Page 103 of Alpha's Impostor Bride

“No. I mean, not exactly.” I run my fingers through my hair in an agitated movement. “Look, I didn’t mean to hurt you, but you’re trying to move too quickly. I’m still adjusting to all this.”

“I’m not doing anything.” He folds his arms over his chest. “I just want to sleep with my mate. You’re the one who’s insistent on overthinking everything. You and I had very different experiences eight years ago, Leanna. I’ve tolerated you treating me like the enemy, but you’re not the only one who suffered. You were angry and hurt, and you ran. I lost my mate and thought she was dead.”

His words are harsh, but his eyes tell a different story.

Confusion. Pain.

I swallow. “You’re right.” Letting out a gust of air, I force myself to relax and think things through. “You’re right. But this is a lot to process, Cedric. This morning, the palace, then Harriet shows up, then you and I, and now this…”

He studies me, and I sort out my thoughts before continuing.

“It’s overwhelming. All of it is. Seeing you again, having to accept what really happened, letting go of my own anger. Everything is crashing around me. Your presence here is disrupting my life, and that scares me. But I don’t want you to go, either. I don’t know if I’m making sense—”

“You don’t have to make sense,” he says quietly. “I understand. We want two very different things. You want this life, and I just want my mate.”

Everything within me goes still.

He just wants me?

“It’s not—” My fingers dig into my sleeve as shame washes over me. “There are things you don’t understand, that I can’t explain to you, Cedric, because you haven’t stood in my shoes. You’ve been free your whole life, while I was little more than a slave. I always belonged to somebody. I never had autonomy over my own body, never was able to make my own decisions. My life, my worth, even my very existence were decided by Vivian and then by you. The two of you always held my fate in your hands.”

I’ve never been someone who sheds tears openly. But lately, it seems I can’t stop crying.

“This small house that you look at so disdainfully? It belongs to me. Everything in here, I picked out myself. I learned what I like, what I don’t like. Did you know that I didn’t even have my own favorite color? For the first time, I’m free and allowed to decide things for myself. Nobody controls me. I don’t have to clutch somebody’s legs simply to survive. I don’t have to debase myself in front of anyone just so they grant me a few more days to live. I don’t have to listen to anybody insult or humiliate me and not react because my very survival depends on them.”

I’m shaking, but not out of anger toward him.

“How can I expect you to understand what this life means to me? You’ve known freedom your whole life, Cedric. I haven’t. In the castle, in the North, the only way to survive was to subordinate myself to you, to please you. I didn’t even know who I was, the kind of person I was, till I came here. And now, you want me to give it all up, to go back to a life of servitude again—”

“That’s not what—” He looks horrified, but my emotions are running high: guilt, shame, this terrible ache in my chest, and a crippling fear.

“That’s exactly what it is!” I cry out, louder than I wanted. I feel my air passages constrict. Why can’t he understand? Why can’t he—

“Mom?”

Chapter 20

Cedric Raine

Harriet once told me that one needs not to hear but to listen.

I never understood the difference. Hearing is the same thing as listening, isn’t it?

But as my mate looks at me, her voice ragged, her eyes devastated and filled with tears, I finally understand.

I’ve been hearing her ever since I found her again, but not once have I tried to listen to what she has been saying. My stomach churns.

A slave.

That’s how she viewed herself? Even when she was with me? Did I make her feel that way?

For the second time in my life, I feel helpless. I don’t know what to say to her. My mate—This is my fault. Of course it’s my fault.

I’m almost glad when our son interrupts us. Leanna is shocked, and she turns around quickly. “Finn. I—Did we wake you?”

The boy steps down from the stairs, looking upset. “Why’re you crying?”

My mate instantly wipes away her tears. “I’m not. Why aren’t you in bed?”

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