Chapter 34 #3
Riven stands with her, hesitating before finally letting go of her hands. She stands in front of three Alphas—two of whom actively hate her, and one she doesn’t know and can’t trust.
I can’t move. The moment feels strangely sacred. Sacred and terrible. My chest fucking aches at the look in her bright blue eyes.
She clasps her hands in front of her stomach.
“My Mother called her the Last Daughter,” she shrugs like it’s of no importance, but I swear the temperature rises.
Something inside of me reacts almost violently to her words, like they’ve been branded into my bones long before I ever heard them. I see Dax swallow thickly out of the corner of my eye, and I wonder if he feels the same.
“It was just a story. A beautiful one, about a girl who would be born one day to wake those beautiful, magical, sleeping creatures, and defeat the darkness that made the world forget them in the first place.”
She nods softly, almost to herself. “A beautiful story, but a story nonetheless.”
She lifts her gaze, and her chin rises a fraction. “Daxen is right.”
Her blue eyes meet his shocked grey ones. He hasn’t opened his mouth since he ripped her apart, and I doubt very much he expected her to back him up.
“It’s not real. There are no kind, enchanted people full of magic. No one can talk to beasts, or bend shadows to their will. There’s no such thing as a crown of starlight.”
I see her physically swallow down her pain. I can tell the moment she shoves it down under layers of resignation.
“No one is going to lead anyone into battle. No one is going to stand against a forgotten foe.”
Another tear tracks down her cheek, and this one feels sadder, somehow. Full of resignation and submission.
“No one is going to save anyone.”
The defeat in her voice is a physical ache. I feel it when she raises those tear-filled eyes to mine. Her sigh is full of dejection. A sound containing a lifetime of disappointment and rejection.
“Because stories aren’t real.”
The finality in her tone breaks my heart.
Without looking at either of us, she exits the room on silent feet, leaving her heart lying bloody and broken at our feet. We watch her go, no one daring to breathe, let alone stop her. The sound of the door clicking softly shut reverberates through the room like a death knell.
It’s barely closed when I feel Riven move.
It’s slow. Predatory.
He walks right up to Dax, rotates, and punches him square in the jaw.
I cringe. Dax, clearly not expecting to get clocked in the face, reels. He stumbles into the side of the coffee table with a snarl.
He raises a hand to his bleeding mouth, and betrayal flickers in his eyes briefly before he masks it. “What the fu—”
“Save it, asshole.” Riven growls. He actually fucking growls in Dax’s face. “She was nesting, you ignorant fuck.”
I reach out to steady myself on the first thing I can find—the chair she was sitting in. I knew. I knew the moment I saw her hands moving in those desperate, primal patterns. Having it confirmed, though… It’s like someone telling me my nightmares are actually real.
A nightmare of my own creation. Because, once again, I stood there and watched it happen. I knew we were pushing too hard, but I was too much of a coward to stand up to Dax. I fucking knew that, I just don’t want to admit it.
It’s easier this way. Easier to let him lead. To let him lay out his facts and convince us all that the Omega is evil, that she’s done monstrous things to hurt and nearly kill our brother.
And maybe she is. Maybe she has. But what we’re doing…
“All that brilliance,” Riven sneers, hands fisted at his side. “All that tactical intelligence and you couldn’t even tell when an omega was falling apart right in front of you. You missed the most obvious godsdamned signs in the room!”
He turns his rage on me next. “And you. Aren’t you supposed to be the fucking nice guy in this little threesome? Where the fuck are your instincts?”
I want to laugh. I nearly do, before realizing I’d have to explain myself, and there’s not a chance in hell I’m having that conversation tonight.
My instincts?
My instincts are in a fucking pile in the corner of my subconscious, buried with my Alpha. Because if I do what my fucking instincts urge me to do, I’d have marked, bit, mated, and fucked a baby into that Omega two days ago.
My instincts want me to tie my soul to an Omega I’ve never scented, and never fed from. An Omega who’s the reason my best friend is fighting for his life in a coma.
