Chapter 15 #3
"Same account as last time," he says, and lets himself out.
I blow out a breath and wait. The injected suppressant doesn’t take long to work.
It’s sometime after two in the morning when Sonny settles. The flush comes down out of his face by degrees. The sweat stops. His breathing lengthens. That thin scramble in his throat slows into something that looks like sleeping instead of drowning.
And his delectable scent thins out.
Not all of it. It banks down into something faint and ordinary. The pressure that's been sitting on my chest for four hours lifts straight off and I can finally breathe deep.
I should be relieved.
What I feel instead is the loss of it. How fucked up is that? There's a hollow where all that sweetness was and everything in me hates it.
He's so small in my bed.
He's still naked under my shirt and the blankets. His hair's dried in flat pieces against his forehead. There's a bruise coming up on the shoulder he probably hit against the bed when he passed out.
The dried blood on his throat is particularly loathsome.
I get a cloth and warm water from the bathroom and clean the area. Carefully. If I have to keep looking at the evidence of what Calder did I might lose my resolve.
The mark looks worse clean.
Two deep punctures at the top and the drag of the rest of them underneath, the skin around it hot and tight and swollen up in a ring. I put my thumb near it and press.
Sonny groans.
Not pain. His whole body follows the sound—his shoulder rolling toward my hand, his chin lifting, that torn throat tipping up and offering itself to whoever's touching him. Chasing it. Asking.
I take my hand back and sit there with heart pounding until he settles.
A long while later I reach out again. Nothing to do with the mark this time—his hair's dried stuck to his forehead and I brush it aside.
He turns his cheek again into my palm and goes loose all over, and makes a small sound. Like he’s finally able to relax after being wound so tight.
I stay like that for a moment, letting us both have the comfort.
This is… It’s outrageous. It’s purely biological but it’s also–
Not lust.
I'd give a great deal for it to just be lust. I can handle that. I could find someone willing, sink my cock into a warm body, and let all this wash off me. It’d be easy to be rid of the pull in my sternum I have for Sonny if all I needed was a wet hole.
But my heart skips a beat and I wonder if that’s how Sonny feels when his heart is going crazy. Does it scare him? Does he feel breathless?
That’s how I feel when he’s near.
Like I can’t clear my mind of him. Like I’d give anything to see those haunted eyes sparkle.
Do anything to keep him safe.
And there it is. The thing I’ve been walking circles around all night. Maybe for days.
I care about him.
I pull my hand out from under his cheek like the sheet’s caught fire, and he makes a small noise at the loss, and I sit back in that chair and put my face in my hands.
Because I know exactly where this road goes. I’ve driven the whole length of it once already.
Angela in a hospital bed, looking up at me with that face, saying I want another one.
And me looking down at the only thing I’ve ever loved and not saying no.
I could never say no to her. She wanted and I gave, every time, because that’s what caring did to me—it took every ounce of judgment I had and threw it out a window.
And it killed her.
I sit up.
I’m not doing it again. I won’t do it again.
He isn’t leverage—Starla sold him in December, I’ve been holding nothing for weeks. He isn’t mine or Killians. He isn’t Calder’s either, whatever my son’s teeth have to say about it.
Keeping him here pays off no debt of Starla’s–that was a fool’s idea.
He doesn’t belong to any of us. He was never ours to keep.
But he’ll be our ruin, and God help him, we’ll be his.
So he cannot stay in this house.
Not for his sake. Let's be accurate.
Three alphas under this roof and every one of us is a danger to him. And I'm not the least of the three. I'm the one who's known exactly what he is and damn near fucked him too.
So he goes.
I'll get him well first. Fluids, food, the heart medication. A week to get his feet under him. Then he goes somewhere far, with money behind it and a door that locks.
He can be somebody else's problem. Somebody else's ruin.
I'll be sorry about it. Fuck, I'm sorry about it now.
But I buried one omega. I know what my wanting does to fragile things.
There's a boy asleep in my bed who turned his face into my hand like nobody's ever been kind to him. If he stays here, I'll do to him exactly what I did to her.
I stand and pull the blankets straight over him. Leave the shirt where it is.
I wait in my own doorway looking at him longer than I've any business doing, but I know in a way I’m saying goodbye. Giving myself a last, long glance before I bury everything I feel for him and never let it see the light of day again.
A week’s time. He’ll be gone.
I'll tell Calder and Killian when it's arranged and there's nothing left to argue about.
It’s what’s best for everyone.
It’s what’s best for Sonny.