Page 149 of The Delta's Rogue
When the back door closes, Sebastian spins towards me again. Dominic and Riven linger, as does my dad, but they leave us alone, standing off to the far end of the massive, raised deck behind Peter’s house.
As Sebastian draws nearer, my body relaxes, soothed by his authoritative presence. Part of it is that submissive response that Amara took great care to train into me, but I don’t care. I need him to take charge right now.
Because I can’t.
I step closer to him, releasing the railing, only now realizing the edge was digging into my lower back with how hard I leaned against it.
Sebastian shoves his hands in his pockets, and I peer up at him, tilting my chin as high as I can. He towers over me, but I’ve always felt safest within the shadow of his height.
“I hate to do this so soon after…everything.”
He lowers his voice again. When he speaks to me like that—in that low, intimate tone—I can almost imagine it’s just the two of us. I can almost pretend there isn’t a doubt in my mind about where we stand.
“It will help my ruse if you’re with me when I meet with her.”
My eyes widen, and a broken whimper escapes me.
Sebastian steps closer, until our bodies are separated by an inhale, and he grips my upper arms. “I won’t make you do it if you can’t. I will never force you to doanything.”
He subtly rubs my arms as he waits for my response. I don’t know if it’s for my sake or his, or both. It could be the bond or his lycan influencing his actions. But I soak it in. I’ll take whatever he gives me for as long as he is mine because I don’t know how long I have left with him. If he never forgives me, I will understand. If he wants to reject me, I will understand. If this meeting is the last time I get to be his, if this is the beginning of the end…
I stare into his unreadable gray eyes. Even though I long to fall to the ground, curl into a ball, and hide myself away from everything and everyone, I nod. “I can do it.”
It’s strange being backin Sebastian’s office at The Black Door.
I stand in front of his desk as still as a statue. I haven’t moved further into the room since I first entered it, and I can’t say how long ago that was. Time no longer has meaning for me.
The office is exactly the same as it was four years ago: the same furniture, the same computer, the same minimalist decor. The only thing different in it is me.
I’m not the same girl I was back then. That girl? I don’t even know if shewasme.
The images I see of her in this office play in my mind like projections on a screen. They’re grainy and pixelated, and spliced together haphazardly like a homemade movie a group of students made for a school project. The feisty, free-spirited female in the low-quality home film that teases and flirts with Sebastian looks like me and sounds like me. But is she me? Am I her?
Riven leans against the wall behind me, and Dominic waits outside the partially open door in the hallway, but neither says anything to me. Riven was silent the entire journey from Peter’s house to the club. Everyone was silent, too afraid to say something that might jinx us. Or perhaps they were afraid anything they might say would spook me.
I don’t blame them. Everything spooks me. Even I don’t know what may set me off or send me into a spiral of terror.
Riven shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and I flinch, hands flying to my chest as my heart skips a beat. My eyes clench shut, and I focus on breathing and on the facts.
We’re in Sebastian’s office.
Riven is here to protect me, to help me.
Sebastian is downstairs, getting everything ready.
I’m safe.
I’m free.
“Sorry,” Riven says, his voice tight and quiet.
I glance at him over my shoulder.
Like all the others, he’s exhausted—dark circles above his cheekbones, red veins in the whites of his eyes, disheveled hair, wrinkled clothing. He’s the worst of the lot, though. The only two worse than him are my dad and Sebastian, which is understandable.
But Riven—my future beta, my best friend, and the one who was with me the night they took me—blames himself for what happened to me. There’s more to his apology than what’s on the surface. His apology isn’t for scaring me right now. It’s for all of it. For every moment of torture I endured. For him failing in his duties as my beta, my second-in-command.
“You don’t need to apologize.” The smile I give Riven is halfhearted. Weak. Unsteady. But my words are sincere. “It’s not your fault.”