Quite honestly, my instincts need to be taken out back and shot. Put me and them both out of our godsdamned misery.
And what’s worse? My instincts are the reason my Curse exploded from my body for the first time in thirty fucking years just days ago. Thirty years of what I thought was control—gone.
All because my instincts went into protective mode.
I’m not in any position to trust a damn thing my instincts urge me to do. Clearly.
No.
Despite his inability to be even halfway gentle, it’s easier and safer for everyone to trust Dax. Better to fall back on his logic than my worthless fucking instincts.
Riven doesn’t care about my answer anyway. His voice drops even further, turning into something deadly and protective.
“Do you have any fucking clue what has to happen for an Omega to be pushed so far past their limit that rational thought has stopped working, and all that’s left is pure animal instinct?”
His lips twist with disgust. “I hope when that girl learns how to hate you properly, you both fucking choke on it.”
Riven glowers darkly and drops into his spot on the couch. When Dax and I just stand here, he looks up, sneering at us.
“Sit the fuck down,” he barks. “We have shit to do.”
I’m not too proud to admit he scares me a bit. His words make shame burn in my chest like heartburn—painful and impossible to ignore.
I make it back to my chair and pick my book of horror story fairy tales back up, falling back into the soft leather.
Riven’s pheromones are choking the shit out of me, and when I look up to see if Dax is drowning in them as well, he’s still standing there, wiping a trail of blood off his chin with his thumb.
He healed almost immediately, but hasn’t moved. He stands silently and stares at Riven like he’s never seen him before.
I’m bracing for Dax to pull some Alpha posturing shit, but to my shock, he doesn’t. He grunts something that might be a wordless acknowledgment and drops into the chair across from us.
We sit in silence for a few minutes, and just when I think the worst of it is over, Dax opens his mouth.
“If you ever punch me again, I’ll put you through the fucking floor.” He means it as a threat, but Riven simply scoffs. He carefully flips a page in his book, refusing to look in Dax’s direction.
”You’re welcome to try,” he drawls. “Perhaps you could start with the floor containing your high horse, and we can reevaluate from there.”
Dax snarls, and for a second, I think he might actually bare his fangs at one of his oldest friends, but Riven waves a hand at him lazily.
“I know you believe she betrayed Caelan,” he says. “I get that. And maybe she did.” He sighs, leaning in and bracing his forearms on the table.
“But even if she gift-wrapped Caelan and handed him to her daddy, holding balloons and singing Happy Birthday, the way you’re treating her now doesn’t make you righteous. It just makes you monsters.”
He holds up a hand to stop Dax before he can reply.
“The fact of the matter is, no matter what she tells you happened, you’re not going to know, or even believe, the full story until Caelan wakes up. So don’t lie to yourselves about what this is. You’re not protecting him, Daxen. You’re just abusing her.”
He leans back, kicks his leg up to rest his ankle on his knee, and opens his book.
Dax and I share a long look, but before I can say anything, he throws up a wall on our Bond that’s so thick I damn near metaphysically bounce off the thing.
He looks wrecked. Tired, with dark circles under his eyes and his hair standing up from where he’s been rubbing his hands through it all afternoon.
I know what Riven threw at us fucked him up, but if I’m honest, part of me is glad someone else said something. That same part is glad I’m not the only one questioning how far we were going to push the Omega’s punishment.
I don’t know how much longer I can treat her like shit.
Not just because it feels wrong somehow, but because my Alpha won’t let me.
He barely tolerated it to start, and it’s a thousand times worse now.
Every time I even think about doing something cruel to her, I have to fight my instincts like trying to wrestle a rabid dog into a pair of skinny jeans.
The fact is, I need to talk to my Dax about this. I need to explain how I’m feeling. Need to be honest with him about how I feel like I can’t trust myself, but worry we’re pushing too hard.
What if we do irreparable damage to the Omega?
What if Caelan wakes up and—
No. I’m not even going to consider that. As much as Daxen acts like a hardass, his reasoning is sound. It makes sense.
But Dax doesn’t look me in the eyes the rest of the night.
And he never unmutes the Bond.