Chapter 12 #2
I’ve never really thought about it before.
They were just… there. Background scenery in nature documentaries.
But watching June right now, the way the light bounces from her hair, how her eyes sparkle with excitement, and the fact that she’s sharing something precious with me—I decide at that moment that waterfalls are my favorite thing in the entire world.
They’ll always remind me of her. Of this. Of watching her come alive in a way I’ve never seen before.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice rougher than I intended. “I like waterfalls.”
She beams at me, and something in my chest cracks open.
We walk along a worn path near the water, the sound of the falls filling the silence between us. She’s telling me about the different seasons, how the pool is warm enough to swim in during summer, how the trees turn gold and red in autumn, how she’s never actually come here in winter before.
I’m only half listening. Most of my attention is on the way she moves. The curve of her neck. The occasional glimpse of cleavage when she turns a certain way.
I want her in a way that’s primal and consuming and completely beyond my control.
She’s mid-sentence when her boot catches on a root, and she stumbles forward with a surprised yelp.
I move without thinking. My arm hooks around her waist, catching her, pulling her back against me. But the momentum carries us both sideways, and suddenly I’m pressing her against a tree, my body pinning hers, her back against rough bark and her front against me.
She’s breathing hard. So am I.
“You okay?” I ask, but I don’t step back.
“Yeah.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Thanks.”
We’re so close I can count her eyelashes. Her scent is curling around me like it’s trying to ensure I know it’s her.
Except I’ve known her since the moment she collected me from the prison cell and I caught her scent through the fog of whatever drug was in my system. Knew she was mine then.
“You don’t need to hide from me,” I say softly.
She stiffens. “What?”
“Whatever you’re scared to tell me. Whatever secret you’ve been keeping.” I brush a strand of hair from her face, and she shivers. “You don’t need to hide.”
For a moment, I think she’s going to deny it. Going to put up those walls again and pretend everything’s fine.
But then she takes a shaky breath. “I’m an Omega, not a Beta.”
I don’t react. Just wait.
“Well, I was, then I tried not to be, and now I am again. Sounds confusing even in my head.” She’s talking fast now, nervous, her words tumbling over each other.
“When I was eighteen, doctors said I was dormant. Said I’d probably never have heats or form proper bonds.
My parents convinced me to take suppressants, pretend to be a Beta, avoid all the complications of a broken designation. ” She keeps explaining.
“You’re not broken.”
“You don’t know that.” Her eyes are bright with unshed tears. “I’ve been hiding for years. Taking pills every day. Convincing myself I was better off without all of the heats, the bonds, and a pack.”
She stops, chest heaving, and stares at me with something like desperation. “You’re just going to grin at me?”
I am smiling. I can’t help it. “I already knew you were mine, June.”
“Yeah, you say that, but—”
“I might have been wasted that first night, but the attraction between us, that magnetic pull I felt the moment I saw you, was inevitable. Like the universe had been building toward that meeting my whole life.” I cup her face in my hands, tilting her chin up so she has to look at me.
“I was just waiting for the pieces to fall into place. This makes so much sense.”
“I’m sorry I lied—”
I press a thumb to her lips, silencing her.
“No. You don’t need to apologize to me. Not for this. Not for anything.”
In my mind, I’m thinking about those fucking doctors who told an eighteen-year-old girl she was defective.
About her parents, who convinced her to hide instead of letting her be her beautiful, natural self.
About seven years of suppression and fear and loneliness, all because she believed she wasn’t enough. That fucking guts me.
She’s more than enough. She’s everything. And I’m going to spend however long it takes to show her that.
She opens her mouth to say something else, but I’m done talking.
I kiss her.
My lips crash into hers like a wave breaking on the shore, the culmination of every moment that’s led to this. She makes a small sound of surprise that melts into a moan, and her hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer like she can’t get enough.
I trace the seam of her lips with my tongue, and she opens for me instantly, letting me in, letting me taste every corner of her sweetness. She’s tentative at first, almost shy, but when I deepen the kiss, she matches me stroke for stroke.
Fuck.
The sound she makes, this breathy little whimper, goes straight to my cock.
I press her harder against the tree, one hand tangled in her hair, the other gripping her hip, pulling her against me so she can feel exactly what she does to me.
She gasps into my mouth and rocks forward, seeking friction, and I nearly lose my mind.
I kiss her like I’m starving and she’s the only thing that will save me. Like we have all the time in the world and not enough at once. Like every fantasy I’ve had since the night we met is finally coming true and I need to memorize every second before it disappears.
She clings to me, arms around my neck, fingers in my hair, body arched into mine. And I love the way she surrenders to this thing between us. How she holds on to me, lets herself want without holding back.
When I finally break the kiss, we’re both gasping. I trail my mouth down her jaw, along her neck, finding that spot where her pulse thunders beneath her skin. I press my lips there, then my teeth, gentle but claiming. She moans, and the sound vibrates through both of us.
“Seth…”
I inhale and breathe her in until she’s all I can smell, all I can taste, all I can feel. This is right. This is where I’m meant to be—with her.
She’s mine. And she’s my pack’s.
I lift my head as she draws back, and I let her, though every instinct screams to pull her closer.
Her cheeks are flushed, lips swollen from my kiss, eyes glazed with desire.
And her nipples, fuck, I can see them poking through the thin fabric of her dress, tight and straining against the material like they’re begging for my attention.
But there’s fear there too. Underneath the wanting.
I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, gentle now. “Everything is going to be all right, June.”
“I really don’t have your confidence.” Her voice trembles. “Nothing has gone right for me. Not for a long time.”
“It will now.”
Her eyes flash, pain and disbelief fighting for space. “You can’t promise that.”
“Watch me.” I hold her gaze and don’t soften it, don’t back down, because she needs certainty more than she needs pretty words. “Give me time. I’ll prove that you are exactly where you’re meant to be.”
She just stares at me, like she is trying to decide if she can afford to believe it. Something fragile moves across her face, hope that scares her as much as it comforts her. Her throat works when she swallows, and for a second, I think she might step closer instead of away.
Then she takes a step back, breaking whatever was building between us.
“We should head back.”
I let a slow grin tug at my mouth. “Why? Worried you’ll forget how to hold yourself together with me standing this close.”
She laughs like it surprises her too, and she turns toward the path. But before she goes, she glances over her shoulder. The look she gives me is pure heat. “Something like that.”
I stand there and watch her stroll away. The sway of her hips. The sunlight in her hair. The way she moves through the world like she is just starting to believe she has a right to take up space in it.
My chest tightens with something that feels like purpose.
Fuck.
I’m already in deep.