6. Chapter Six #2
“I have been going to therapy,” I say roughly, inwardly cursing myself because who just comes out and says shit like that? He asked how I was, not what I was doing. Fucking idiot.
My throat feels like I’ve swallowed a box of gravel.
I didn’t tell either of my partners that I was even considering therapy.
To be quite frank, I was under the assumption that they couldn’t have cared less about what I did with my time anymore.
Something that I keep telling myself not to take to heart.
This…this rift is my own doing. The aftermath is my penance.
Dominic pauses, his body rigid for a brief moment before finally turning around to face me.
His eyes are blown wide, his mouth slightly open, shocked by my truth.
“Oh.”
I sigh and give him a quick nod, gazing down at the kitchen counter because I can’t bring myself to look at him right now. I can’t see the expression on his face as I say my next words. It's a coward’s act, I know. But I can’t see the hurt on his face anymore. It will break me.
“It is my fault that Lennon left us. My actions are the ones that caused her to leave. To be pushed out of the team. I forced both you and Holden to go along with my plans. Even when you questioned my choices. I fucking guilted you both into following me. Into destroying our Omega with little thought of what consequences my actions would deliver. I had been so…”
I trail off, shaking my head in disgust at myself. At the cowardice I showed. At my blindness.
“...consumed,” I finally choke out. “I let what my father did to me all those years obliterate the person I am. Let it bleed over into the one good thing I had going for me. Now, both you and Holden have to suffer because I’m a fucking mess.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat, as I do the one thing I’ve not been able to do before. Admit to the love of my life that I’m broken.
“I destroyed us, Dom.”
For a moment he remains silent, but I still don’t look up. What would I even find? Disappointment? Pity? Anger? I just, I can’t do it.
“Baby…”
His words crack, and my heart feels like it’s in a vice as his voice washes over me like a bond trying to stitch itself back together through torn flesh.
It burns. It aches. Hanging in the space between us like smoke from a fire I started but could never put out.
“It wasn’t just you who destroyed this pack, Sasha.
All three of us had a hand in pushing our Omega away from us.
You may have led the charge but we followed you. ”
I shake my head again. “No, Dominic. It was mine—”
I jump as Dominic’s fist slams down against the bench.
The crack echoes through the kitchen. My eyes dart up to meet his face.
He’s furious. His jaw clenched. Eyes wild as they stare down at the fist on the counter.
His face flushed red. Every instinct inside of me screams to stand.
To meet his anger with my own. To remind him that I’m still the Alpha of this pack. Instead, I stay exactly where I am.
“No, Sasha!” he barks. “Give us some fucking credit. We’re not just a pair of blind little puppies that follow you to wherever you decide to take us.
Just…stop.” He sighs, pulling a deep breath into his lungs before finally meeting my eyes.
“We made our choice. You. Sasha. You are our choice. Holden and I hold just as much responsibility. We should have been stronger. Fought you harder. Should have protected her. But we didn’t.
We allowed every single thing that happened to happen. So just stop.”
I want to fight him on this but I can’t. There isn’t anything left in me anymore. There’s just…nothing. A hole where my anger used to simmer. I can’t even summon the want to feel that way anymore.
“You are the one thing I seek when I open my eyes in the morning, and the last thing I crave when I close them at night. Everything I do. Every choice I make. Every sacrifice. It’s because I love you, Sasha.
Because the only thing that matters to me is you.
I love Holden, and fuck, I love our Omega, too.
I won’t fucking deny it. But, Sasha. Without you?
I’m nothing. You’re my best friend. My love.
My Alpha. And I refuse to lose you to your guilt after we’ve already lost Lennon to our mistakes. ”
His words hit me harder than any punch ever could. And it feels like my soul, however damned it might be, is on fire at his admission.
Lennon took more than my heart when she left. She took with her the man I thought I was. The arrogance that convinced me I was always right. But whatever is left of me, this version of myself, belongs to the man before me. To Holden.
To my pack.
“The only way we’re ever going to make any of this right is if we stop placing blame. What kind of Alphas does it make us if we sit around weeping like some fucking wimps, huh? Moaning about our misfortunes while doing nothing to earn the right to stand beside our Omega again?”
He holds my gaze, before pushing off the counter and walking around to stand but a breath away from me.
He turns me in my chair, reaching out and gently taking hold of my chin.
“You haven’t lost me, baby. I’m just giving you the space you need to breathe.
To think. But I am not going anywhere, you hear me? You’re mine, Volkov.”
“I love you, Dominic,” I breathe out, not knowing what else to say at this moment. So I give him the only truth I know.
The corner of Dominic’s lip tilts in a smile. It's devious. Cheeky. It lights a fire in my chest I hadn’t been aware existed anymore.
“We gotta get her back. But…I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
I never know what the fuck I’m doing and I’m scared, Dom.
” The admission leaves my mouth tasting like blood.
Like the first honest wound I’ve ever willingly opened.
I watch as his eyes search mine, leaning into his touch like the lifeline it is.
His thumb brushes across my jaw, an act of ownership I don’t deserve, but find myself craving all the same.
A reminder that, despite everything I’ve done, someone is still willing to reach for me, broken pieces and all, and love me anyway.
His gaze never wavers. It anchors me. Steadies the storm that’s spent years tearing me apart. Only this time, it doesn’t feel the same. It’s deeper now.
As if me working through my shit and ripping myself open in therapy was the first step toward seeing the people I love for who they truly are, instead of through the haze of my own pain.
He isn’t just my packmate.
He isn’t just my love.
He’s a fucking kaleidoscope.
Every fractured piece of him catches the light differently, revealing colors I’d been too consumed by my own darkness to notice before.
He’s beautiful.
Worth fighting for. And I swear from this moment forward, I will.
“There’s only one thing we can do. We go after her.”