Chapter 21 #2
“Don’t come yet,” Hayce ordered, his voice more a throaty whisper than a command. Ehlian barely registered he was working open Hayce’s buttons, sliding his hand into his trousers and curling his fingers around the thick length, feeling its pulse against his palm.
Normally, he would’ve listened. He liked the way that command made him shiver, liked to obey. He wanted Hayce inside him, but he already knew he wouldn’t last under the relentless thrusts of Hayce’s fingers.
“I can’t tonight,” he panted against Hayce’s neck. “Can’t hold back. You let go too.”
He ground his cock against Hayce’s hip, mindless and relentless, pressing harder, faster. He tried to match the rhythm, stroking Hayce just as fast, and he wasn’t even sure if he’d managed to bring Hayce off when his own climax hit, leaving him still as waves of pleasure consumed him.
It took a while before his breathing returned to normal. It felt like a year’s worth of weight had been lifted from his body, his unsatisfied needs finally met. But it came with a cost. The room and the strong presence of Hayce suddenly felt painfully sharp.
The faint alarm in his head was still there, now blaring louder and louder.
No one is quite enough.
He didn’t need to peel back the words one by one to know what they meant, what he had suspected all along these past few weeks.
Those balls weren’t just for rebuilding old alliances.
Hayce had had whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and when those omegas didn’t give him the same thrill as Ehlian did, Hayce conveniently came back to him.
Ehlian refused to reduce himself to a fuck toy again. He’d had no choice in prison, but here on Arox, he could have as many as he wanted. Hayce wanted to slip back into their old dynamic, but Ehlian wasn’t going back there. Not in a thousand years.
His voice was tight against Hayce’s throat. “Will you send a lawyer after me again if I become an inconvenience in your life?”
The cords in Hayce’s neck tightened.
Ehlian untangled himself, leaning back against the door.
Hayce’s face was carefully blank. For a moment it looked as if he might speak, but he decided against it.
“I know you had something to do with it,” Ehlian pushed. “So don’t bother pretending otherwise.”
Hayce’s lips tightened. “Only you could find a problem with being given a chance at an early release.”
“You know that’s not the fucking point,” Ehlian threw at him angrily. “You wanted me to go.”
“Yes, I wanted you to go,” Hayce said tightly.
“We nearly bonded, Ehlian. The odds of my plan failing were far higher than succeeding. And if it failed, I was never getting out. You wanted to end up like that omega who threw away his life just to get back to his bondmate in prison? If you cared about yourself, maybe even about me a little, you’d never take that risk. ”
“You can’t compare us to them,” Ehlian said sharply. “Our near-bonding was an accident.”
Hayce scoffed drily. “Sure it was.”
Ehlian’s face burned. “Don’t put this on me.”
“I’m not putting it on you.”
“Yes, you are,” Ehlian said. “You didn’t trust me. You could barely look me in the eyes those last few weeks, making me feel like…” He swallowed. “I knew the risk. You had no reason not to trust me.”
“I had every reason not to trust you’d withstand it a second time,” Hayce said, his jaw tightening. “But I trusted myself even less.”
The confession stirred something warm in Ehlian’s chest, but seeing the amber sparks in Hayce’s eyes dim and twist with darker emotion doused it.
“And that bothers you.”
“It does,” Hayce said smoothly. “You have a far too idealised illusion of me. There were moments I considered tying you to me and condemning you to that life. I’m not proud of that.”
There was an odd thrill in that, having an alpha choose you, but Ehlian understood just as much that after being locked up in prison indefinitely, you latched onto anything you could. Now, Hayce could have whoever he wanted. He had endless choices, and it was clear he was going for each of them.
But Hayce was also wrong. Ehlian knew he quietly calculated his decisions, planned, and rarely did anything that mattered without a reason, just as he had cruelly cast Ehlian away in the end. So him being here, right now, was a calculated move too. The only question was: what was the reason?
“You want me to testify in your brother’s case?” Ehlian asked, because there was no way Hayce didn’t already know about Sandar’s visit.
Hayce gave him an oddly insulted look. “I wouldn’t put you through that.”
“You didn’t bother looking my way for months, Hayce. And you clearly had plenty of time on your hands. There’s a reason you’re here,” Ehlian said. “So why now?”
“My brother was captured tonight,” Hayce said. “You would know if you hadn’t been busy entertaining your soft alpha.”
Hayce had the audacity to look frustrated. Better yet, offended. As if Ehlian, gods forbid, had dared to move on with his life while Hayce had a different omega on his arm every other day.
Ehlian tore himself away from the door violently and stormed into the living room—but now what?
He felt raw. Restless.
After straightening his clothes, he finally turned back toward Hayce. Aside from the faint creases left by Ehlian’s hands, Hayce’s dark suit was immaculate. He now stood by the chest of drawers, picking up a framed photo of Ehlian and Willian.
“What does that have to do with me?” Ehlian demanded.
“You, Ehlian, have a way of understanding things others would miss,” Hayce’s eyes flicked to him. “Yet sometimes, for the life of it, you can't grasp the obvious.”
“You can’t expect me to figure out what you’re thinking every time,” Ehlian shot back. “You give what you want to give, and that’s barely anything.”
Silence stretched between them before Hayce finally spoke. “Yes, I did contact your lawyer and made sure no one finds out. Conveniently, Geald gave me the perfect cover. He’s an idiot,” Hayce said, tone mocking. “But a useful idiot.”
“Useful…” Ehlian echoed. “So you could deceive me.”
“It wasn’t meant to deceive you,” Hayce said.
