Chapter 15
DIANA
For a moment, I don't know where I am.
My body is heavy, but my mind is light, like I'm drifting between dreams and the sharp edge of reality. The air smells like outside and... him. That rich, grounding scent that wraps around my ribs even when I don't want it to.
My cheek is pressed against something warm and solid. A chest? Yes, and his chest. This disorienting moment is so wonderful as I continue to forget how I got here, just aware that if I’m against Judge’s chest, then I’m safe. I’m home—
I blink my eyes open.
The sky above is streaked with orange and pink as the sun sinks toward the horizon. We're on a balcony lined with steel rails and welded seams. The wind is cool against my bare skin. There's a faint vibration beneath us, the whole structure humming as it moves… oh, the Mirage.
Wait, we’re still on here?
"We're not on the way back?" My voice comes out hoarse. "Why are we still on the Mirage?”
I try to push myself away from him to reorient myself, but a large hand presses gently at my shoulder, keeping me as close to him as possible. “We’re not leaving until you’re stable. If you still need care, then I’m going to ensure the Witch Doctor will help.”
I glance down to see my shirt is gone, bandages wrapped around my torso. Which now makes sense why he felt so warm and crap, because I’m snuggled into his body heat.
While pressed against him, I can kind of see that we’re sitting on the platform floor of the skinny balcony, his back against the wall, knees spread.
I'm half in his lap, half on the cool metal, one of his arms banded around my waist to hold me steady.
There's dried blood on his knuckles with bandages wrapped over his palms.
As I glance up to actually stare at the alpha that caused all this mayhem, it’s still a little bizarre to have been caught, just like that. And yet I get no joy to see that he looks wrecked, a shadow of stubble darkening his jaw.
I lower my head when his gaze sweeps over my face, and see that a basin sits beside his boot, the water tinged pink. He has a cloth in his free hand, and when silence falls over us, he resumes cleaning the grime from my shoulders, the cold water making the hairs on my arms rise.
“Why did I pass out? It didn’t really feel like blood loss.”
“Poison, likely. I was cleaning you while you slept. Your feet are in terrible condition.”
The corner of my mouth perks up in the slightest way, only to furrow my brows. "You're not mad at me?"
"I'm mad, alright… not at you.” The cloth pauses. His thumb brushes the uninjured skin at the side of my neck, just once, as if reassuring himself that the bite is still there. "If you ran, it's because you didn't feel safe enough.”
I don’t protest as I just exist in his orbit again, unsure how to trust him. He’s not wrong at all, but is that just a ruse?
"Now that you're awake, lean on your arm," he instructs. "I need to clean your legs and feet."
I laugh weakly. "I don't need to be cleaned."
He shoots me a serious look when I connect my gaze to his pale one. "I need to know how injured you are.”
"I think you got the main one." I grimace through the dim joke as I try to motion to my back. "How bad was it?"
His jaw tightens like he’s processing a hundred things at once. “Mostly skin, but it nicked a muscle. Now lean back."
I do as he says, propping myself on one arm while he adjusts the blanket so it covers my chest, leaving my legs exposed. I bundle underneath it, the air colder up here. “Wait, I don't have any pants on," I comment, the realization hitting me, throwing a glare his way. "Or underwear.”
A crooked smile spreads on his face. “Can’t examine you with clothes on,” he says clinically, like I would to a patient. Okay… well, I won’t say no to that. He's taking care of me, which is the least he owes me.
“You seem oddly measured.”
“Your scent isn’t stained by anyone, you’re alive, and I’m fucking tired. I’ll save the attitude for when it’s needed.”
Judge starts wiping at my legs, cleaning away grime and blood; the sound of him cleaning the rag in the water is almost meditative. I then realize he probably smelled me between my thighs when he removed my clothes. What a—
"Now let's clear the air," he adds, focusing on his work. "If we hadn't had that mole, and if Titan hadn't threatened to kill you, I would have done things differently."
