Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Three and a half years ago
ACE
Thistle’s skin brushed mine, a calming, destructive cure.
A fix to a problem that marked my only vulnerability—one I couldn’t shake, no matter how I tried to free myself of her.
It had been almost a year, and she didn’t know the full truth. Not because I’d hidden it, exactly, though I’d never been direct. But Thistle had concluded herself that her connection with me was one-sided, and I hadn’t challenged that.
She thought, when I chose to sleep with her, she was the winner of all the options I had.
She didn’t know I was repulsed by most connections in life—that there was barely an Omega in the world I looked at twice.
My connection with Glade, like every other connection I had, held value within the nature of what it symbolised. What it meant for me.
Nothing more. Never more.
But now, Glade was the only evidence remaining that I wasn’t chained.
I had another Omega around. One that I showed interest in. Showed , if not felt. Yet, day by day, that draw to her—even as a trophy—became less.
Day by day, this call grew. The one I’d been weak enough to answer tonight: the promise of a feather of raven hair brushing my skin, of violet galaxies luring me into the depth of peace I’d never felt...
In my arms, Thistle tried to turn again, but I placed a hand on her arm, stopping her. She shrank in my grip, wilting at the rejection.
She didn’t understand—and she never could.
I couldn’t be this close and risk waking up to see her face. I couldn’t claim her and witness the way pleasure looked in those violet eyes, because it would seal my fate.
I’d caved tonight.
I always caved when I saw what she was capable of. There were still flecks of blood on her cheek, and the tang of iron in the air.
I was drawn to her so absolutely, it suffocated me.
And still, she hadn’t guessed the truth.
“What would you say if I told you we were matched by the universe?” I shouldn’t have spoken it out loud—couldn’t give her more power than she was already threatening to take, yet the words came out, anyway.
Thistle curled up instead, squeezing her old Bunny plushie tight.
“Matched?” Her voice cracked, and a nervous laugh slipped out. “I’d say you were kidding. Had to be.” She tilted her head, and I noticed her smile was strange and distant. Then she blinked, changing as if she were having an argument with herself.
“But it does… feel right—you know? I knew—you knew, even without scents?” She frowned. “No, no, no. I’m yours, but you’re not mine. You can’t be mine. If you were, I’d break you. Ruin you.” Her voice shook. “Too broken and ruined before we met. I was so stupid...” She trailed off, and for a moment I wondered if she knew she was still speaking out loud. It’s how I knew when she was hiding out on my balcony—and I’d never told her to stop because hurting her was getting exhausting.
And so was seeing her pain.
It’s why I hid from it.
Still, she was whispering, hunched up tighter. “I believed them all, and… and if that wasn’t true and I gave all that I think… um...” Her voice shook as she spiralled. “I think I’d die. I don’t know what I’d?—”
“Shut up, Omega,” I breathed. She cut off as my grip closed around her throat. “I didn’t claim you were, I just asked what you’d say.”
I resented that stopping her spiral like that, keeping this lie, wasn’t motivated by cruelty at all. Cruelty, when it came to her, was getting further and further out of reach with every moment we spent together.
I’d stopped her because there was a cliff on the other end of that truth, but we were so much more alike than she knew, and the truth was I wasn’t capable of catching her if she fell from it.
“Oh.” She paused, then dared to shift in my grip, a guilty flash in her eyes as she turned to face me—so quickly I didn’t stop her in time. She buried her face in my chest and dragged me close. “Oh, thank God.”
I sighed, then stifled a purr on its way up my throat as she drew her jaw along my collarbone, scent marking me.
Thistle had no idea the power she wielded, and it was better that she never did.
Since the day I’d walked into a seedy bar and placed a gun in her hands, never expecting her to pull the trigger, Thistle Maverick had ruined me.
That’s the part that everyone else missed when she looked so small, fragile, and unsure. The part I could now see so clearly.
She was a villainess with raven hair and eyes of endless violet galaxies.
An Omega just as cutthroat as I was, yet it was much, much harder to spot.
She was my curse.
The one test I felt doomed to fail.
But I wasn’t like other Alphas—never had been, which was how I’d got where I was, and I’d die rather than give in to this weakness.
The universe could burn in hell before I let an Omega destroy me.
THE END OF PART ONE…