“It was to deceive my brother. I’ve never done the same for any of my omegas and I knew Sandar would find it too telling.
” Hayce set the photo frame back down. “I had my men following you over the past few months. Not my preferred method, but in this case I had little choice. They could’ve kept you safe for a while, but eventually my brother would’ve found a way to get to you.
His last resort would’ve been to go after anyone who matters to me. ”
“I don’t matter to you,” Ehlian said flatly. “I only matter to your dick.”
“My brother wouldn’t care either way,” Hayce said dismissively.
“You’ve met him. That was only a small taste of how far he’d go.
He doesn’t care who you are. He only wants to make me suffer and take away whatever he can.
And I won’t be responsible for anyone’s death—least of all yours, Ehlian.
So… the less I showed I care about you, the better. ”
Ehlian swallowed, the weight of Hayce’s words pressing down on him. They unsettled him… scared him a little. The last man he wanted coming after him was Sandar, a lunatic who carefully and viciously masterminded his own father’s murder.
“So what now?” he asked.
“Sandar can do little from a cell,” Hayce said. “Whatever connections he has will be lying low, but I’ll have my men on watch. No one will get close to you.”
“Alright,” Ehlian murmured, worrying at his fingers. While Hayce’s promise made him a fraction better, he suddenly didn’t feel safe in his own flat anymore.
Something unexpectedly gentle softened Hayce’s eyes, and he moved, stepping closer—
“No.” Ehlian’s voice sharpened, even though what he wanted most was a tight, reassuring hold.
He craved the sense of safety only one alpha could ever give him.
“I’m not going back there. I might need protection again, but this isn’t prison.
You don’t have the same hold over me anymore.
” Ehlian let out an exhausted breath, the last few weeks of emotional clusterfuck catching up with him. “I want you to leave.”
“I would,” Hayce said, unfazed. “But that’s the last thing you need… or want.”
Ehlian’s face burned, suddenly aware of how paper-thin his mental shield had become, letting his emotions slip through.
Hayce achieved with ease what his brother never could.
The oldest trick in the book… or maybe just the raw intimacy shared by couples who let their guard down around each other.
Somewhere deep, Ehlian still trusted Hayce blindly, even after Hayce had made a fool of him over and over.
Ehlian reinforced his mental shield, pulling a dense barrier across his mind again.
“And I’m not leaving you in this state,” Hayce said, but his actions twisted those words into something else, his gaze dropping to Ehlian’s bond point, lingering there, possessive.
“Or in the hands of your incompetent, soft alpha. You have a remarkable talent for choosing the ones with the weakest core.”
“That’s what this is really about?” Ehlian began slotting the cruel pieces together, hating how right his instincts were. “You want your empire, your status, your snob omegas… and you want me as well. You want everything.”
Hayce gave him a wooden, flat look. “After everything I told you tonight, that’s the conclusion you’ve arrived at?”
“Yes,” Ehlian said seriously. “It’s clearly not just about your brother. The moment I might find a more compatible alpha than you—”
Hayce scoffed.
“—and slip away, that’s when you decided to come,” Ehlian continued.
“I’d give it less than a year before I become an inconvenience again and you get rid of me.
And if you change your mind about me again, I won’t come back.
I swear, Hayce, I’m not sitting around while you carefully choose the perfect omega who would match—”
“Just stop for a moment and think, Ehlian,” Hayce cut him off. “Even before we nearly bonded, I could’ve gotten rid of you any time I wanted, and I didn’t.”
“Yeah? Why didn’t you?” Ehlian hit back. “Probably the worst decision you could’ve made. For you, and for me. You could’ve spared me from having to watch my back constantly because of your lunatic brother.”
“Sure, Ehlian. Go back and ask your old self how he would’ve felt if I’d abandoned you for Grasson to claim.”
“I would’ve rather had Grasson as my alpha than yo—”
Ehlian abruptly choked off the word, but it had already slipped out.
The warmth vanished from Hayce’s eyes in a fraction of a second, his voice dry. “How flattering, Ehlian.”
Ehlian felt the beginning of a headache, all his suppressed emotions stretching his power tight. “Still think I want you to stay?”
Hayce gave him a long, veiled look, but when Ehlian didn’t budge, he spoke. “If you think I touched any of those omegas…” His voice softened. “They are insignificant, Ehlian.”
Ehlian said nothing, even as the raw, aching spot in his chest began to loosen.
“I know I wasn’t fair to you,” Hayce said. “The breakup wasn’t easy for me either, but you underestimate how much I wanted to bind you to me.”
Ehlian hummed, faint, barely audible.
A moment passed before Hayce turned away. A few steady steps, the front door opened… and quietly closed.
Silence again.
“Fuck,” Ehlian whispered into the air.
His flat suddenly felt too small, too narrow, too cold.
He kicked off his shoes and dragged himself into the bedroom. Not even bothering to take off his clothes, he climbed onto the bed, grabbing the corner of the blanket and wrapping himself in it.
He could keep listening for footsteps, keep glancing at the door. It wouldn’t open. Hayce wouldn’t return to slip into bed and share his warmth.
That arrogant, insufferable, cruel dick! Even after being a year apart, he knew Ehlian better than Ehlian knew himself. What he needed now was steady arms instead of a blanket. Warmth and safety.
But fuck, he was angry. Angry that it had taken Hayce so long to give a sign, to come to him, to let him believe that all those memories between them meant nothing.
The longer he lay there, the heavier the thought rooted in his mind: he would hate if today were their last shared memory.