Chapter 6
six
LIV
I texted Darius to say I needed space and that he could go home, before I bundled myself in my comforter and tried to breathe slowly into the mattress.
I needed to figure out a way to become one with the blankets, because I was fucking losing it.
My breaths came out faster and more frantic by the moment. My panic skyrocketed as I fought to keep my shit together—and lost.
My fated mate was giving it another shot with his ex.
Just like I'd coached her to ask him to.
I was going to lose any chance at ever finding peace.
Finding sanity.
Finding security, and safety, and stability, and becoming as hinged as Callum was now that he had a mate to oil his unhinged self, or whatever the hell she did to him.
It was gone.
My chance was gone.
He was going to mate with her. She was wearing the ring, and she was too nice for me to even hate her for it. She'd been through hell, too. She'd dealt with Simon. She'd survived Simon.
And I'd missed my chance with my fated mate.
There was no controlling my breaths anymore as I hyperventilated into the bed, pulling the blankets tighter around me and fighting just to survive the misery of this. Of losing something that was still completely unknown to me.
Peace.
Real, genuine peace.
This anxiety was all I would ever have.
The door to my bedroom opened. Darius didn't know where the key was or what it looked like. Niall must've pulled it out of the junk drawer for him, so—
Someone tilted me to the side and slid beneath me.
The way he moved me, knowing exactly what position I was in despite the blankets above me, told me who it was.
He must've argued with Darius to get past him, but Dare knew that Niall could get me out of a panic attack. He'd seen it, more than once.
We'd been so good together.
Too bad he'd been willing to let me die.
I'd lost him. Now I was losing my fated mate too.
Somehow, losing Jonah hurt less than losing Niall had. Probably because I'd never really had Jonah, and I'd known without a shadow of a doubt that Niall was mine.
Niall's stupidly gorgeous face appeared in the hole beneath mine that I always left for breathing's sake. "Hey, Livvy."
"No. I can't do this." I was still hyperventilating, taking fast, shallow breaths as my emotions and my magic teamed up to create the perfect storm.
"Do you remember the first time I held you like this? We were just fuck buddies. Go back there."
"We can't go back. You ruined it."
"I still know you and your magic better than anyone else. We're doing the thing we do when you panic."
"No, Niall."
"Do the thing," he repeated, his voice so chest-achingly calm while his eyes blazed with that endless intensity. He wasn't going to leave me to deal with this alone, no matter what I said.
"Do you want me to do it?" he asked, when I didn't do it.
"No." My voice cracked.
"Yes, you do."
I groaned between panicked breaths. "Fine. I do. Do it."
"We're talking about the worst-case scenario, right here and now."
I squeezed my eyes shut and jerked my head in a nod.
"You'll never see Jonah again. Whatever friendship you had is gone. You won't ever get to experience a fated mate bond. You'll have to deal with your magic's shittery for the rest of immortality."
I nodded, my face scrunched and my tears dripping onto his cheeks. He didn't mind the tears. He never did.
He pulled my forehead down to his, so they were pressed together.
That was the rule of the thing we did when I had panic attacks.
We talked through it, and he got to touch another part of me every time we got past something else. Not sexually; it wasn't about sex. It was about getting back in control, and the physical contact helped, for some reason.
"There's got to be something good about that scenario. At least you're not officially mated to a man who's in love with a curly werewolf," Niall said mildly.
A pathetic burst of laughter escaped me, a break in my frantic breaths.
"He didn't want to fuck you, so he's obviously shitty in bed," Niall added. I could tell it took him a serious amount of effort to pretend he could talk about that without feeling rage.
"It wasn't good," I admitted, more tears falling free as I took a staggered breath in.
"You deserve better." Niall's words came out gravelly. I knew he was probably fighting possessiveness as he slipped his hand around the back of my neck.
"I know. And he wasn't going to quit that job. I would've been tied to the villa forever." My breathing was slowing, just a little. I still had to take breaths between the sentences, but they were deeper breaths.
"We hate the villa, right?"
"Yeah. We hate it a lot."
He tugged on the blanket until he found one of my hands, and pulled it to rest on his chest so I could feel the heavy beat of his heart.
"I might miss running in the Orchard sometimes. We mostly just listened to boring audiobooks together, but it was nice not to be alone," I whispered. My eyes were watering again.
Niall gently wiped a few of my tears away. "Do you feel alone a lot, Livvy?"
"Sometimes. I miss this sometimes, too. Us."
He cupped the back of my neck gently, as he held my forehead to his. "I miss us too."
"I don't want him to be my fated mate."
"I know. He's nowhere near as attractive as I am."
My laugh was teary, but he was right. "I wish I could trust you again."
"I wish that every fucking day."
Niall wiped a few more of my tears away.
I knew I should stop talking to him. Make him leave. Come to terms with everything on my own.
But I couldn't.
And I didn't want to.
"What did he say your magic felt like? I know your power pretty well."
"He says it's an energy boost. He calls me Zap, like the energy drinks at Kat's cafés."
He knew Kat was Callum's mate. We'd been together when my best friend made his bargain with the werewolf, so Niall had heard nearly as much about her as I had.
He'd just thought Callum was stalking her, before he knew about fated mates. Which he was. There was just more to it than that.
Niall and Callum had been pretty good friends when we were together, so it wouldn't surprise me if he'd kept track of Callum's mating announcement in the news, either.
