Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
AVA
The morning after Caleb, I woke to find Mason sitting on the edge of the nest, watching me with those dark, knowing eyes.
"Ethan's waiting," he said simply, his voice soft but carrying the weight of expectation.
"He's been patient, but he needs his time with you too.
" I nodded, my body still pleasantly sore from the day before, the bond with Caleb humming warm and bright in my chest alongside Mason's steady presence.
Two threads now, woven together with my own. Two down. Two to go.
"Ethan's different," he warned me, his dark eyes searching my face. "His punishment won't be like mine or Caleb's. He processes things differently. Just... be patient with him. Let him work through this his own way."
I swallowed hard, nodding. Of all the brothers, Ethan was the one I understood the least. The quiet one. The observer. The one who watched everything with those sharp green eyes and rarely let anyone see what he was thinking.
"Where is he?" I asked.
"His study." Mason's lips quirked in something that wasn't quite a smile. "Where else?" I went. The door was closed when I reached it, and I hesitated, my hand raised to knock.
Before I could, his voice came through the wood. "Come in, Ava."
I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The room was exactly as I'd imagined, organized chaos, every surface covered with books and papers and equipment.
Ethan sat behind his desk, his green eyes fixed on a monitor, his glasses perched on his nose.
He didn't look up when I entered, just gestured to a chair positioned in front of his desk.
"Sit," he said, his voice calm but tight. "Please." I sat, my hands folded in my lap, my heart pounding against my ribs. The chair was comfortable, but I couldn't relax. Whatever Ethan had planned, I could feel it building in the silence between us.
For a long moment, he didn't speak. Just kept staring at his monitor, his jaw tight, his fingers hovering over his keyboard without actually typing anything.
I watched him, noting the tension in his shoulders, the way his throat worked as he swallowed, the dark circles under his eyes that spoke of sleepless nights.
Finally, he turned to face me, and the look in his green eyes made my breath catch. It wasn't anger. It wasn't even hurt, exactly. It was something rawer. Something more wounded. Like he was looking at someone who had shattered something precious.
"Do you have any idea what it was like?" he asked, his voice quiet but intense, his green eyes never leaving my face. "Watching you die?"
I opened my mouth to respond, but he held up a hand.
"I don't mean that as some kind of figure of speech," he continued, rising from his chair and moving to the window, his back to me. "I mean literally. I stood there watching your heart rate drop, watching your temperature crash, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it."
He turned back to his computer and pulled up something on the screen.
"Come here. I want you to see this." I rose from my chair on unsteady legs and moved to stand beside him.
On the monitor was a series of graphs, lines tracking upward and downward, numbers I didn't fully understand. But I saw my name at the top.
"This is what happened to your body while you were gone," Ethan said, his voice tight. He pointed to a line on the screen. "See this? That's your heart rate. It started climbing the moment you left — your body knew something was wrong even before your mind caught up."
His finger traced the line as it spiked and then began to fall erratically. "And here's where the bond sickness really kicked in. Your heart couldn't keep a steady rhythm. Your blood pressure tanked. Your temperature started dropping even before you got caught in that storm."
I stared at the data, my chest tightening. I'd felt it happening, the sickness, the cold that seemed to come from inside me. But seeing it laid out like this made it terrifyingly real. I knew that he could feel and smell things with the bond…but I didn’t know he could know this much from it.
"And this—" His voice cracked, and he had to stop for a moment, his hand trembling where it rested on the desk.
"This is when we found you. Heart rate at thirty-two.
Core temperature at eighty-nine degrees.
You were in hypothermia on top of severe bond sickness, and Ava.
.." He turned to look at me, tears glistening in his eyes. "You should have been dead."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
"The odds of surviving with those numbers?
Less than twelve percent. One in eight." He shook his head, his jaw tight.
"I've spent years studying this stuff. I know exactly what happens when bonds break, when Omegas separate from their Alphas.
I've written papers about it, given lectures.
