Chapter 5
FIVE
ROGUE
A low whine woke me from an uneasy sleep.
I blinked heavy eyes open, trying to orient myself. I was exhausted, my body heavy, darkness like a stain hanging over my mind.
Where was I?
Reality tumbled in slowly.
I remembered biting Thistle.
Bella’s attack.
Dragging Knox back here…
Thistle…
The world took a moment to come into focus.
First, I saw Knox. He was sleeping at my side, chest rising and falling slowly. My attention was pulled by movement.
The blurry mop of black came into focus. Midnight hair obscured her face.
“Bunny?” Her voice cracked, and the worry in it drove a surge of energy through my veins. She was leaning over Ace, shaking him. “Wake up…” Her plea was desperate.
I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. I was parched and exhausted. I cleared my throat and tried again, shoving myself up.
“Kitten.”
Her head snapped to me in an instant, eyes wide. Sweat beaded her brow, and even from here I could see the tremor in her arms.
Fuck…
Heat.
She’d woken surrounded by sleeping Alphas in the middle of her heat.
“Rogue?” She all but threw herself over Knox toward me. I pushed myself into a sitting position, catching her easily. A whimper of relief slipped from her chest as she felt my touch. My own instincts settled, a grating irritation I’d barely clocked, soothed in an instant.
“I got you,” I murmured, drawing her close, a low purr coming to life. Her eyes filled with tears as she stared up at me, fingers digging into my arms as she held on.
But… something wasn’t right.
I knew how broken she was—had heard it in her voice in the bathroom earlier.
I frowned as her end of the bond cracked open just a fraction. She was trying to keep it closed, looking at me with such desperation, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that to fix this meant breaking something bigger.
I hated Bella more than anything in the world.
“Open the bond,” I breathed. “Fully.”
She wasn’t shutting me out completely, but I felt as though I was kept at arm’s length, as if she were afraid of what I would find if she opened up.
What if this is your only chance to be with her? A little voice asked.
The thought was a jagged edge lodged in my throat. I might not have long left. There were no guarantees that when Knox woke, he would stall this stupid thing in my neck from detonating. Yet, that knowledge didn’t make this any easier.
If I died, I’d rather leave her with the thing I could offer that she’d never been given before.
Her lip wobbled as she stared at me. “I’m just… just all mixed up.”
“Open it,” I said, this time more gently.
She shrank back. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Her brows creased with worry. “My brain is just… not right.”
“I know,” I told her. “You’ve gone through too much.”
She regarded me for another long moment, then, to my relief, she let go of the grip she had on the final pieces, letting me in.
What was beneath made my stomach turn.
It was poison. Terror and pain colliding in a swamp of toxicity.
I shifted my hand to her waist, paying close attention.
There was a shock of relief first—the heat, the part of her that was desperate for touch. But the anxiety that followed was like a spill of black ink, almost choking her.
She tensed, and I realised my purring had stuttered out as I felt what she felt. Her grip on me dug in, little fingers holding on in fear almost as much as I could feel her clinging to me in the bond. Now that it was open, it was as if she couldn’t let go.
I needed to figure this out, but I didn’t know if she knew what she wanted.
She’d been attacked, watched the Alpha she loved bite someone else under threat of death, almost been raped, and then been driven into a premature and vicious heat.
“I want you to talk to me,” I whispered, lifting my hand and cupping her cheek.
That touch drew out no fear. No ink spill.
I frowned. “Do you want me here?”
“Yes.” She spoke so fast, the word almost tripped on its way out.
I stroked her cheek, trying to parse out what was happening as she leaned into that touch with no issue. What was making her afraid?
“Do you want to touch me?” I asked.
She nodded.
Slowly, I lowered my hand from her cheek and brushed her waist. Again, I felt the spike of relief followed by a seething mass of anxiety.
Right… So, we weren’t doing this right now.
I would find another way to deal with her heat.
I drew my touch away. “Tell me what you’re feeling?”
“Uh…” She swallowed, then added a choked whisper. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“You can tell me anyway.”
“I like… when you touch me.”
“Okay.” I believed her. I’d felt that. But there was more to it. “And then?”
“I mean… it doesn’t… it doesn’t really matter.”
“It matters to me,” I said.
“I don’t know, I think then I get scared?”
“Of what?”
“Of—” She cut off, frowning as if she didn’t know why she’d been about to say whatever it was. “Well, that’s stupid.”
