression softened around the edges.
“You’ve shown me that everything I believed—everything I was forced to believe—is bullshit.
But even if it wasn’t . . . I haven’t bitten you.
We don’t share the bond I’d thought induced emotions.
My feelings can’t be fake because I can resist you.
Your scent entices me, it lures me in, but I could’ve walked away.
I’d proved it once. I chose not to. You’re not conventional.
You’re not offering the dynamic I assumed was the only way.
You refuse to bend to my will unless you choose to.
My acknowledgment of omegas and mating was shortsighted, I admit that, and I’m sorry for it because if I’d known none of this had to be forced, I could’ve given you everything you’ve ever wanted so much sooner. ”
My eyes stung, my vision glassy. “Why didn’t you just tell me this?”
He broke eye contact to wipe a hand down his face. “Because I couldn’t let go of my pride. I couldn’t admit I’d been wrong about it all. That I was ignorant.”
“So why are you telling me now?” My voice cracked.
“I can’t live another day in a lie,” he stated, stepping away from the fireplace.
He didn’t close the gap between us, but he was facing me.
Fully. He’d flayed himself open. Revealed every card he had, and now he was laying himself at my feet.
All the air in the room suddenly evaporated.
“I’m not a good man. I’ve done horrific things, and will continue to do so.
I don’t deserve you, I know it, but I want you.
I want you to be mine. Not for a contract.
Not for convenience. Wholly, and by your own will.
I understand if you don’t want the same.
In fact, I wouldn’t expect it after the way I’ve treated you, but I couldn’t leave you tonight without admitting the truth.
I’ll have the contract rewritten. You’ll be free from any and all obligations to me, but I will not abandon you.
You and our daughter will have everything you need.
That won’t change. She’s my successor, and I’ll uphold my promise to protect you, but you don’t have to pretend anymore.
You can leave, if that’s what you wish. I can even—”
I was on my feet before he could finish, crossing the room and crashing my mouth into his without caring if it hurt.
His fingers knotted in my hair, his tongue prying open my lips so he could devour me.
He tasted like smoke, whisky, and the realisation he’d needed liquid courage for this would’ve made me laugh against his tongue if I wasn’t so immersed in how right it felt.
The kiss in the ballroom was abrupt. It was a reaction, a desperate impulse.
This felt like awareness, an acceptance.
A “why the fuck did I wait so long to do this?” It was all-consuming. Definitive.
Why had I been so stubborn?
I’d been deflecting what was right in front of me. The connection I’d craved was within my reach the entire time, but I was too shortsighted to recognize it.
“I don’t want to leave,” I declared once we parted, my palms bracing his jaw. I smiled up at him. “I belong here. Minnie belongs here. I want to be your mate.”
His free hand rested on top of one of mine. “I won’t take anything more from you,” he said. “I swear it. You have it all, you don’t have to force yourself to—”
“I’m not forcing myself to do anything.” I retreated a step, not withdrawing from him, not pulling away.
I stayed in his space, shared his air, but he had to see my sincerity.
He was entitled to the same transparency he’d offered to me.
“I’m free to do as I choose, and it’s taken me this long to figure it out.
I could’ve lived at my end of the house, hidden away, spending every single day alone or with Minnie, and only speaking to you for courtesy’s sake.
This mating could’ve been exactly what the contract laid out—beneficial, and only merited on paper—but I don’t want that.
I haven’t wanted it for a while. I was just too pig-headed to admit it to myself. ”
I shrugged, feeling perceived, deeply and overwhelmingly so, but for once it didn’t deter me.
“I chose to let myself know you. I chose to give parts of myself to you that you never asked for, never forced me to give. Our agreement was to spend our cycles together, to pretend we were mated to the outside world for Minnie’s sake.
There were never any other responsibilities.
I didn’t have to bake with you, go out for my birthday with you; I didn’t have to learn more about you.
Hell, you’re a possessive man, a clever man, and that contract was solid—right down to the finest details—but you never even wrote a clause to say I couldn’t be with someone else. ”
He shifted on his feet, his eyes darkening. “An oversight.”
