Chapter 18
Evan
All resistance drained from my body, leaving me a slack weight against Gregory.
The haze lifted all at once, and reality crashed in with brutal clarity. Oh God. What did I just do? My breath caught in my throat as my thoughts spiraled. I’d said yes to this. I let him…
Heat flooded my face, mixed with shame and bewilderment. I tried to summon the panic I should have been feeling. I had let a stranger—a man I barely knew—claim me in a way I never thought possible. Yet the fear was nowhere to be found. Instead, a warm sense of belonging took root deep in my chest.
The panic should have been there, screaming at me to run, to pull away, to protect what was left of my dignity. But it never came. It was frightening how easily I fit here, wrapped in his strength. I didn’t want to move; I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Gregory held me firmly, his arms a fortress against the rest of the world. I pressed my cheek to his chest and listened to the thunderous rhythm of his heart.
My ragged breathing slowed. “Alpha,” I complained, my protest muffled against his skin. “Everyone probably heard us.”
He chuckled. “They’re not in the house. Adam wouldn’t let anyone disturb us. He and Lyra are outside, watching over the grounds. She’s stronger than you think.”
I leaned back enough to meet his eyes. “Are you sure?”
Gregory nodded as he rested his hand on my hip, his thumb rubbing soothing circles over the bone.
“Thank you for speaking with Lyra on the porch. She was hurting. She’s lost people before.
” His gaze drifted around the dim space.
“This room… It belonged to her brother. He died in the war when she was a child. Adam has raised her on his own since then. Losing someone else, someone she considered family… would have been too much for her.”
My stomach tightened into a cold knot. A dead brother. A war. Every new piece of information grew worse than the last. “Her brother… Was he your friend too?”
“He was my comrade. We fought together,” he replied.
I twisted in his arms. “You were a soldier? Like in the military?”
Gregory’s face clouded, shadows darkening his expression.
“I served as a knight in the Asterian Order—the Empire. Adam was our Knight-Commander, a living legend. In the Empire, my bloodline is despised. They treated me worse than an animal, but they also wanted me as their weapon. For reasons I still don’t understand, Adam saw something else.
He saved me. He trained me and taught me about life. ”
A knight. In this strange, violent world, it actually made sense.
Some of the fear came crawling back, wrapping cold fingers around my ribs. How many throats had he burned in the Empire’s name? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t force the question out. Maybe I couldn’t bear to know.
Gregory dropped his focus, sending it somewhere over my shoulder. “I made a mistake,” he said, strained. “I hurt people… I hurt someone I was meant to protect.”
He clenched the hand resting on my hip into a fist, his knuckles pressing hard against me, then gave a quick, dismissive shake of his head. The damage was already done though. The regret was an open wound in his eyes when he forced them back to mine. “It doesn’t matter now.”
That look of hurt undid me. I pushed up and wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing my cheek against the wide expanse of his chest.
Gregory’s heartbeat kicked up again under my ear. A deep rumble vibrated through him; he was chuckling. “You don’t even know what you’re doing, do you?” he murmured.
I shifted back, frowning. “What?”
“You’re scenting me. Despite being from another world, my sweet Evan, you still do what an omega does for his alpha.”
Heat flooded my cheeks. I shifted back in his lap and crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, I won’t do it again.”
With no effort, he pushed my arms down, his hands capturing my wrists.
He leaned in and crushed his mouth to mine.
The kiss was hot, demanding, and I melted into it.
“You can scent my whole body if you want,” he whispered against my lips.
“Rub on me until I lose my mind.” He broke away. “Now, I’m going to clean us up.”
Gregory gently lifted me from his lap and carefully lowered me onto the mattress. He stood and walked to the corner of the room where a basin of water and a stack of cloths sat on a small table. He brought them over, sat on the edge of the bed, and began cleaning me with a warm, wet cloth.
He started at my throat, the damp fabric wiping away the dried crimson smear. I flinched, bracing for the sting. The sensation of his canines snapping shut was still fresh, and I half-expected actual puncture wounds.
As the cloth passed over the spot, there was no sharp pain—only a dull ache, like a bruise.
“My saliva.” Gregory glanced at my neck with a dark satisfaction as he rinsed the cloth in the basin. “It heals the flesh instantly. I sealed the wound before I pulled away.”
He squeezed the water from the fabric, the action bunching the muscles in his shoulders. Water dripped from his hands, landing on the thick, jagged scars that mapped his chest. Seeing those silver lines now, after learning of his past as a knight, hit differently.
I drank him in—the powerful build, the history carved into his skin, and his intense concentration as he tended to me. I struggled to reconcile the image of a brutal Imperial weapon with the man gently washing me, all while his own length still strained against his abdomen with an unsated ache.
“Weren’t you… satisfied?” The question escaped before I could stop it.
He paused. “My own satisfaction isn’t the point. I won’t push you further today.”
Gregory went back to cleaning me, and my gaze drifted down again.
I couldn’t look away. It wasn’t only the length that was impressive; the girth of it was intimidating, roped with thick veins that pulsed under his skin.
The head flushed a deep, dark red, slick and heavy from his arousal.
But the strangest part was at the base where it joined his body.
The shaft swelled into a thicker ridge of flesh, a prominent bulge.
“Your dick. It’s, um, kind of a weird shape,” I blurted out on a breathless rush.
A raspy laugh escaped him, and the genuine mirth in it startled me. “I wouldn’t know about cocks from your world,” he said, “but mine is normal enough for an alpha.”
I ducked my head, not wanting to draw any more attention to it. When Gregory finished, he cleaned himself off and put the basin and cloths away. By the time he returned, I had already burrowed under the bedding. I lifted the edge in a silent invitation.
He slid in behind me, his body a furnace against my back. From over my shoulder, he lifted a hand. The small candle flames dotted around the room flickered once and died, plunging us into a soft darkness—only the silver moonlight streaming through the window cut through the shadows.
Gregory spooned me close, his arm circling my waist to rest on my stomach as if staking a claim. His breath hitched against the shell of my ear, warm and even. “Your thoughts are loud tonight.”
The sheer comfort of his hold made everything I’d been suppressing bubble to the surface. “What if he didn’t want this?” I murmured into the darkness.
Gregory’s lips brushed against the back of my neck. “What do you mean?”
“The other Evan,” I clarified. “Lyra told me he was terrified of being your mate. What if he would never have done this with you?”
A long silence filled the darkness, so dense I wondered if my question had swallowed him whole.
“Do you think that does not haunt me?” Gregory finally said, his voice rough with a confession I wasn’t expecting.
His heart skipped a beat against my back.
“My heart is treacherous, Evan. It feels the bond. It recognizes the skin, the heat, the scent. To my instincts, you are one and the same. And I do not know if that is a mercy or a damnation.” He pulled me closer, securing me against his chest with a firmer hold.
“But the only thing that matters to me is that you wanted this. You were here with me. That was not him.” He pressed a kiss to my shoulder, sealing the promise.
His warmth and the weight of the bedding were a potent combination, lulling me down into a velvety exhaustion. My eyelids drooped, fluttering as they fought a losing battle against sleep.
His words eased some of my anxiety, but doubt crept in right away.
Was I just a temporary soul in a borrowed body, this moment only a brief pause before everything ended?
I couldn’t understand why I was here or if this second chance was a mistake waiting to be corrected.
A correction that would extinguish this new feeling inside me before it ever had a chance to see the sun.