“Tell me?”
She forced a smile as if to shrug it off, but the tears swimming in her eyes sabotaged the act. I waited, thumb back to stroking her cheek again.
“I don’t know; it’s like if you do, then you’re going to want to have sex with me. But that’s dumb because I don’t not want to have sex.”
“But you don’t want to?”
Her mouth opened, then closed, another spike of panic consuming her.
“I’ve never… since Knox…”
“Knox?”
“It used to hurt when I had sex—when I finished. So I never wanted it like I do now. I mean, Ace is one of a kind—always in my dreams. Totally worth it. But it still hurt, so I always kinda hated that I needed it.”
“But it was different with Knox?” I asked.
“The first time I was with him, he… took care of me—never had that before.”
“And it didn’t hurt?”
She pouted. “Dummy didn’t even fuck me. Just made me…” She tilted her head, shooting me a guilty look. “You know… just got me off a lot. Then he held me all night. Never had that—where it was like he wanted to see me feel good too?”
Ah.
Great fucking prick of an angel.
“Suppose it was good I got him back, then.”
She turned, hand reaching out to Knox, who was still passed out on his back next to us. She cupped his cheek, thumb tracing his skin gently. “Thank you,” she whispered.
She looked back at me, fingers cupping my cheek now, and the touch sent goosebumps across my skin. “It’s… special now. And I want it to be special with you.” Her eyes were glassy again. “I just don’t want it like this, when it hurts. And I’m scared. I just… love you too much.”
My chest got tight at those words—at how much I could see she meant them.
Despite the heat, I don’t think I’d ever heard her this clear. “I love you too, Kitten. And you’re allowed to want that, heat or not.”
“I don’t know. We… gotta do it—right? I’m…” She swallowed. “And what about your hormones?—”
“Forget me,” I said. “Do you feel better like this?” I asked, glancing down at her palms pressed to my chest.
She nodded.
“Are you in pain?”
Her brow creased, then she shook her head. “Not anymore—not much. But… I’m gonna disappoint you.”
“You aren’t.”
It was like she couldn’t hear me, though, her voice getting frantic.
“Already stuck with us, B-Bunny…” She shuddered, eyes darting about as if she was searching for the plushie that wasn’t here.
I felt that wound, a titan in the background tearing her to shreds.
“And now…” She let out a little whine of distress, ripping my attention back to her.
“Now we’re in heat and I can’t even do that right—” She cut off as I clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Kitten. I’m just going to hold you,” I said. “That’s it.”
She looked angry when I drew my hand away. “No, because if we cuddle, then we don’t… don’t do anything, it’s gonna leave you all frustrated.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because that’s… that’s how Alphas are.”
I snorted. “How utterly debasing.”
She stared at me, mouth parted in shock. “I didn’t mean?—”
“Any Alpha who told you that is as worthless as the toxic waste that came out of his mouth.”
If all she wanted was for me to hold her, that’s what we’d do.
She shrank, eyes darting between mine, so unsure, but I could already feel her unfurling in the bond, reaching out to my offer, even if she was nervous about it.
So, that was kind of it.
With the promise that we weren’t going to go any further, she settled into my arms. I felt barely a shred of anxiety as my touch drifted back to her waist to reposition her.
It was far from a perfect fix, though. Even with my purr vibrating through her frame, I felt her heating up. She began shivering in my arms, her grip digging in extra hard here and there.
This wasn’t a pain-free solution, and I didn’t have any meds down here that would be safe for an Omega, but she was holding out.
So, I let her lead.
I’d found, in life, it was easy to see a puzzle as a whole and miss the details of what mattered. To see a final picture of anger, or pain, or hatred. Whatever I wanted to see.
Knox had been vengeful and hateful when he’d taken the keys to my freedom. The picture I’d seen was a reflection of me, and it had, at the start, been easy to hate him the way he’d hated me.
Knox might have looked like a mirror of me, but to pretend we were the same, that what made up our foundation was identical, would be wilfully ignorant.
His pieces were dragged together with a through-line I could never truly understand.
Not until I had a taste of it like I had the last few years.
And even in that, it wasn’t the same. I was protected from the pain he suffered by the knowledge that everything I endured was in the name of vengeance.
I could grapple with that—could understand it—but what had happened to him? It had happened without reason.
I had happened to him, and in that, I don’t think he’d ever found answers.
Arrogance.
Pride.