My heart skips a beat at how fast he’s diving into this, like it matters.
Like he’s been stressed over it this whole time.
I work backward to figure out where everything went wrong.
Or at least, where it didn’t go like how it usually did in my dreams. “Like not taking me in that heat house, to start?”
"No, that would have happened." A ghost of something possessive crosses his hardened face. "But that's the alpha you have. I'll always be that way."
Great, an approving fluttering in my stomach confirms that I really might be a little deranged. “Did you say that Dominion had a mole?"
"Yes… Someone was sending information to Titan.
I didn't tell you because hearing about Titan scared you enough.
" He pauses when he gets to my feet and gives them a disproving scowl, and I know they’re covered in blisters.
"Roxy was a diversion. She owes me. I gave her clear rules—she doesn't touch me in any way I didn't approve of.
I planted different information with different people to see who leaked what.
" His intense eyes meet mine. "That's how I knew Jack was the mole. "
Oh, shit. “Rebecca's alpha?"
"Yes."
"Does she know?" I ask, my heart racing. Did she lie to me, too?
"She did."
A flush of adrenaline warms me up, my chest rising and falling in dramatic ways. As I stare at Judge, it’s so hard to want to focus on Rebecca when it doesn’t really matter right now. I try to shift to get my neck out of its kink. “Why didn't you tell me these things before?”
He raises a brow and looks out to the desert scenery, and I swear I spot him rolling his eyes.
“Sure, just share all that with you while trying to get you to warm up to me. Would have worked real fucking well,” he says, rolling his massive shoulders.
"I didn't think you'd run. I didn’t think you’d know. I wanted the bond so you could feel that I meant what I said when it finally came time.”
“Well, it all made me feel like I was just a secret.”
"And I'm sorry." I almost smile as the words seem to taste terrible in his mouth, like they’re a vegetable he’s been avoiding since he was five.
"When Titan is dealt with, Diana, you can have a whole wing.
The damn forest. Whatever you want. But right now, I can't focus.
" His rigid expression softens into something more raw. "I'm not used to caring about something. That shit is never safe for me, and it’s a massive vulnerability I don’t know how to protect.”
"Then don't care about me."
His laugh is broken, exhausted, and yet so wonderfully real.
"That's hard when your ass is as crazy as mine. How am I not supposed to want you, then?” He sets the cloth aside and rests his elbows on his knees. That comment strikes at something deep in me, because so far, he hasn’t really mentioned anything other than me just being an omega.
It’s sort of awkward as neither of us says a thing, and he looks all over like he’s battling with how he wants to phrase something.
“I’ve had time to actually think now that I know you’re alive…
if you truly need it, you can break free of me,” he says, although his eyes seem to say he doesn’t mean an inch of that.
“We can remove the scent gland, if you must.”
My brain stutters, almost certain this is some kind of trap. “What if it kills you?" I mumble.
There’s a thread of primal hope in his eyes, like he’s ready to claim even a sliver of my care for him. “It won’t if I agree to it. The Witch owes me. She’s counting on me killing Titan.”
I just stare at him. None of this is going how I envisioned it, and I am so primed to not trust this man that it’s almost instinctual. “I don’t know what to say,” I reply, lowering my glare to the blanket. “Why would you do that? You chased me down just to do that?”
His fingers roll like he has to put this energy somewhere, his eyes wide and unblinking.
The veins in his wrist and forearm protrude, and the alpha’s warmth receded.
One blink seems to alleviate whatever is building inside of him before he looks off.
“I shared the story about my mother. About my life before you. When I knew Titan wanted to harm my scent match, I was eager for any option to protect her preemptively. I made the deal before I knew you. Before I knew anything except that somewhere out there, I had a scent match, and if I found her, I could not survive her turning into my mother, too—”
My stomach flips. “Wait, you made the deal on me?”
"Yes."
An initial wave of grief doesn’t land quite right inside of me, as if I’m sad it’s not my parents. Like it was one last attempt to touch their ghost, replaced by some horrible sense of hope that they loved me more than I thought they did.
