Chapter 18
Sebastian’s shoulders curve inward with guilt. “I left a note.”
“That’s a weak excuse, and you know it.”
Sebastian flinches. “Micah—”
“Do you have any idea how that made me feel?” My throat tightens with the hurt I’ve been trying to bury. “To wake up alone? To find nothing but a scrap of paper?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing after attacking you.”
“The right thing?” I push away from him, anger flaring hot again. “I spent days wondering if I’d imagined everything between us. Checking my phone every five minutes, hoping for a text, a call, anything.”
Sebastian rises from his chair, hands open at his sides. “I’m so sorry.”
“I sent texts. Begged you to tell me you were alive.” The confession burns on its way out. “I talked to the cameras, hoping you were still watching.”
His face twists with pain. “Micah, please—”
I pull at the hem of my hoodie, twisting the fabric between my fingers. “You promised to protect me from Travis.”
“I had people watching your building,” Sebastian insists, taking a step toward me.
“But not you.” I back away, needing the distance. “I needed you, and you weren’t there.”
The words hang in the air between us, raw and naked. I curl my fingers into my sleeves, tugging them down over my hands for comfort.
“I thought…” Sebastian runs a hand over his scarred face. “I thought you’d be better off without me. After what I did during your Heat.”
“What did you do?” I challenge. “Mark me? I would have consented if you’d asked.”
Sebastian blanches. “You don’t remember?”
“I remember enough.” My fingers brush the Mark on my neck. “I remember asking for you. Begging for you.”
“You were in Heat.” He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “You couldn’t consent.”
“We already had plans for you to see me through my Heat. I didn’t wear a nape guard.” My arms tighten around myself. “What did you think was going to happen?”
Sebastian turns away, his stark profile outlined by the glow of the monitors. “I thought I could control myself. Be what you needed without…” He gestures to my neck.
“Without claiming me?” I finish for him.
“Yes.”
“I felt disposable.” The words slip out before I can stop them. “Like you used me during my Heat and then decided I wasn’t worth keeping.”
Sebastian’s head snaps up in horror. “No. God, Micah, no. That’s not—”
“Then what?” I cut him off, body trembling. “What am I supposed to think? You Mark me, claim me as yours, and then ghosted me.”
“I was ashamed.” The admission falls between us, heavy and real.
“Of me?” I whisper, shrinking into my hoodie.
“Never of you.” Sebastian takes a tentative step forward, hands reaching toward me before dropping back to his sides. “Of myself. Of what I did. Of losing control.”
I hug myself tighter, holding in the pieces that might scatter if he touches me. “You hurt me more by leaving than you ever could have by staying.”
Sebastian’s scarred face twists with regret. “I realize that now, and I’ll never forgive myself.”
He sinks back into his chair, the leather creaking under his weight. His fingertips trace the edges of his keyboard, tapping an uneven rhythm. When he speaks, his voice comes out rough, as if the words scrape his throat on their way up.
“I’ve spent my life trying to be in control.” The tapping stops. “Every decision, every action.”
I stay silent, watching the way his eyes fix on the monitor displaying the manor’s front gate. A car passes on the road beyond, headlights illuminating the wrought iron before vanishing around the curve.
“My family lives in the public eye.” Sebastian gestures to the screens surrounding us. “One wrong move, one moment of weakness, and it’s not only me who suffers.”
“Is that why you ran?” The shaking worsens. “To protect your family’s reputation?”
“No. That would be more noble.” His hands tremble as he folds them in his lap. “I ran because I was terrified of how you’d look at me when the fever cleared.”
“Because of the Mark?”
“Not just the Mark.” He swallows hard. “You told me you were scared of pain, and I promised you it wouldn’t hurt. But I broke that promise. I lost control, and I hurt another person I love.”
His pain pulls me a step closer. “What do you mean?”
Sebastian’s focus drifts to a space between the monitors where a small framed photo hangs of two teenage boys with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders, grinning at the camera. One of them is Sebastian, whose face is unmarred by scars.
“The car accident,” he whispers. “I told our parents I’d drive safely when I took my cousin Ezra for a drive after I got my license.”
The tension in his shoulders travels down his spine, leaving him rigid in the chair. I can almost see him, young and carefree, hands gripping a steering wheel for the first time.
“We were on a back road, and I was showing off.” His fingers dig into his thighs.
“I took a curve too fast and lost control. The car hit a tree. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt.
” His hand rises to touch the scars on his face.
“I went through the windshield. Ezra was pinned inside the car for three hours while they cut him out.”
“But he survived,” I say softly. “Right?”
“Yes, but he spent months in the hospital. Surgeries. Physical therapy.” He stares at the picture of them. “He was just a kid. Thirteen. And I almost killed him because I couldn’t control myself.”
The pieces click into place. Sebastian’s rigid self-discipline, his careful boundaries, his obsession with security. All of it rooted in this moment from his past, this unhealed wound.
“You were a teenager,” I murmur. “Teenagers make mistakes.”
“My mistake left scars on both of us.” His jaw tightens. “And I swore I’d never let impulse override judgment again.”
“Until my Heat,” I finish for him.
“Until your Heat.” He stares at me with pain-filled regret.
