Chapter 21 Betrayal #2
“Look at you,” he cooed. “I love seeing you like this, mate. You take me so well when you stop fighting and just give in, don’t you agree?”
“Yes,” I said, not really thinking about the question but knowing that was the answer he wanted, the one that got me what I wanted and needed. “Please, alpha.”
His hands gripped my hips and I cried as he thrust inside, filling the space inside me slowly until he hit full hilt.
This was us at our best. He filled every inch of me deliciously, and I lost myself to the sweet oblivion of his touch, letting my mind drift away as I existed solely on a plane of physical pleasure.
Here, there was no pain.
* * *
Hours and many orgasms later, he held me, his fingers running through my hair as I tried to sleep.
“You know what we have supersedes everything, right?”
I vocalized my response, too tired to form actual words. He got chatty like this sometimes after sex, and while I really just wanted him to be quiet, it was one of his few endearing qualities.
“Nothing can compare to a mate bond. Our connection was written in the stars themselves, ordained by the gods.”
That’s how it was supposed to be, anyway.
The emotions I actually felt for Victor were… complicated. They were all encompassing, and they were primal, but they weren’t love.
He was my only anchor. He’d isolated me, forced me to depend on him for everything and I had no choice but to feel things for him because I had nothing and no one else.
Nothing felt cosmically significant, and the only one ordaining anything about our relationship was him.
I really wished he’d let me study more about mating bonds on my own. Surely there were cases like ours, couples whose personalities and goals didn’t align or fit but still were mates. Who only found common ground when they were in bed.
And even that part of our relationship hadn’t been there right away. It wasn’t until recently that he’d started treating me more gently. Every time he would start to get rough, he’d see one of the scars left by Kain Ulfic’s teeth along my skin and rein it back.
The one on my right bicep was particularly gruesome, a noticeable divot left behind from where he’d actually torn out my flesh.
Victor rubbed his thumb against that scar now, his brow furrowing in regret for failing to protect me.
“You’re my everything, Sage, and you have everything of mine that’s worth giving.”
* * *
I sat on the couch, aimlessly flipping through the channels.
I’d always envied those who had the time to watch TV.
In the “before-times,” as I liked to call them, I couldn’t help but feel left out whenever someone started talking about a hit new series I hadn’t watched, let alone heard of.
Between school, work, and doctor’s appointments, whatever spare time I did have back then was taken up by gaming.
Now, in the “hereafter,” all I had was time, and honestly? All those shows I’d been meaning to catch up on once I wasn’t so busy were awful.
Nellie had sworn up and down that this reality show of twenty-somethings living in a large house in the wilderness of the neutral lands was riveting, but all I saw was a bunch of whiny, entitled brats who couldn’t scrub a toilet if their lives depended on it.
I absently grabbed for a phone that wasn’t there to text her so I could complain about her trash taste in TV.
Damn, how long was it going to be until that muscle memory was gone?
I really wished Victor would let me have a phone, if only for the two of us to communicate.
I got so lonely during the nights while he was working, and it would help if I could text somebody, anybody, just to make a connection to a living being that wasn’t Tailer or Izack, the two guards who took turns standing outside the door.
Not that they weren’t worth knowing, but Victor had made it clear they were to minimize talking to me outside of emergencies, and all my attempts to initiate conversations fizzled out pretty quickly.
I knocked on the front door. “Izack?”
“No, it’s Tailer, ma’am,” came the guard’s muffled voice.
Crap, I thought I’d had their schedules worked out. Had Victor changed them to fuck with me?
“Tailer, do you think Dona and Warner are going to finally hook up on this season of Arcane House? Because the only thing holding them back was her complicated feelings for Titian, but then he left and a different merfolk took his place. So they should finally be good to go, right?”
Tailer cleared his throat, but didn’t reply.
My heat was really ramping up and I was getting antsy. If Victor didn’t get here soon, I was going to have to take matters into my own hands, literally, and he always yelled at me when I did that.
“Is Victor coming? I know he said he’d be late, but I need him…”
The sad, pathetic whine stirred something in my guard and he actually replied. “I’ll let you know as soon as he’s on his way.”
I caught my reflection in the mirror by the door. This little get-up was actually quite sexy. Despite the scars, my breasts looked amazing, and the unlined lace provided just enough view of my nipples to be scandalous without looking too pornographic.
Victor liked me to look “classically sexy, not whorish.”
His words.
“Any chance I could get an ETA? I’m losing steam, here.”
“No ma’am, I’m sorry.”
The sun had almost fully risen, and I squinted at the bright light.
I didn’t need to live nocturnally like vampires, but Noctis operated on that schedule and I’d become used to it after living here for so many years.
I walked over to the windows and closed the curtains, hiding the beautiful palette of pale blue, orange, and pink.
