Page 65 of Shattered Omega

“You’re my alpha, and husband, and I’m yours,” I replied. “We have to protect each other.”

He winced, not meeting my eyes. “There’s nothing…” His voice shook. “Shatter, I’m already…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I’m not…”

I cupped his cheeks, making him look at me, and I found the thing at the centre of all he was with our souls entwined closer than they had ever been with my bite between us.

When I reached out to him in the bond, he turned to smoke. Wind blowing him away like he was never there.

I heard at last the words he couldn’t say. The truth that trapped him. And I realised it had nothing to do with trials or the experiments he’d endured for Dusk over and over. Those didn’t haunt him—they weren’t even pain. They were relief; salve on a burn.

From the burden he’d carried before any of it.

The core of what made him what he was and the reason, his aura was like it was—perhaps the reason he had been in the Cimmerian Vaults in the first place, when he’d broken enough to become too dangerous to be left free.

And I heard the words that were carved into his very soul, his truth that meant pain where there should be happiness. Guilt where there should be love.

I’m not supposed to be here.

A scar deeper than any left across his skin, borne of every day that passed, of every moment of happiness he couldn’t bear.

Of surviving.

Tears leaked from my eyes.

“I don’t know how to…” He took a breath. “I don’t know how to face what you want me to face. I don’t know how to be more for you.”

“I’m your mate,” I whispered. “I’ve always been your mate and I will not give up on you.”

He held me tight, fingers lacing through my hair as he arched my neck. Relief shocked my system as I felt the brush of his teeth on my skin.

Aside from Dusk, their bites weren’t needed for the bond, but I wanted them, anyway. All of them.

I shifted, dragging his teeth lower until they were on my breast, over the place Eric had left a mark.

A low whine escaped my chest as I felt his mark upon my flesh, and a claim that bound us together.

A claim that meant I would never leave him behind.

TWENTY-THREE

RANSOM

The whir of the drill made me anxious as Umbra secured my bookshelf to the wall.

Those screws meant this was real. Shatter was over at Roxy’s for movies, but she’d be back before long, since it was Sunday evening and we had to be up early for school tomorrow.

Umbra was surprisingly efficient with the power tools I’d borrowed from the workshop, and right now I was holding the bookshelf in place while he worked.

I peered at him and got an eye roll as he felt me prodding through the bond again. I wasn’t sure what had happened between Umbra and Shatter after we’d left yesterday. It had been a rather unnerving hurricane of hormones when we’d come into Umbra’s room. When she told us to leave, it was like she had us all by the throat and she owned the dark bond.

Rather impressive.

It wasn’t long until I’d felt them both through our connection, Umbra somehow sheepishly relieved.

“You, uh… alright?” I asked him as we both stepped back to take a look at it.

We hadn’t spoken much, despite working on the shelves. He’d seen me hauling in the bookshelf through the front door and wordlessly hummed to himself while he helped me bring it in.

Umbra side-eyed me and grunted.

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