Chapter 34 #2
I didn’t get into the bed with him like I used to. The dirty feeling wouldn’t leave me, paired with everything that had happened since we came to Desert Moon. Instead, I sat in one of the sleek chairs and took his hand. The tears leaked out before I could stop them, hot and silent.
“Hey,” Gabe murmured, his grip tightening on mine despite his weakness. “What’s wrong? Talk to me, Ady.”
I shook my head, the tears finally spilling freely down my cheeks. “I’m just glad you’re awake. Gabe… the courtyard. I’m so sorry. I stood there and I didn’t say anything. I let Ethan build those scars on your back and I—”
“Don’t you dare,” Gabe interrupted, his voice rough, cutting off my words before they could spiral.
He let out a harsh, self-deprecating laugh that turned into a grimace as his bandaged back tensed against the chair.
“Don’t you dare apologize to me for that, Adea.
I earned every single stripe of those lashings. ”
I blinked through the blur of my vision, watching his knuckles turn white where he held my hand.
“I never should have left your side when we got to this territory,” Gabe rasped, his gaze dropping to the floor, dark with an agonizing level of self-directed fury.
“My dick has only ever gotten me into trouble. I let my own vices get in the way of being a good friend, and I let it completely fuck things up with my mate. I’m the one responsible for my actions, Ady.
I isolated myself, I left you alone at the Mating Festival, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it. ”
My vision blurred at his truth. It hurt, but this was why I loved him.
He was always honest with me. I’d always feel guilty for what had happened, but my heart hurt a little less.
He leaned forward, his nostrils flaring as he caught the overwhelming, territorial scent of Ethan’s beast clinging to my skin.
His eyes widened with shock as his gaze locked onto the high collar of my turtleneck.
“Ady…” he whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying new panic. “Please tell me it was consensual.”
My heartbeat quickened. Shame welled inside me, and he picked up on the panic.
“Tell me.”
I hadn’t wanted to tell him, but it came out like word vomit. “Shane got in. He used wolfsbane.”
He flinched back. “That doesn’t make sense. He took a hundred lashings. He shouldn’t have been able to… are you mated to Shane? Where’s Ethan?” A vicious snarl tore from his throat.
“Gabe, please!” I begged, squeezing his hand, forcing him to look at me. “Shane didn’t mark me. Ethan is dealing with it. The focus has to be on the territory. There’s been a disturbance and he left, but I have a feeling it has to do with Shane.”
“Fuck,” he hissed, his anger morphing into deep desperation. “What can I even do?”
“This is what I need right now,” I whispered. “Just hold my hand. There’s no need for anything to be done.”
After a moment, his jaw tight, he spoke again. “How did he get past the Enforcers?”
“He had someone before me—her name’s Sabine. He thinks she had something to do with the breach,” I choked out the truth.
Gabe flinched. “Goddess, I’m sorry. I’m dealing with the fallout of something similar down here. Lilith… she’s nothing. You have to know you’re all that matters to him,” Gabe urged.
My gaze flickered to his bare neck. “You guys haven’t marked each other?”
My best friend immediately stiffened, his eyes darting away to the window.
“Gabe, it’s your turn,” I pushed softly. “Talk to me. How’s it going with Olivia?”
He let out a bitter laugh. “My… past caught up to me. My inability to keep my hands to myself… hurt her. It deeply hurt my mate, and now I’m paying the price.
I have to make up for it, and I will, but she’s…
she’s distant. There’s someone else. It’s hypocritical, but Goddess, I can’t hate her for it. ”
My heart ached for my best friend. I knew the rumors about Odis and Olivia—knew that the Beta was actively stepping into the emotional space Gabe had left vacant—but looking at his broken frame, the dam inside my own chest completely cracked.
I couldn’t carry the burden alone anymore.
I needed a confidant who wasn’t drowning in the same suffocating guilt that consumed my mate.
“He took it, Gabe,” I whispered, the admission scraping up my throat like shards of glass. “Shane… he took everything while I was drugged. The shame is burning me alive.”
Gabe’s eyes went entirely wild, a lethal, low snarl fracturing his chest. Before I could flinch away, his fingers caught the thick collar of my turtleneck and ruthlessly wrenched it downward.
The air left his lungs in a sharp hiss.
In the stark morning light, my secrets bled out.
The material parted to expose the horrific canvas—the un-licked, swollen punctures on my collarbone and the deep, violet thumbprints scoring my shoulders.
Higher up, a collar of deep purple-black bruising told the story of exactly where Ethan’s beast had repeatedly sunk his teeth in to tear away the intruder’s stain.
Gabe stared, his face draining of color as the brutal math clicked. He didn’t just see the wounds; he saw the lost control, the total anguish that had driven Ethan to shred my flesh and stitch me back together with his own teeth just to claim the wreckage.
“Goddess, Adea,” Gabe rasped, his fingers hovering, trembling too hard to touch my skin. “He didn’t just mark you. He went feral.”
“There was no other choice,” I whispered, forcing the thick fabric back up to shield the gold light. “He had to wash him off of me. And Sabine… Gabe, she’s the one who let him in.”
Gabe’s shoulders hunched, a heavy silence consuming the room until there was nothing left but the sound of our breathing. “We’re in deep, Ady,” he whispered into the quiet. “And I don’t see a way out of the abyss.”
“There’s nothing we can do right now,” I said, trying to anchor us both. “You’ll win Olivia over, and things will get better for me.”
“Adea, we need to—” Gabe started, swinging his legs out of bed.
Before his feet could hit the floor, a deafening wail shattered the quiet—The Citadel’s emergency proximity sirens.
A split second later, a deep boom detonated in the distance, followed by a second reverberation that rocked the very foundations of the tower.
The floor violently pitched, the shockwave rolling through the concrete structure and throwing me from my chair onto the rug as a row of decorative glass shelving shattered against the far wall.
The walls groaned under the sudden, violent sway, the blast wave echoing from the lower sectors.
The lights died instantly, leaving the room plunged into the bloody glow of red emergency strips along the baseboards.
Through the heavy static of the wall intercom, a frantic voice cut through the blaring alarms, raw with panic:
“All units! Any and all available Enforcers, report immediately to the eastern sector! Breach confirmed at the elementary school! I repeat, the target is the elementary school! Save anyone you can—get the children out!”
My heart stopped, the cold reality settling deep into my bones. The northern border disturbance had been a ruse all along. The King was miles away at a ghost line, and the monsters were already inside the gates.