Chapter 27
Mo
The front door opens.
Darius stands in the doorway, shoulders squared, jaw tight. His eyes find me immediately. Then they move to the others, to the cards spread across the coffee table, to the easy way we’re all sitting together.
Something crosses his face. I can’t read it. He’s hard to read on the best of days, and tonight his expression is locked down tight.
“Blue.” His voice comes out harder than I think he means it to. “I need to speak with you. Alone.”
The others exchange looks, and one by one, they stand. Silas gives me a long look before he goes, something questioning in his dark eyes. I give him a small nod.
I’m okay.
Archer is last. He pauses by the door. “Don’t kill each other,” he says, and then he’s gone.
Just Darius and me.
I stay on the couch. I don’t stand, don’t square up, don’t brace for a fight the way I would have a few weeks ago. I just sit there and wait for him to say whatever he came to say.
He stands in the middle of the room. His hands are at his sides, fingers flexing, and he won’t look directly at me. Whatever this is, it’s costing him.
Finally, he speaks. “I wish to formally apologize for my previous actions. The manner in which you were restrained was… inappropriate.”
The words come out stiff. Rehearsed. Like he practiced them in front of a mirror, and they sounded better in his head.
“Inappropriate?” I say. “That’s what you’re going with?”
His jaw tightens.
“How about cruel?” I sit up. “How about inhumane? How about the fact that you chained up an omega who’d been kept in a cell and sold like property, and you didn’t think twice about it?”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “I was ensuring your safety.”
I let out a breath that’s half laugh, half disbelief. “My safety. Right. Chain the omega to the wall for her own good. Very progressive.”
“I’m trying to apologize,” he says, and there’s a crack in the formality now.
“Are you? Because it sounds like you’re reading from a script. A bad one.” I tilt my head. “Beep boop. Formal apology activated. Beep.”
His hands clench into fists at his sides. I can see the effort it takes him not to snap. The muscle in his jaw is jumping. Good. Let him feel uncomfortable. Let him stand there and squirm the way I squirmed on the end of that chain.
“I’m not the monster you think I am,” he says.
I stand up and close the distance between us. He’s so much bigger than me. I have to tilt my head back to look him in the eye.
“No?” My voice drops. “You want to know what I remember, Darius? I remember you standing over me, telling me I belonged to you. I remember you saying you couldn’t wait to fill my mouth.
I remember being chained to a wall in a room I couldn’t leave, listening to you decide what I could and couldn’t do with my own body. ”
He goes completely still.
“You want forgiveness?” I say. “Earn it.”
His eyes are on me, and there’s a war happening behind them. I can see it.
He opens his mouth.
Nothing comes out.
Then he turns and walks away. Out the front door and into the dark, without another word. The door doesn’t slam. He just pulls it closed behind him. Which somehow feels worse than if he’d broken it off its hinges.
The others come back in after a few minutes. I don’t know if they were listening, but from their faces, I’d guess they heard enough.
Nobody asks what happened. Archer just picks up the cards and starts dealing again. Elias drops onto the couch beside me, bumping my shoulder with his. Silas takes his spot on my other side, close enough that his warmth is there if I want it.
We play cards. But part of me keeps drifting to the closed front door. To the quiet way Darius pulled it shut behind him. To the look on his face when I threw his own words back at him.
He hadn’t argued. Hadn’t defended himself. Hadn’t tried to pin me down or command me into silence. He just stood there and took it. And then he left.
That’s not how the alphas I’ve known behave. The ones I grew up with would have hit me for talking to them like that. The alpha who killed Sophie would have crushed my throat for less.
Darius just left.
Later that evening, when everyone’s gone to bed and the cabin is dark and quiet, I stand by the window and look out at the compound.
He’s there. Sitting on a fallen log at the edge of the treeline.
Alone. Just sitting in the cold, staring at nothing.
His shoulders curved forward in a way I’ve never seen from him.
And I think about what Cassia said. About the boy who killed a man at sixteen to save a girl.
About the boy who executed those who betrayed the pack and exiled the rest. About the weight he’s been carrying ever since.
I’m not ready to forgive him. But watching him sit there alone in the dark, I realize something. I don’t want him to suffer either.
I stand at the window for a long time. Then I go to bed, pull the covers up, and close my eyes. I don’t go out to him. But the fact that I wanted to is enough to keep me awake for hours.