Chapter 19 #2
“Did I break you, Rang?” Shiloh searched his face but couldn’t find any answers. “Should I be apologizing?”
The alpha cocked his head. “You sound like you’re really asking.”
“Because I am.”
“Ah, right.” He nodded to himself. “You follow social cues. Mimic others to pass as—”
“What’s so fucking great about being normal?” he spat before he could hold himself back.
“Did I hit a nerve, omega?” Sarang looked like he was considering hurting him some more, but then surprisingly decided against it. In a swift move, he pushed off of Shiloh, standing at the side of the bed and adjusting the collar of his black dress shirt, checking his cuff links.
The crown shaped ones Shiloh had gifted him three birthdays ago.
Sarang caught where he was looking. “These? Don’t take it personally. It doesn’t mean anything. Half of what I own came from you. Isn’t that part of the reason you think I stuck around all these years? To leach off of you?”
“No,” Shiloh said. “I think you stuck around because of guilt.”
He didn’t deny it, but he did smirk again. “I don’t feel guilty toward you anymore.”
He’d demanded truth, right?
“I thought if I was nice, you’d like me enough to stay even if coin was off the table,” Shiloh admitted, hating how it made him feel small. “Then I found out about the life-bond, and learned it wasn’t just coin that was keeping you with me.”
“If I don’t visually monitor you, anything could happen. There’s no telling what a life-bond will do to you, since you aren’t a Gray. It was for your own benefit. Your own protection.”
“It was so you didn’t have to try to fall asleep at night thinking you were your father,” he corrected.
So much for the gentle and cooperative approach.
Sarang’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know what you helped me realize? I was going about it all wrong. Instead of trying so damn hard not to be like him, I should have been doing everything in my power to make it so no one could ever abandon me like he did.”
“I locked you up to keep you,” Shiloh reminded quietly. “Why would I ever leave?”
“Is this the part where you tell me I should give you the bite to ensure it?” Sarang grunted. “Now that I know your angle, you’re becoming predictable.”
“Is it so wrong that I want to be with you?”
“You don’t want that. What you want is to own me, omega.”
“How are they not the same thing?”
“Because in one version, you continue to treat me like a character on your stage, and in the other, we write the script together. For four years, you’ve taken me for a fool. You’ve played me long enough. Now it’s my turn to play with you.”
Shiloh exhaled in frustration. “I don’t understand. If the end goal is the two of us, together, and that’s something we both want, what does it matter how we get there?”
“It matters,” Sarang firmly disagreed.
But it didn’t go unnoticed that he didn’t deny that he also wanted Shiloh back.
Perhaps…this could work for him after all.
“You said you wanted to get to know me and then you would decide,” he said. “That I have to be good for you. What does being good entail? I need you to be specific, alpha. I’m not capable of following on my own.”
“No, I see that now.” He took a step back. “Since you like playing the part of a dependent so much, let’s see how you feel about really becoming one.”
“Alpha?”
“You’ll only have me,” he reiterated. “If you don’t like the way I treat you, if you don’t like how I keep you, if you get sick of my company…none of it will matter. Even if you end up realizing you dislike being a kept omega, you’ll still only have me. Only be allowed me.”
Shiloh bristled. “Did you just call me a whore?”
“My whore, to be specific.”
“I’m the—”
“So I have a prince for a whore,” Sarang cut him off. “What of it?”
“You’re crossing a line.” One Shiloh would not tolerate.
“What’s wrong with being a kept omega?” he asked. “Isn’t it exactly what you wanted? You’ll be my only bedpartner. I’ll give you my knot. Fuck your through my ruts and your heats. Tend to you—in fact, with that last one, how is that any different than the way we’ve always been?”
“The difference is you’re keeping me trapped in a room purely for carnal pleasure,” Shiloh growled. “I don’t want you to just fuck me, I want you to claim me!”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Sarang said.
“A kept omega isn’t the same as a mated one. You’re insulting me, Rang.”
“There isn’t an omega downstairs that wouldn’t get on their hands and knees and present for me this instant if I offered to make them my kept omega,” he argued. “Should I go prove it? There’s no law dictating how many I can have at once.”
Being a kept omega was a term mostly used for people engaging in a breeding contract.
It was a step above a causal relationship, but with a clear distinction between being a sexual partner and anything more serious.
If he went around telling the world Shiloh was his kept omega, he’d basically be telling them that he fucked him on the side for fun.
“You stopped me from having that omega at Den Night,” Sarang reminded. “Are you really going to let me choose from one of our employees? Will you be able to look them in the eye ever again, knowing they’ve experienced what it’s like to have my cock pounding their greedy hole?”
Bitter and feeling backed into a corner, Shiloh did what he always did.
He pivoted.
“Diogenes is going to realize what’s going on and come for me,” he said snidely, too riled up to recognize the danger. “Let’s see if you can look him in the eyes when you find him between my thighs, filling me up with his—”
Sarang grabbed the beeping monitor with both hands and chucked it across the room. The device smashed into pieces, bits raining about, the sound loud and shocking.
Shiloh had caved in on himself protectively before he knew it, cupping his ears, ignoring the way he pulled at his injuries as he made himself smaller.
Right.
That was something he’d forgotten. Something he hadn’t had to experience in so long, it’d completely fled his mind.
His mother’s rage had always been worse than her beatings.
More frightening in their explosiveness. In the way Shiloh was helpless to do anything against them. As he’d grown, he’d developed the knowledge that he could defend himself. If she hit him, he could grab her fist. He could fight back.
He never did, but there was a comfort in knowing that the choice was there. A power in knowing he was really the one in control, since he was allowing her to do what she wanted to him.
But when she got angry and took it out on objects instead of his flesh…
“Omega,” Sarang’s voice could barely be heard through the pounding of Shiloh’s heart. “Omega. Look at me.” He captured his wrists and tugged them down, forcing Shiloh to glance up and meet his gaze. “There. Look at me. Only me.”
A soft purr vibrated from the alpha’s chest a second before soothing pheromones cascaded around Shiloh. It took a moment, but together, the alpha’s comfort managed to seep past Shiloh’s fear.
He blinked.
“I won’t take another,” Sarang promised softly. “Tell me you won’t either.”
Shiloh swallowed and licked his lips, then nodded once. “There’s only ever been you, Rang.”
He’d never slept with anyone else.
He’d never wanted to.
The alpha looked surprised, but he got ahold of himself quickly. Releasing him, he stood and nodded toward the mess. “Leave it. I’ll clean it when I return.”
“Where are you going?” Shiloh grabbed onto the cuff of his shirt.
“That’s none of your concern.” Sarang pried his hand off. “Be good for me, omega, and I’ll be back before you know it.”
“And if I’m bad?”
“I’ll stay away.”
Shiloh wanted to argue, but his still healing body had reached its limits. He lowered back onto the bed, pulling the covers over himself.
And watched the alpha turn and walk away.