And when it was you, when it was the woman I love dying right in front of me, none of that mattered. I was completely helpless."
He moved closer, his hands gripping the edge of his desk so hard his knuckles went white.
"I felt it through the bond," he said, his voice rough with emotion.
"I felt your heart stuttering. I felt your body giving up.
And there was nothing I could do except stand there and watch the numbers get worse and pray we weren't too late.
" He came around the desk, stopping directly in front me and crouched down so we were eye level.
"The only reason you're sitting here right now is because Mason made a choice that's going to haunt him forever," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Do you understand that? Do you understand what you almost cost us?"
Tears streamed down my face as the weight of his words sank in. "I'm sorry," I whispered, reaching out to cup his face. "Ethan, I'm so sorry. I didn't understand—"
"No, you didn't." But his voice was softer now, some of the sharp edge bleeding away.
He leaned into my touch, his eyes closing briefly.
"That's what kills me. You didn't think about what it would do to us.
You only thought about yourself, about your fear, about needing to run.
" He stood, pulling me up with him, his hands gripping my shoulders.
"I need you to really understand what you put us through," he said. "So that the next time you feel scared, the next time you want to run, you'll remember those numbers. You'll remember that you had a twelve percent chance of living through that night. You'll choose differently."
"I will," I promised, fresh tears spilling down my cheeks. "I swear, Ethan. I'll never make that choice again."
"I know you mean that right now." His thumb brushed away my tears, surprisingly gentle. "But I need more than words. I need you to show me."
"Anything," I whispered. "Whatever you need, Ethan. I'll do whatever it takes." Something shifted in his expression, the pain giving way to something darker, something hungrier.
"You ran from us," he said, his voice dropping lower.
"You chose to leave. You decided that whatever was out there was better than being here, with me.
" His hand came up to cup my chin, tilting my face toward his.
His green eyes burned into mine. "So now I need to know that you want to stay.
I need to hear it. I need you to beg for me, Avalon.
Beg for us. Show me that you choose this, that you choose me. "
My breath caught in my throat. "Ethan—"
"You're going to cry for me," he continued, his voice intense and raw.
"You're going to beg for me. You're not going to come until I'm absolutely certain that you understand what you almost threw away.
" Heat flooded through me, pooling low in my belly.
My Omega keened at the dominance in his voice, at the raw need barely contained beneath his controlled exterior.
"Yes," I whispered, the word coming out without conscious thought. "Yes, Ethan. Whatever you need. I'm yours."
His eyes darkened, something primal flickering in their depths. "Then show me." He took me to his bedroom, a space I'd never seen before, warmer than his study, the bed covered in soft blankets that smelled like him.
"On the bed," he instructed, his voice calm but with an edge of steel. "On your back."
I obeyed, lying back against the pillows, my heart pounding as he slowly removed his glasses and set them aside. Without them, he looked different, less controlled, more dangerous. His green eyes raked over my clothed body with an intensity that made me squirm.
"Take off your clothes," he growled softly, eyes on me the whole time. "Slowly. I want to see you." My fingers trembled as I reached for the hem of my shirt, pulling it over my head. Then my pants, pushed down over my hips. I lay back in just my underwear, vulnerable under his unwavering gaze.
"All of it," he said softly. "Nothing between us.
" I unhooked my bra, slid off my panties, until I was completely bare before him.
The cool air raised goosebumps on my skin, my nipples pebbling into hard peaks, but I resisted the urge to cover myself.
Ethan didn't move. Just stood at the foot of the bed, drinking me in with those intense green eyes, his gaze tracing every curve and hollow of my body.
"Beautiful," he murmured. "Do you know how terrified I was that I'd never see you like this again? That the last time I touched you was when I was rying to warm your frozen body?"
His words hit me like a physical blow. "Ethan—"
"Don't speak," he said, his voice sharp. "Not unless I ask you a question. The only words I want from you right now are begging."