By now, we should have finished the first round of sex, and my body knew it, heat or not. My pussy throbbed with want, while my eyelids were getting heavier with each blink.
I sat back on the couch, squirming in my seat, and changed the channel to the morning news to get my mind off sex.
So you can expect more warm, clear weather through the week until this low-pressure system moves in from the north to bring a little rain to the weekend.
Thanks, Magnus. And now on to Livy, who’s standing live outside of the Premier’s Mansion hoping to catch a glimpse of Premier Corvane and his new bride as they head off for their honeymoon….
I felt my heartbeat pulsing through my whole body, echoing in my ears and drowning out whatever the reporter had to say.
The Premier… had a bride?
Clips of a wedding ceremony taken earlier that evening at Sanguiel’s Temple filled the screen. Victor, looking perfect as usual in an immaculate tuxedo, was standing next to an equally perfect woman with bleach-blonde hair, tanned skin, and ice blue eyes.
They smiled and kissed.
I could hardly breathe. My cheeks drained of blood, making me lightheaded, and I felt I might pass out.
I hated Victor, but I needed him. I wanted him here, I wanted him gone. I craved and reviled his touch.
I didn’t know what was wrong with our bond, if it was maybe some defect in me, because Victor claimed he’d been smitten from the beginning. That just a whiff of me had sent him into a years’ long tailspin, desperate to find the one who’d mistakenly caught his eye.
And… he’d taken a different bride.
An anguished scream erupted from my chest, and I fell to my knees on the ground. How could he do this to me? Mates were monogamous, mates didn’t hide, mates didn’t marry other people…
The front door opened and Tailer bolted inside, crouching beside me. “Ma’am, what is it? What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t speak; the only sound I was capable of making was a keening wail. The pain seized my entire body, and I felt like it might rip me to shreds from the inside out. My lungs shriveled and disappeared as I gasped for air, now finding even screaming no longer possible.
My mate had cheated on me. I touched the mark, the claiming bite he’d taken that first night, the one that connected me to him, body and soul.
It burned with betrayal .
I could hardly see, but I heard Tailer curse under his breath as the reporter continued talking about the beautiful wedding, the “event of the decade that everyone had been clamoring to get invited to.”
Tailer spoke into the radio strapped on his shoulder. “Code Green. I repeat, we have a Code Green.”
I collapsed into myself like my heart was a black hole, trying to pull the rest of me inside and crush me into nothing.
“Just stay with me, ma’am… Sage. Your mate will be here soon. He’ll make everything all right.”
And here they come! Oh-oh my, does Premier Corvane look eager to get started. Premier! Premier! Do you have time to… Well, apparently not! Tune in this evening at seven for an in-depth segment on the new Madam Accalia Corvane, cousin to the late Premier of Fenmoor, Kain Ulfic. Back to you, Eyvind.
* * *
“Sage? Sage? Answer me!”
I registered his voice but couldn’t move from my self-inflicted catatonic state. Nothing hurt here. All pain was gone in favor of the abyss.
In favor of sweet nothing.
I registered that he’d picked me up from where I’d fallen in front of the couch, but his touch was neither warm nor cold.
“How could you let her find out?” he hissed.
“I apologize, sir, but it’s all over the news.”
I registered movement next. “I want that thing gone now. All screens—I want them out!”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
“Shh,” came what was attempting to be a calming sound. It felt like glass in my ears. “Oh my darling, it’s not what you think.”
A door closed. My body was laid down.
“Look at you, you’re beautiful, darling. I knew you would look perfect in this—the bride of my dreams.”
Hands slid inside my underwear, and then they stopped.
“Sage? Sage, your slick, it’s… what happened to your heat?”
Heat? How could I go into heat? My mate, my alpha… I couldn’t trust him. He wasn’t safe. My body had completely shut down all vulnerability, instinctively knowing I could not make a baby with this man.
“Come on, Sage, snap out of this. Come to me, your alpha commands it.”
He could command anything he wanted, but it wouldn’t change anything.
“Sage… Sage I need to come back to me, darling.”
My body vibrated from his purr, but if gave me no comfort.
“All night, all I thought about was you. I wished it was you standing next to me at Sanguiel’s altar. Believe me, Sage.”
His words meant less than nothing. His promises already false. The one whom the universe had provided to protect me had broken my heart.
I guess I’d always been destined to be defective.
Hands on my shoulders shook me. “Sage! Sage! Wake up!”
I screamed. My body convulsed, contorted, seized, and I screamed again. The emotion and anguish and despair rushing back through my veins.
Rolling away from him, I sobbed, grabbing a pillow and bringing it into my chest as raw agony continued to pour out of me.
“Sage, please, I’m sorry. It’s really not what you think, I don’t love her.”
I couldn’t form words, only wild, animalistic howls of unfathomable grief.
Victor had finally destroyed me.