Page 49 of Racing the Storm

“I never had another heat.”

I sat back on my heels, and stunned was too small a word to describe what I was feeling. “Never?”

He shook his head again. “No. It was…” He breathed out a soft laugh and shrugged. “It was one of the reasons I threw myself into my research. I wanted to know what the hell was wrong with me. Why I was broken.”

I winced at the idea that he considered himself not whole. “I’m sorry.”

Danyal gazed at me a moment, then shrugged. “I never did find out why. My first heat was massively delayed. I had already started to suspect I’d never have one until the night I met you. I was able to study a handful of Omegas who went through the same thing, but there was never any one factor. Some of them were mated and never had a heat again. Some had more than one partner. Some just the one, like me. In the end, I realized I was just different.”

Pushing up to my knees, I gave into my urge to touch him. I moved slowly, but when he didn’t pull away—when he didn’t wince at the contact—I let my hand cup his cheek. “You do know you’re not broken, right?”

He scoffed a little, but the sound wasn’t cruel. “I’ve moved on from that. At first, I thought maybe you sensed something in me was…wrong, and that’s why you left. After the first year passed and not another heat, I thought maybe your Alpha instincts just knew.”

“No, I swear…”

He turned his head and nipped at my hand, silencing me. “I know that now. I was young and hurt and trying to find any reason why you hadn’t come back for me.” He licked his lips, and I choked on more words of apology. “Eventually I realized that whatever it was, it was on you. You were focused on the war, or maybe you had just wanted a single night. Maybe I wasn’t your type. Maybe you were already married.”

I closed my eyes and said nothing, just feeling the heat of his cheek beneath my palm.

“None of those reasons were my fault though. Just like my body being the way it is.”

I gathered my courage, then opened my eyes to look at him. “Why didn’t you ever find someone else?”

At that, he did pull away, and in spite of the pain, I let my hand drop into my lap. “Part of it was knowing that not everyone would understand that I wasn’t broken—just different. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to take rejection after rejection. Eventually, I would start to believe there was something wrong with me.”

“Danyal…”

“The other reason was because I still wanted you. I hated myself for it,” he said, his voice hard as he met my gaze fully, “but it was what it was.” He bit down on his lip, then shrugged one shoulder. “It got easier when you showed up at the base and pretended like you didn’t know me. It gave me closure.”

I had nothing to say in my defense. I wanted to tell him that of course it had nothing to do with him, but he didn’t know that at the time. My actions had given him the closure I didn’t want him to have, and it was entirely my doing.

There really was no going back.

I pushed to my feet and stared at him one last time, resolved to let him go. I might pine for the rest of my life, and I’d meant what I said about making it up to him, but I wasn’t going to force myself on him. He had wanted to move on, and that was the least I could do.

Saying nothing, I turned and walked back into the cave, and I pretended like it wasn’t gutting me when the sound of his footsteps didn’t follow mine.

Chapter

Seventeen

DANYAL

Iwasn’t trying to punish him. Part of me wanted to, but as I sat there and watched the sunset beyond the trees, I allowed myself to acknowledge that Mikael was hurting, and I hated it. It wasn’t just Omega instinct that wanted to go after him and make it right—but I couldn’t deny my biology was playing some part. I had spent most of my life free of the restraints a lot of Omegas had to learn to live with, but being around Mikael like this was testing them now.

It hadn’t been like this for me in years.

I felt strangely young again—a pup just coming out of puberty, the tendrils of a last heat nipping at my heels. Never mind it had been decades. Never mind I had lived an entire lifetime without Mikael or a heat.

It was pride alone that kept me from going after him, but the wolf in me whined when he appeared hours later with the last of the fresh meat. There was a warmth in my stomach I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt, and it tied my tongue in knots.

Stay, I wanted to tell him, but I met him with silence.

Eventually, he turned on his heel and left, and I picked at the food—only to make him happy. What I wanted more than anything was to be home. I wanted a safe space to explore what all of this meant, instead of trapped with him after the agonizing time I’d spent under Kasher’s watch.

It was killing me, not knowing how safe we were. It was driving me up the wall not knowing whether those other Wolves had managed to accomplish everything they’d wanted to accomplish.

And to top it off, Mari and Kor’s child was still out there, and I wasn’t even sure she and Arturo had managed to get away without being caught.

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