Chapter 46
During the afternoon of the next day, I hopped up on the kitchen island to join Knight as he prepared for a movie night.
The mansion had a theatre room that we’d decided to take full advantage of. However, it seemed they didn’t have a popcorn maker.
Kyan and Zed were in the theatre right now, squabbling over a movie list for the evening while Knight was cooking snacks and fully committing to microwaving a dozen bags of popcorn.
I couldn’t help wondering if it had anything to do with one of our earliest dates, when his pack took me to the movies. Not a flashy date for most, but none of us had normal upbringings, and it had been the most exciting date I think I’d ever gone on at the time.
I grinned as Knight swapped one bag in for another and set the timer before sliding onto a barstool at my side.
“You feeling all right today?” he asked.
I nodded, though I couldn’t catch my yawn. All the drugs made me sleepy at unexpected times.
“How are you doing with all the meds?” he asked.
I shrugged. “There are worse things.” I had to take the suppressants throughout the day and night, but I had a vibrating alarm set for the midnight dose, so I didn’t have to wake them up.
Missing a dose wasn’t an option. Kyan seemed concerned that, if I did, I might slip into heat in an instant. I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
Discussing my meds wasn’t why I’d come. “About the other day…” Clasping my hands, so it wasn’t so obvious how nervous I was. “I’m sorry if I said anything about you and Kyan, I mean, that I shouldn’t have.”
Knight glanced at me, a smile on the edge of his lips as he tugged the corner of the popcorn bag he’d just popped and picked a few out for himself. “Don’t be, Princess. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I nodded, but my chest didn’t ease. It didn’t feel that way. I hadn’t known… I swallowed.
I didn’t want to hurt any of them.
“I don’t want to get in the way of anything.”
“You won’t.” Knight stopped before me, dragging me to the edge of the counter so I was all but forced to tangle my legs around him as he cupped my cheek. “I promise.”
“Okay.” It was just so important that nothing changed because of me.
“I know Kyan,” he said, seeming to see the conflict in my eyes. “Despite how rigid his father was, there’s nothing complicated about him saying he loves you. You’re the Omega he matched. The universe stamped its approval. It’s safe for him. But with other things, he’s still figuring out his way from the maze his father left him in. Wrong turns didn’t just leave him lost, he was punished when he wasn’t the perfect image of an Alpha, and he was young enough that he was still trying to make sense of the world. There’s a lot of shame and fear, even if he doesn’t want it. But what he can say doesn’t change who he is—or what he feels.”
I nodded, processing that.
“Does it... hurt?” I asked. “That he doesn’t say it?”
Knight considered that for a long time, then shook his head. “I don’t need Kyan tying himself in knots trying to figure out how to say shit I feel down the bond from him every day. I love him, and beyond that, no one owes me their healing. That part is his, and it will happen when it needs to.”
I stared up at him, feeling his conviction and peace, and it unwound a piece of my soul, too. I was supposed to be their Omega, but I just felt... broken and worn thin. I’d been running for so long I didn’t know if there was anything left but scars. Would he maybe have room for some of that for me, too?
Did I even deserve it?
“Besides,” Knight murmured. “If he can believe in you for all these years, I can believe in him.”
“I don’t know how he did.”
“You were always special to him.”
I peered up at him, caught a little off guard by that.
“Zed and me, we’re your mates, but Kyan?” Knight tilted his head, eyes curious. “You’re two halves of the same whole.”
I frowned, my mind clawing at the edges of a reality that had been whispering to me for a long time. It felt like there was something caught in my throat.
“We knew the moment he saw you,” Knight said. “Felt it through the bond like a lightning bolt—and he came to life. It’s why Zed locked it down—didn’t let a soul find out who you were until he’d met you. Kyan came home that night—his mission failed—I swear, he was getting ready to kill us.”
“To... what?” I asked, startled.
“He’d just fallen for our target—the Omega he was sent to kill. We’d been chosen for Zed’s pack—highest honour in the Brotherhood, but I didn’t join this pack thinking it would be a family—that Zed would give a shit who we were. Not until that night.” A faint trace of a smile curved Knight’s lips. “Until then, Kyan... it was like he was just burning. Fire and ash, everything he’d been taught and nothing beneath. He’d never failed a mission in his life, but when he saw you, something happened, and I found out who Zed was that night.”
I cocked my head. “How did you get the truth out of Kyan if he was worried you’d kill me?”
Knight grinned right as the microwave beeped. He crossed over to it and replaced the popcorn bag before returning to me. “Look. It was messy as fuck. Lot of guns being waved around, you know? Until Kyan had Zed with a knife to his neck and he told him he’d rather kill us all than see you die—and then Zed started laughing, because... well, he’s just Kyan with a better mask on a good day, and he said there was no way in hell he would let you die, not when it was the first sign he’d ever had that our pack might be more than Brotherhood weapons.”
I sat in silence, taking that in, trying to process it all.
“You brought him to life,” Knight said quietly. “Before you, he was nothing. I know. I was in a bond with him.”
“None of you ever told me that...”
“It wouldn’t have been fair to put that on your shoulders. Would have swayed your choice—and the whole fucking point was your choice—it wouldn’t have been fair to either of you any other way.”
“And then I left...” My expression crumpled. “And he—he almost?—”
“No.” Knight’s voice was rough, and he cupped my cheek, thumb brushing away the tear that had escaped. “You taught him what it meant to love, and then he learned to do it all by himself.”
I swallowed, my chin still quivering.
“I saw that firsthand,” Knight said. “He’s not very good at talking about it, but he learned to love so damned much, he outdid the rest of us. He forgave you first, loved you because he wanted to—because he knew it was right.”
“He needed you for that, too,” I whispered. Without Knight... What he’d said about finding Kyan on a roof that day. I couldn’t think about it. A world without Kyan in it would be cold, silent, and empty.
“You helped him learn to fly, Princess, I just made sure he didn’t go face first into the sun.”
I choked a half sob, half laugh, leaning into his palm.
“Is it... wrong, if my connection with Kyan is... different?” I asked.
Knight’s chest rumbled with a laugh. “Your connection to all of us is different. The way I see it, you’re both mine—and brats—so what’s the difference?”
“And Zed?” I asked.
Knight snorted. “He’s still got Maverick blood. We’re all his. The closer we’re tied, the easier it is for him to keep us all in his little pack box for show and tell.”
I glanced up at him, a smile still stiff on my face. He seemed to see that, though, too.
“You can’t worry about it anymore,” he breathed. “Everything...” He trailed off, scrunching his nose all cute-like which meant he might be close to tears. “Everything after was inevitable. Soulmates on either side of a war. Kyan could no more kill you than you could have let him die. That’s all there is to it.”