“I thought I could handle it without losing myself. But I took your choice away. I didn’t prepare you enough, and I hurt you.
I Marked you without permission. I did the one thing I swore I’d never do.
I let my Alpha instincts override your safety. ”
“Sebastian—”
“No.” He cuts me off with a sharp gesture. “You need to understand. When I woke up and realized what I’d done, I hated myself. I couldn’t bear to see fear or disgust when you looked at me. I attacked you.”
His pain hits me with physical force. All this time, I’d interpreted his absence as rejection, as him discarding me after getting what he wanted. But the truth is so much worse. He ran not because he doubted me, but because he feared becoming the out-of-control monster he believed himself to be.
“I never felt attacked,” I whisper. “Not once.”
Sebastian meets my eyes, hope and disbelief warring in his face. “How could you not? I pounced on you without any consideration for your comfort.”
“I never said no. In fact, I remember being enthusiastic.” The three days blur together in a fevered haze, but I remember that much. “And if I’d been coherent enough, I would have asked for your Mark.”
“You can’t know for sure. You were in Heat.”
“I invited you to my Heat,” I remind him again, since he keeps forgetting that fact. “I gave you a key to my apartment. I registered you on my Heat app.”
Sebastian goes still. “You what?”
Heat climbs my neck at the admission.
Inviting someone to share your calendar and actually logging them as your mate are two completely separate things, and I may have been getting a little ahead of myself.
But I was so excited, and in my head, it was a done deal.
If anything happened to me, I wanted the authorities to know who to contact in an emergency.
I swallow hard. “I added you as my Alpha.”
“I never saw the notification.”
I pull at a loose thread on my cuff. “Because I didn’t share it.”
Confusion furrows his brow. “Then why—”
“It was my way of committing. Of choosing you.” The confession leaves me stripped bare. “Even if you never knew.”
The blue light from the monitors catches in his eyes, turning them almost luminous as understanding dawns. “You wanted to be mine.”
“Yes.” The single word hangs between us.
Sebastian’s hands tremble. “I’ve spent five days hating myself for taking what I thought you never meant to give.”
“And I spent those same five days wondering why you didn’t want what I freely offered.” The irony pulls a sad laugh from my chest.
The layers of miscommunication unravel between us, each of us hurting from opposite sides of the same fear. His worry that he’d trapped me, and my fear that I wasn’t enough to keep him.
“What a mess we’ve made,” Sebastian murmurs.
“Yeah.” I take a tentative step toward him, then another, until I stand before his chair. “For a security expert and a hacker, we’re not great at communication.”
A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “We’re really not.”
My hand lifts to hover next to Sebastian’s face. “Can I touch you?”
The question mirrors the one from our first night together, when the blindfold came off, and he revealed himself to me.
His breath catches. “Yes.”
My fingertips brush his cheek, tracing the raised ridge of scar tissue that runs from temple to jaw. Sebastian’s eyelashes flutter closed, his breath escaping in a shaky exhale as he leans into my palm.
“I’m still angry with you,” I whisper, even as my thumb strokes along his cheekbone.
“You should be.” His tongue skips along his bottom lip. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”
“No, you don’t,” I agree. “Not yet.”
I lean forward, closing the last inches between us, and kiss him.
Sebastian freezes for a heartbeat, then melts with a soft rumble that vibrates beneath my palm. His hands rise to hover at my waist, still afraid of taking what isn’t explicitly offered.
I press closer, parting my lips in invitation, and whisper, “Touch me.”
The permission breaks his restraint, and he grips the front of my hoodie, pulling me forward until I tumble into his lap.
The leather chair creaks beneath our combined weight as I straddle him, knees finding purchase on the cushion on either side of his thighs.
His mouth opens under mine, tongue sliding across my bottom lip in a request that sends heat coursing straight to my hips.
I grant him access, and his mouth is all coffee and cinnamon, his familiar heat stealing my breath.
The stubble on his jaw scratches my palms as I cradle his face, holding him to me.
His hands slide beneath my hoodie to find bare skin, callused fingers tracing patterns up my spine and leaving trails of fire in their wake.
“Micah,” Sebastian breathes my name between kisses. “I need—I want—”
“What?” I rock on his lap, his cock hardening beneath me. “Tell me what you need.”
“To prove I can be better.” His hands squeeze my waist, firm but gentle. “That I can control myself. Be the Alpha you deserve.”
The vulnerability in his face steals my breath. All his power, his wealth, his strength, and what matters most to him is proving he won’t hurt me.
I brush my thumb across his bottom lip, red and swollen from our kisses. “You didn’t hurt me during my Heat. I wanted everything you gave me. Everything.”
Sebastian shakes his head, his scarred face tight with regret. “You cried.”
“I was aware enough at the beginning to remember demanding you continue.” My hips shift, and the friction draws a groan from his throat. “And I don’t regret your Mark. Not for a second.”
His hands slide to my thighs, gripping hard enough that I might find fingerprints later. The thought sends a fresh wave of heat through me.
“Let me show you I can do better,” he begs. “Let me take care of you in the right way.”
In answer, I pull my hoodie over my head and toss it aside.