Chapter 26
Everything I believed I cared about meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. I crouched in the safety of my bedroom, my palm flat on the wall as I struggled to breathe. Tears blinded my vision. I never fucking cried. Not when the orphanage bastards raped me, or when Jennifer—never.
This slip of an Omega had me fucked in the head, and my mistakes flashed across my closed eyelids.
My cruel words to her, the way I allowed another woman to touch me, even if I hadn’t done anything further, all of it flitted across my mind in a flurry of regrets.
In biting her, a dam had burst open. One I never knew existed—emotions. Fucking emotions.
I was drowning in self-hatred.
Kyan had repeated it over and over, but I shut it down. If only I’d been less stubborn, less blinded by my pride. My damned pride and fear.
Briar was nothing like Jennifer, but all that baggage I’d held onto, my distaste for women and their motives, had been because of her, and Briar had suffered the effects.
I pressed my palms into the wall, breaths rasping from my throat.
She’d been concerned about me.
After everything I’d done to her . . .
When she slid her fingers into my hair, the flashback to being forced into fucking Jennifer slithered into my memories. Flaring up the disgust that lived inside me, but as soon as she asked me how I was? It burst every bit of the misplaced disdain I’d directed at her.
Jennifer had never asked about my well-being.
Much less stopped mid-fucking. Even if my juvenile cock had hurt from the friction.
Even when I couldn’t come, and she’d punished me for it.
The scars from childhood stuck with me. Once I grew at seventeen, it became harder for her to force me down . . .
I gritted my teeth, shaking my head, and rubbed my palm over my wet face.
Briar didn’t deserve any of our behavior, yet we’d caused her irreparable harm. Her eyes were devoid of any happiness; they held a glaze, as if she’d just given up.
I recognized that look on my own face. I had it every time Jennifer visited me.
A gasp left my lips, the throb in my chest intensifying.
After she’d adopted me at thirteen, I’d expected to leave behind the hell of the Forest Peak orphanage; instead, I was greeted with a different one that Sinclair and Kyan had already been living in.
Pretty—how many times had I had adults say that about me since I was nine?
My hands shook as I raked them through my hair. Too many to count.
Women. It was always women who took a liking to me. Nausea swirled in my stomach.
Kyan was right. I’d put it on Briar when she’d had nothing to do with it, but being around her had brought up every single demon in me . . . because she made me feel weak.
I’d promised myself I’d never allow anyone to hold power over me.
And now it was too late.
The Omega—no, Briar—had me and my twisted, fucked-up heart, which before her, I’d believed had shriveled up into dust.