"Nicknaming you after your power is a dick move. As if that's all you are," Niall said, his voice gritty with the anger he was trying to hide from me. His possessiveness clearly hadn't gone anywhere, despite our years apart.
"Did it ever feel like that to you? An energy boost?"
"No. It did change a lot, though. The sensations depended on what we were doing, how much we were touching, and whether or not you were actively pushing the magic at me. Which you usually weren't. It felt like a brush of your hand against my skin, then."
"It was different sometimes?"
He nodded. "Your magic is alive, Liv. I'd be more surprised if your power didn't feel different to different people."
"I guess that's fair. He could still be my fated mate, though. I've never had anyone tell me that before. Callum had never heard it either."
"You could make a bargain with him to find out."
"No. If he wants to be with Gwen, I don't want my soul officially connected to his." I let out a long breath and lifted my forehead from Niall's. His face was wet with my tears, and I tried to wipe them off with my fingers. It mostly failed. "Sorry. You're kind of a mess now too."
"I don't mind." He brushed my hair out of my eyes. "Feel better?"
"I'm not in the middle of a panic attack anymore, so that's nice. But I'll need to get back on the bike in a minute."
"Darius won't be able to ride with you. He was turning a TV show on with Lars, and he looked a little sick," Niall said, studying my face.
"I don't think the realization that your fated mate can reject you is easy for him. He's been trying so hard to find his since he was like fifteen." I paused, then added, "You should probably go."
"That's not how this works." He gestured between us, still talking about the thing we did when I panicked. "I get to tell you what I think about the situation."
"Don't push your luck."
He feigned offense. "I'm hurt that you think I would."
"I'd be much more surprised if you didn't."
"I think if you were really soulmates with Jonah, you would like him more," Niall said.
I blinked.
"And I don't think you like him. Even as a friend. You might've liked him before he was the Beta, and before he was around Gwen again, but you said you coached her on getting him back."
"That was a lapse in judgment."
"You don't make lapses in judgment. If you gave her advice, it's because you think they should be together."
"Possibly," I acquiesced.
I did make lapses of judgment, though.
I thought Niall would save my life at any cost, and he hadn't. I thought we were perfect together, and we weren't. Not in the end.
I thought he was mine, even if fate disagreed.
"Don't look at me like that," he said.
"Like what."
"Like you hate me."
"I don't hate you, Niall. I couldn't if I tried. I just hate the choice you made."
"It never felt like I was making a choice. You were both unconscious, but I had my fingers on your pulse, and I could feel your magic as much as I could feel the spell. I knew you had enough power to complete it. I knew you weren't going to die."
"That's not even possible. No one can feel someone else's magic to that degree, and I felt myself burning out."
He jerked his head in a nod. "Maybe I read it wrong, but your heartbeat didn't stop, or even slow down. If it had, I would've done what I had to do."
"It would've been too late. With my magic fully drained, I couldn't have recovered."
"I knew you weren't anywhere near fully drained. The magic wasn't flowing out that fast."
"We're never going to agree on this. Regardless of your perspective on what happened, I very nearly died, and you made a bet with my life to save Larson's."
Maybe it was messed up to expect a mate who could value my life above everything else. But fuck it, what was the point of love if it didn't make me someone's priority?
"It never felt like I was choosing him over you. It felt like you had the power to get through the spell, and you did. I don't know how you could think I would sacrifice you, when Larson was already dying. Why would I risk losing both of the only two people in this world that I love?"
Not loved.
Love.
Like he still felt that way about me.
He couldn't, though. Right?
"I don't want to talk about this anymore. I need to get on the bike," I said. "My magic is getting all pissy."
"I know. I feel it. Just… think about it."
Maybe I would.
For the moment, all I could think about was surviving my magic for the next few hours.
Grabbing the sides of my blanket burrito, I rolled off his chest. He grabbed my arm to stop me from falling off the bed, which had happened before.
More than once.
"Thanks for doing the thing," I said over my shoulder, on my way to the closet to change. "But it doesn't fix anything between us."
"I didn't do it to fix things between us. I just didn't want you to suffer."
I closed the closet door behind me and shut my eyes, letting out a quiet breath as I leaned against the wood.
There was something I could no longer lie to myself about.
Something I had to admit.
I would never be satisfied with Jonah. Not after being with a man who treated me the way Niall had.
When I made it back to the gym, I found Niall riding one of the spin bikes slowly, going through a warm-up program the machine offered.
I lifted an eyebrow at him.
He held out a hand expectantly, and I looked down at my own fingers.
I was holding my earbuds.
He was silently asking for one.
"I'm already halfway through a book, and it's pretty spicy," I warned.
"I'd be surprised if it wasn't, Livvy."
I bit my lip to hide a reluctant smile, and handed over the earbud. "I've been listening to these long, wordy fantasy books without any sex in them when I run with Jonah. I'll be relieved not to have to finish the last one. The characters I liked already died."
"Romance books don't let you down like that."
"Not the good ones."
I sat down on the bike next to his and started the story partway through one of the chapters.
"'You’re going to take my cock tonight, little human,' he murmured to me, moving his hands slowly over my bare thighs and ass as I settled against his erection," a female narrator's voice said.
Niall laughed, and I couldn't help but do the same.
We exchanged a look that had too many years and too many moments of shared fun behind it, before we both looked back at the screens connected to our bikes.
My grin lingered.
His did too.
It wasn't hard to remember why we had been so good together. Not even a little.