But it was Judge.
He holds up one of his bandaged hands, the one with… oh my god. A fucking black rose. I can see the edges of it where the bandages aren’t covering, and I completely forgot about it until now. At least, it seemed so disconnected, but after learning he made a deal on em…
"The ink in the rose is laced with something of the Witch Doctor's.
Titan has one too, with a different design.
There's an implant elsewhere in my body I can rip out, break open, and smear on the ink.
If I do that, it kills Titan." He pauses, lowering his hand as an echo of the revered persona continues to dominate his expression.
Pale eyes slowly move to meet mine. "If I do that, it kills me, too. That was her price."
Now it’s my turn to not blink at all. What the hell is he actually saying to me?
"I made a deal on your soul, Diana—on my scent match—that if Titan ever got his hands on you,” one of his fingers flicks lazily up at me, “I’d just kill the both of us and be fucking done with it.”
My body craves to revisit her, to ask if this is all true, because this is stirring something in me. "The Witch Doctor proposed this?”
The corner of his mouth crooks, revealing that handsome smile I do like.
“She fucking hates Titan. But she likes money more… so she took his money and gave him a full sleeve tattoo with its own properties, and then added the ink to the matching rose that he has. He told her that if anyone will kill him, it’ll be me.
So she got her money from him, and she gets to send me as his grim reaper. It's efficient."
I stare at his bandaged hand that’s got a little bit of old blood seeping through. If it weren’t for the way the bond vibrates with his sorrow, I don’t think I could believe him. But the fear is unapologetic inside of him; between us.
"You'd get rid of the bite?" My voice is small, my gaze steadfast on him. "You'd let her do that?”
His face softens in a way I've never seen. He looks... sad.
"If you're going to disappear, you can't just run, sweetheart.
There are wrong ways and right ways." The alpha’s edge creeps back, and I gently smile at him.
"I won't let you go easily, Diana. I'll always want you.
But if it's what you need, you can cut the bond, and I'll live with it. I’m used to misery at this point… but I admit, I enjoyed the small reprieve in the attic where there was hope.”
I stare at the pink-tinged water, the rags in his hands, the blisters he's examining on my feet. I'm so full of emotion I can't tell what's hormones and what's genuine.
"I don't..." My voice cracks, the connection in my chest with him screaming that my alpha is hurt. "I don't think I want to do it.”
I hear the breath he lets out. See his shoulders drop. The tension in the tether eases—warm, relieved, terrified.
And without any transition, the tears well in my eyes as I fully realize what it would mean to not take this offer. "I just don't want to be betrayed again," I choke out, almost pleading. "My parents betrayed me. Selene betrayed me. And Roxy was on your lap—"
His purr is instinctive, the sound vibrating through his chest as he instantly shifts so he can gently grab me, turning me to face him, giving a great deal of caution to my back.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs.
I don't fight when he pulls me in. If anything, I actually tuck my face against his neck, breathing in that scent that infuriates me with how safe it makes me feel. My hands curl into his shirt, and the dam breaks. "Please don't hurt me," I sob, my voice high-pitched.
His bandaged hand cups the back of my head. "I'm going to take care of you, Diana.”
There’s no lie or deceit as his emotions ebb with mine. Just raw regret and bone-deep terror that he almost lost me. I’ve never felt that kind of love directed at me… Is that even love? Who fucking cares right now. He’s my alpha, and he owes me.
"Are there any other things I need to know?" I pull back to see his face, staring at it as I know my expression is ravaged with devastation.
"No."
Simple and solid, and so him. His thumb brushes away a tear. I want to give in, to the warmth, the steady beat of his heart, the way his scent wraps around my jagged edges and files them down.
Slowly, I lean fully into him, my forehead pressing into the hollow of his throat. His arms come around me, and for the first time since the attic, I let my weight rest on him completely.
Just for now.