Page 49 of Conflicted

The answer to that last one was obvious. My behaviour at this point was honestly ridiculous. I seemed to have regressed a few millennia back, to the time when I’d been a hormonal teenager. Even then, I didn’t remember feeling like this. It was like Nox had taken over my mind, pulling the strings even when he was hundreds of miles away.

It was funny—I had thought I’d been crazy where Dimitri was concerned, but my obsession with Nox was quickly showing just how laughable that was.

The wards told me that Nox had left the house once while I’d been away. It had been gone ten o’clock at night, which had sent my brain into overdrive. Was he out causing havoc? Or had he gone back to the club to hook up?

I kept checking my phone during the negotiations, hoping to see a message from one of the others. Somethingabout Nox starting a fire, or maybe diverting all of the traffic on the M25 in the wrong direction.

It stayed resolutely silent…which meant Nox wasn’t out causing mayhem.

So it was likely the alternative.

Thinking that he might at that very moment be sleeping with someone else made it difficult to breathe. The pull in my chest was almost painful. Every single part of me wanted to fly back and track him down. To haul him away from whatever bloke he’d picked for the night and ask him what they had that I didn’t.

I couldn’t though. I had a job to do here.

Besides, I had no right to ask those questions of him. I had no claim on Nox. What was more, he didn’t want me to have a claim on him. He didn’t want me.

Still, I spent the eight hours and seventeen minutes that he was outside of his house in complete turmoil. It was long past club closing time when he finally crossed the wards again, meaning he’d spent the in between hours somewhere else. With someone else.

When there’d been a pause in the meeting, I’d told Ezekiel I needed five minutes. None of them had wanted to take a break, but I’d insisted.

I knew I couldn’t get through the rest of what was required of me without it.

I flew as hard as I could for two of those five minutes, landing deep in the forest.

With no one to hear me, I roared my frustrations at the dawning sun. I screamed out the injustice of it all. That I’d fallen in love with a man destined for someone else. That the one fated to me didn’t want me. That we were so incompatible that we had no hope of a future. That even if we could move past everything else, Heaven would neverallow it. That I’d never be enough for anyone, except in my role as leader.

I took one whole minute for myself. I used every second to vent it all, to allow myself to feel the pain of it.

But once my time was up, I shut it all down. I closed the door on it and donned my mental armour.

Two minutes later, I walked back into the room to continue sorting through the mess.

If Ezekiel thought my brief disappearance odd, he didn’t draw attention to it. He did, however, watch me more closely than before. His usual frown was tinged with confusion. I wasn’t surprised; even with Dimitri, I’d been able to hold my shit together.

That wasn’t happening now. Nox had worked his way under my skin, and I didn’t know how to free myself of him.

The entire flight back to London, I struggled with what to do. Should I track him down? Demand to know who he’d been with? What they’d done? Or did I want to ignore all of that and just beg him to fuck me again? To make me forget everything except for him and how he was making me feel. To pretend that he wanted me, even if it was a lie.

It was the most dangerous lie I’d ever wished for. A falsehood I’d had a taste of and now didn’t want to give up.

The one thing I was certain of was that I wanted to see him. No, I needed it. I didn’t know when it had happened, but I’d become addicted to Nox, to the way he made me feel. Three days without my fix had me craving him in an unhealthy way. Even if we just screamed about how much we hated each other, that would be enough.

At first, I’d told myself it was just because of fate that I felt like this. That, if I ignored it, it’d be easier to overcome.

But over the past few days, I’d realised it was so muchmore than that. It was about what Nox had wanted from me in the brief encounters we’d shared.

Nothing. He’d wanted nothing. He didn’t need me to make any decisions. To plan any missions. To give my opinion on supe disputes or oversee training.

It was…freeing.

Okay, so he also didn’t want me, but hopefully he could tolerate me for a little while longer. I wasn’t ready to give this feeling up. Not yet.

I held my breath as we approached his house. I wouldn’t be able to stop now, not without having to explain why to Ezekiel, but I couldn’t resist trying to get a glimpse of him. A brief taste that would have to satisfy me until I could sneak away from the others.

But he wasn’t there. The roof was empty bar the table he’d fucked me on.

I swallowed down my disappointment.It’s okay. Just get back to the compound and then you can go and track him down.

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