Chapter 35 #2
I lift her onto the bath’s ledge and towel her off, covertly checking for injuries again but finding none.
She hums softly to herself as she wrings out her hair, letting me touch her wherever I please.
I’m not a spiritual man, but if the gods are listening—and not as fucked up as last night’s training makes them out to be—I pray that she doesn’t change her mind about us.
Please don’t let her change her mind.
Tucking her hand beneath my chin, she tips my head back and meets my eyes. “I don’t know what the future holds.” She holds my gaze for a beat. “But I won’t abandon you, Revyn.”
Before I can run away with joy, she presses a finger to my lips.
“But I need you to promise me something.” She brushes the pad of her thumb over the seam of my lips as she gathers her thoughts.
“If you have the ability to become an alpha . . . to start your own pack . . .” Every muscle in my body tightens. “Then I need you to try.”
We don’t talk about my bloodline or my previous ties to a pack. It’s one of the things that we avoid mentioning, just like how I’m careful not to exert any lingering alpha influence over her, or she’s careful to avoid talking about her family. It’s just something we deliberately don’t do.
The memories are too painful for us both.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” I pull away from her and lower into the bath, submerging past my shoulders. “I’m not . . .” I clear the gravel from my throat. “I’m not the kind of man who should be an alpha.”
“But you are an alpha.” Grabbing the ledge, she straightens her posture and, gods, her tits are mouthwatering, and her skin’s so goddamn soft.
Clenching my eyes shut, I take a deep breath.
She continues as though she doesn’t notice the heat in my gaze.
“I’ve seen it, Revyn. When we fight, you’re on a different level.
Your wolf is massive. You intimidate people without having to say a word. ”
Every one of her points hits like a knife in my back.
“And when we fuck—” A breath punches past her lips. “Gods, I can feel your power inside of me.”
I never should have told her about my past.
“I’ll give you anything else.” Taking a shaky breath, I force myself to open my eyes. Self-loathing burns inside my heart. Guilt grips my throat. Anxiety settles in my gut. Worst of all, the love I hold for this woman drowns out those emotions tenfold, begging me to consider her request.
But I can’t.
“You know what happened to—” I cut myself off, a hideous laugh bursting from my chest. “You can’t seriously be asking me this. You know better, Sienna.” I swallow the shards of glass stuck in my throat. “I can’t give you that.”
“You won’t,” she whispers, speaking so softly that her voice trembles. “Even though it would make me so happy to have you as my alpha. I love you, Revyn, and I know you’re capable—”
I disappear beneath the water’s surface and hold my breath. Count to ten. Twenty. Fifty. My heart pounds in my ears, begging me to reconsider, to give her what she wants, fuck the consequences. But doing so opens wounds that have long since scarred over.
Even Sienna can’t take away that pain.
The water shifts as Callum steps out of the bath, Sienna’s dangling feet disappearing soon after.
I expel all the air from my lungs and feel the pressure, the heat, both begging me to breathe—to reconsider—to do everything in my power to keep Sienna, even if it means damning her to a cursed existence alongside mine.
My soul was tainted long before the rot was born.
But she doesn’t know that.
I’ve never told her the real reason I left my pack all those centuries ago. She only knows what everyone else does—that I left, willingly abandoning the wolves who raised me and the pups that I helped raise—all because I couldn’t handle pack life.
The truth is a nightmare I can never wake from.
I burst from the bath and take gasping breaths, my vision swimming as I stumble to the edge.
A woman rests there, her legs dangling in the pool and a lullaby on their lips as she braids a little girl’s matching blonde hair.
Behind her, two young boys chase each other across a spring field while their father watches, his closest friends among him and laughing at a joke one of them said.
The forest radiates heat as thick plumes of smoke rise from the treetops.
None of them notice until the two boys disappear. Then the father, running into the burning woods after them. The mother and daughter linger, their gazes locked onto mine as screams break out across the meadow, and its flowers rapidly wilt.
“You left us to die,” the woman accuses, her voice rough with soot. Smoke billows past her lips and her face turns to ash. “What pack can survive without its alpha?”
I shut my eyes, but it’s no use.
Their ghosts haunt my dreams.
The little girl taps my cheek, wetting her charred fingers with my tears. “Was it worth it?”
My answer is always the same.
“No.”
A rush of heat accompanies her scream, and I flinch as flames lick my skin. When I open my eyes, Sienna and Callum are gone, but so too are my ghosts.
I’m alone, as I always should have been, and yet . . .
I yearn for my mate.
But I can’t be the alpha she needs.
I’ve already failed once. I won’t condemn Sienna to the same fate. A pack without its alpha is a gift for death, and an alpha without its pack mourns their loss.
Except for me.
I was too busy fighting for glory in The Great War to care about protecting my pack.
I earned my battle scars and went home to find that home no longer existed.
It had been burned to the ground in my absence, its charred remains a stain on the earth.
To this day, nothing grows in the Revarynn Meadows, and nothing ever will.
Like my soul, its soil is soaked in rot.