“Fuck off, Caine,” I scoffed, bulldozing right through his deflection.
“I know now that you left out any mention of mating bites because you were protecting your autonomy, but it doesn’t explain why you wouldn’t state, clearly and in black and white, the requirement for me to be loyal to you in secret.
Especially with your tainted views on omegas and how we’re all “needy sluts.” As long as every bigoted fucker on the outside was satisfied with our mingled scents and performed connection, nothing else mattered, so even if the lack of that stipulation was irrelevant to me, you still gave me a choice.
And now I choose to be by your side. I choose to be yours. ”
“No, your choice was me or destitution. Even death. That’s not a fair fucking choice.” He gritted his teeth, agitated. “If you leave here, with my protection, you could live however you want to. You could build a home, be with someone who—”
“No,” I snarled, the thought of leaving this place, my home, of being with anyone else, set me on edge. “Don’t tell me what I feel is a lie. Don’t do it.”
He opened his mouth.
“It’s your turn to listen,” I asserted, glaring up at him.
His mouth closed. “Yes, if I hadn’t come to you asking for help, if I hadn’t signed myself over to you, my life would’ve been different.
But would it have been better? For whatever reason, we were brought together at the Den—whether fate or coincidence, it doesn’t matter.
It happened, and it’s not something that’s ever going to change.
I wouldn’t change it. Minnie is everything to me, and if not meeting you meant not having her, I would meet you over and over again, in every fucking universe.
I could have resisted, could have said no and gone at it myself, but it wouldn’t have severed my tie to you.
Whether it took weeks, months, years, my path would’ve led me right back to where I was supposed to be, and that’s with you.
My choice was to either distance myself or take the chance to get close to you, to know you, and I chose you. ”
His head tilted. “Why?”
“Because I like you,” I conceded, but the words didn’t seem right, so I backtracked. “No, that’s a lie, I don’t like you at all, you’re infuriating and stubborn and a prick, but I think I could . . . love you. Or I’m heading in that direction, at least.”
He studied me, not even smirking when he said, “You like me a little.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “When you’re not being a total arsehole.”
My chest was going to explode, my head was whirring, and I might actually be seeing sounds.
As soon as Caine said he’d break the contract, that he’d support us from a distance, the dam had broken.
It confirmed it wasn’t all an illusion, and while I’d been so adamant to defy it, to hate him, it wasn’t just my starvation for bonds.
It was what I wanted. Yet there was still an overhanging fear of being jilted.
I knew Caine hadn’t abandoned me, and I accepted that, but my nerves still lingered, anxious to let myself have a good thing in case it was swept out from under me.
I let out a withered sigh, rubbing at my nape. “What is it you want, Caine?” I asked. “Tell me plainly, because if I’m going to let myself be in this, I need to know I’m not going to end up regretting it and being left alone again.”
“I don’t want conventional,” he started. “I refuse to be my father, or what he tried forcing me to be. I want to learn how to be better with Minseo, to give her the nurturing I never had. I want . . .” He trailed off, looking away in blatant discomfort.
“To be loved for who you are,” I filled in the blank. “Not because of instinct.”
He scoffed lightly. “Possibly.”
“What else?”
“I’ve loved you for a long time,” he confessed.
“I just didn’t know what it was. This feeling of want that’s more profound than purely lust. This ache in my chest. It was obsessive at first, an urge to possess you, to have you all to myself.
” His voice dropped to a low, calculated rumble.
My throat felt tight. “The thoughts I had of you were depraved. Monstrous, really. I didn’t believe I’d be capable of anything else, anything softer, more nuanced, but you’ve taught me how.
Our daughter has taught me how, and though what I’m feeling is still possessive—it always will be, because fuck, I can’t pretend I won’t tear apart anyone who even thinks to take you from me—the love I have for you now is also devoted, reverent. Unmanageable.”
He reached out, grabbing the front of my shirt and tugging me to his chest. His hand cupped my face in the rough, unapologetic way of his, and his gaze was blazing with uncontained ardour.
“What I want is you, and my daughter, our pack. I want to love you, Dylan, primally, unconditionally, every day until the day I die. That’s it.”