Page 203 of Fallen Omega

I wonder if Dante’s control needs are a different sort of prison.

But I can see it all where he’s too close. Blind.

I won’t say scared, but there’s a fear there. It’s in me, too. And it’s so unlike anything I’ve felt—me, a man who can walk into any situation without a drop of dread or fear. I see things clearly.

Emotionless, yes.

But our Lizette is something neither of us have encountered.

And the fear of losing her is strong.

So yeah, I have to keep talking, get the point across.

“She scared the fucking life from me, Dante.”

“Sebastian?” He looks at me, then picks up another roundand puts that in his pocket. “I get it, you lost your mind over her and I’m going to?—”

“You know, when we were young and we ran?” I interrupt. “We were out there wild, fighting our way, and we made it here. Nothing’s got to me. I get it that I’m wired differently, maybe wrong. But it serves. I can get things done. I don’t even fucking mind prison.

“But this fucking girl with the big dark eyes and long dark hair and voice that could crack and melt diamonds? She gets to me. And it makes it worse or better…something, anyway…that she not only sees me but she gets me. She likes me.”

He pushes papers aside. A sign of his disordered thoughts. Dante’s control reaches all the aspects of his life. This slight mess…it’s telling.

“You’re sharing this why? I’m not a touchy-feely guy. Knight’s out there, I’m sure he’ll give you a hug.”

He finds the glass and he’s about to pour another drink when I just reach over and take the bottle, drinking from it. I don’t even care it’s not my drop. It’s got alcohol. It works. “Fuck you, Dante.”

“She doesn’t affect me other than I want to fuck her into all levels of submission.”

“That’s a lie. You want her. You like her and you take it out on her and everyone else because you wish you didn’t. She’s either strength or weakness, you decide, not her. The weakness for her makes me strong.”

“I’m going to shoot the fuck out of people, how’s that for a decision?”

I take another swallow right before he comes around his desk to snatch the bottle back. And the pain from his healing wound’s etched deep in the grooves of his face. A different kind of pain’s in his eyes.

It’s like, I realize, a song.

Fuck, do all of us have one for her?

I know I didn’t have anything like a song in me before Imet her, but now? The emptiness has a fullness, like life. Those areas that allow me to kill without compunction, the quiet and steady things now have a beat to them.

They’re still there, but…

It’s like an elemental beat. Drums and wild, unfettered voices.

Like she awakened something, gave it a voice, that well inside me that’s always been dark now teems.

And the song in my veins is everything at once. It’s emotion. Drums and flares and wildness set free from earthly tethers. It just is. And in there is her. A center of a thing so calm it’s like my emptiness except it’s life.

His is a softer song that can hurt. It’s the violent urges and the need to control through degradation turned into something else, something delicate. For her.

The rest of it is between them, but I see that.

And Knight’s is her surface song, her quiet moments where she sings alone without an audience. He’s comfort and a thing I can’t give. I’m not capable. I’m not that.

The comfort of a beta upbringing.

Her father was a weak alpha, but he took her and raised her, teaching her what she was, but that she could also be so much more, and her decisions were never preordained. Because isn’t that the beta way? Able to choose who and what they want from the whole world of betas?

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