16. Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Sixteen
Sven
T he rage coursing through my veins exploded from my lips, and I looked down at the pathetic scene in front of me.
No.
No, it would take more than this to forgive and let go.
Fuck Karl’s happiness. I shook my head once more before turning on my heels and marching to the kitchen, unable to hear Per trying to make this better one last time.
My hands balled into fists, my anger and lust tangled inside me like twin flames growing at every turn until I reached the counter.
My hands splayed over the cold marble, and I breathed out, hoping it was fury I was purging.
“J?vla skit!” I raked my fingers through my hair, murmuring more curses as I tried to remove my own scalp. My breathing was labored, my pulse sped, and I had to stop myself, rubbing my eyes and forcing deep breaths before I found myself in the middle of a panic attack.
Fuck Karl. He didn’t deserve my panic attack.
It wasn’t long until they crept in. My eyes whipped to their faces, my gaze going from one to the next.
I was bursting to say many things, rehash the past, and unlock everything I had inside me for years.
The words trying to make their way through my throat weren’t pretty.
I blew out a breath, knowing everything that was about to come would change us forever.
“Sven, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Anders started.
I removed my hand from my eyes and pierced him with a look. How dare he ask what was wrong with me when he was the one who brought her into my life?
This fucking tiny, delicious omega who I wanted to kill, fuck, and marry at the same time? The swear words were on the tip of my tongue, ready to fly to Anders and hoping they would cut him like daggers, but then she came along, pushing Anders out of her way.
“Why don’t you explain to me?” she said, her eyes steady on mine. “Anders is right. I didn’t understand the pack bond. Why don’t you tell me how bad Dad betrayed you?”
Her words were soft, her eyes pleading, but I wasn’t falling for the false niceties. She was the enemy. Right in my heart, I knew.
“You create a bond with someone and then change your mind. Then try to mess the whole thing up. He was getting fucking ideas that—” I huffed, shaking.
“I wasn’t going to leave my people. Three villages depend on me.
It’s not just the betas, but I was training to be a doctor to our people.
That was the responsibility I chose, and one I thought my pack supported me. ”
“We did,” Per said, narrowing his eyes on me. “What are you talking about?”
Small villages like ours survive by building strong communities. When I decided to be a doctor, I knew I couldn’t leave my community. I vowed to serve them when I took over for the last alpha doctor. It was my vocation.
“He came to me.” I finally said the words stuck in my throat. “The night after Maja’s mating, he said he thought we should leave. Try to find a beta, try to be happy somewhere else. He wanted us to leave our families, our community, our people.”
“And you never cared to tell us that?” Anders asked with a tone I recognized better than the soft one he was using with the omega.
“I thought he was joking.” I let out a bitter laugh.
“Leave everything behind? Leave our people without a doctor? His own parents? Sure, another doctor would fill the position, but he knew it would be a beta. He knew it was important to have one of our kind taking care of us. I told him how that sounded. Fucking selfish. A week went by, and I thought he forgot all about it, but…”
He left. He actually left us behind and never looked back. He died without letting us know where his corpse had rotted.
Immersed in my thoughts, I missed the fist coming in my direction, and only when it connected to my face, making my head rotate on its axis, did I realize that Anders just punched me.
My face stung, my nose bled, and I wiped some of that blood with the pad of my fingers as I looked at my packmate breathing hard in front of me.
“He told you?” Anders’s voice broke.
“I thought he was joking. I never thought we were going to leave!”
The very fact that he could do it broke me and my faith in the bond. I retreated from Anders and Per. I couldn’t trust anymore, and it was all done to me. There was no coming back from then on. Our pack was done the morning Karl left through the front door.
“You could have told us. We could have talked to him…” Per shook his head.
“Talk to him?” I found myself chuckling darkly at his words. “And beg him to stay against his will? He was breaking the bond. We couldn’t make the bond strong.”
“You broke it ten times over when you hid things from us,” Anders spat.
I nodded, not afraid to deny it. I had. I walked this life alone, punishing them and me, and waiting for it to end. “I know.”
Anders’s fingers flexed as if he wanted to close them on a fist again, and if he came for me, I’d let him.
I knew I deserved their rage, and maybe that was my plan all along.
Just take their rage until they feel as done as I did.
But before Anders could advance on me once again, the omega pushed his chest and got between us.
“Enough,” she said. Her sweet voice carried more finality than I thought was possible. “This has to end.”
“It’s thirty years of resentment, Isadora.” Per shook his head. “I don’t think it can end.”
He was right. It was too much to be said, too much to be felt. We were part of a broken unit, and it didn’t matter how many times the pieces tried to glue back together, something was missing.
“I can’t say Dad fucked up,” the omega started. “Not when he found my mom and had a very happy life. We had a happy life, and I’m sorry it was born out of your pain, but… now he’s gone.”
Her words descended on the room like cold mist, prickling the skin and raising our hair. All of us looked at her as we smelled the tears she was about to drop, salt and grief and bitterness, and waited for her next words.
“He's gone, and we are all moving as if he’s here. Your bond has nothing to do with Dad. If he left, that’s his problem, but you three stayed. And you have to find a way to forgive yourself and—”
I chuckled, prowling to her, feeling on edge since the second I found her perfuming on the side of my home. “And forgive Karl because he made you? The perfect little omega with a hot mouth to swallow my cock?”
It was a challenge. I knew it wasn’t what she meant, but I was angry, and I wasn’t ready to let things go. Per hissed my name, but I ignored him and took her by the neck, racing heartbeat against the palm of my hand, and that damn star anise scent taking me hostage.
“That’s why I should forgive and forget? Because he went out there and made me the perfect cum toy?”
She shook in front of me. Her blue eyes narrowed with vicious intent, but she couldn’t hide the taste of desire her perfume left in the room.
Suddenly, my challenge wasn’t just me poking at her but rather a need that beat as strong as my own heart.
I pushed her down, just a little, just a nudge.
She could resist and stay where she was or she could scoff and yank herself free from my hands, but instead, she kneeled in front of me.
Perfect little omega.
The air came roughly out of my mouth as I watched her so pretty in the position.
We locked eyes for a heavy moment until I removed my hand from her neck and worked on the zipper.
I waited for Anders or Per to say some shit or another, but they didn’t, and I didn’t waste my time looking their way, not when she was so pretty on her knees for me.
My cock bobbed free so close to her face I could draw over her cheeks with the precum, mark her, and refuse to give her away.
I was a doctor, a rational man, yet the idea that Isadora was a gift from the universe in exchange for Karl’s betrayal wormed into my brain, and suddenly, the rightness of it all was filling my chest.
“Open, omega.” I dragged it out, grazing her bottom lip with the tip.
Hungry little omega. She didn’t need to be told twice. Her lips parted over me, her hot mouth taking all she could, and her hands gripped my thighs. She sucked me good, relaxing everything in me. At the same time it tensed, I threw my head back and enjoyed her hot mouth.