Page 155 of Filthy Royal

He just wasn’t sure he cared anymore.

“Every night, I trained until I was too bruised and exhausted to jump into my shuttle and embarrass my ass by showing back up at the dome and stealing you away.”

“Damien…” A single tear tracked through the soot on her cheek. “All I thought about was you. All I wanted was you.”

He turned away, struggling for control. How many more ways could she betray him?

“Damien, please.”

He shrugged off her plea. “Any time another omega even came near me, I scared them off. Their scent, their smile, their voice, was all wrong. The thought of touching anyone but you, tasting anyone but you, was enough to make me physically ill.”

“I never wanted that for you.” He could sense her behind him now, close enough to touch. “I… I wanted you to be happy.”

He dug his claws into the wall to keep from turning to her. “Happy? The only thing that kept me from coming back and fighting for you, from demanding to know what Stormhart could give you that I couldn’t, was the part you and I played in Crex’s death. So instead, I drowned in guilt. Guilt for trusting you when I shouldn’t have. Guilt for being the reason my friend was dead. Most of all, guilt for still wanting you anyway.”

He struck the rock wall. Then he did it again. And again.

“Stop!” Soft hands wrapped around his bicep and tugged.

Because he’d never risk hurting Scarlett, even in his current enraged state, he dropped his arm and let her turn him around.

“I’m sorry.” A sob was wrenched from her as she gazed up at him. “I wanted to tell you.”

“Then why didn’t you?” He fisted his torn knuckles by his sides, the sting of the damaged skin nothing compared to the agony inside.

“I was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me?” His fury flared once more, four planetary rotations’ worth of buried torment scratching and clawing its way to the top. “By letting me think a good friend was dead when he was really a liar and a traitor?”

“I had no choice.”

Damien barely heard her, his own pain making him desperate to wound just as he’d been. “There’s always a fucking choice, Omega. And you made yours when you decided to work alongside my half brother and Crex, two males clearly out to destroy me and my family.”

“I had a plan.”

“A plan? To join yourself to some other Alpha and let him fuck you when you’d called yourself mine? If that’s your idea of a plan, I guess I should count myself lucky things ended for us as they did.”

She reared back as if struck. “Don’t say that.”

“Then what do you want me to say, Scarlett? Thank you for the lies? The guilt? The four planetary rotations of sheer hells while jealousy ate me alive?”

He loomed closer. “Did you get off on twisting me into knots?”

“No. Please. It’s not like that. It never was.” She raised her hands as if to touch him, but then thought better of it. “It’s such a tangled mess. I-I did the best I could.”

“And that didn’t include picking up a comms? Asking me for help?” He scoffed. “I call bullshit.”

“I couldn’t. Every movement I made was monitored. Same with Luc and Stormhart. You saw the spyware. It’s almost impossible to evade.”

Damien’s lips firmed.Shit.He hated to admit it, but the level of surveillance was unlike any he’d ever seen. Only Maxheim’s tech was better, and their family was the only one who had it.

“I couldn’t reach out to you even if I wanted. But it was more than that. They used Luc as leverage…” her voice shook, and he hated that too. “Made horrific threats against you and others I care about. I thought keeping everyone alive was the best plan.”

He stayed silent.

Scarlett’s shoulders sagged. “But it turns out just being alive isn’t enough. That the ache to be near the one you want strips all the joy and color from life and brings its own form of death.”

His own eyes blurred. He blinked fast.

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