Page 26 of Knot Your Possession

He shook his head, sadness etched in every line of his face. “No. I was angry at first too. But I knew you would never do that. I knew there had to be another reason.”

I felt suddenly ashamed. In my panic and confusion, with our bond tearing out of my chest, the idea had taken hold and seemed to grow. A poisonous vine within me. It had choked me for a decade.

“We were kids, Ry,” she pleaded with me. “We couldn’t fight the Palace and the whole of society on our own. There was nowhere for us to go. My uncle told me how he had been working to smuggle out omegas before the Palace found them. So I knew what this place was. I knew it wasn’t a princess school.”

“Yet you still went. We agreed to run. Then you changed your mind,” I insisted, struggling to let go of the arguments that had swirled in my head for so long.

“No, you and Riv decided to run. You tried to decide for me, but it wasn’t your decision to make. I wasn’t your possession to bundle up and carry away. I had to make my own choice.”

“You made the decision to leave without us. You took away our choice to protect you.” I was shouting now, and she flinched, but my pain was ugly and I couldn’t reel it back in now that ash was spilling everywhere. I could feel River’s frustration with me in our bond. He wanted to step in and put a stop to this. But he also knew I needed to purge my emotions, or they became pressurized and eventually exploded. And I’d been holding onto these for a decade.

“No, Ry. I made the hardest decision of my life, and it was mine to make. There was no note, because I didn’t have the words for one. I couldn’t say goodbye to you. Not ever. I only went because my uncle convinced me it was the only way to keep you both alive.”

“Keep us alive?” Now it was my turn to be shocked. “We knew your uncle sheltered and hid omegas escaping the Palace. We overheard our dad and your uncle talking about it. He could have at least gotten you away someplace safe, even if you didn’t want to be with us, but you came to this place, anyway.”

My bitterness bled into my voice. I just didn’t get why she’d come here. It was the question that had turned everything black inside me. It didn’t make sense when there was an option to run. Even if it hadn’t been with us. It was the splinter that had festered in my heart every time I tried to move past that night.

“No, he couldn’t,” she insisted. Her brow furrowed, and she looked completely confused. “The Palace knew about me already. Somebody from the dance contacted them. The Palace called while you were gone. My uncle told them I’d already left for my mother’s in the city, because he couldn’t risk having them turn up at the farm and discovering his operation. He said anytime an omega presented in an unexpected family, or in an unusual way, it alerted the attention of the Palace. They would immediately investigate everyone connected to the omega. I had to go straight away or risk everybody, and my uncle had to temporarily shut everything down. It wasn’t just you, me, and Riv. Every omega he would save in the future was at risk. Didn’t he explain this to you when he got back?”

I went still and shot a look at my twin. She really hadn’t known. I hadn’t realized fully what that meant until this moment. A frozen wave of understanding crashed over me.

“He couldn’t,” River said. He sounded hesitant, not wanting to cause her more pain.

Ava looked between us at my sudden silence. I clenched my fists as I realized the depth of what they had done to her, to us all. The layers of lies and manipulation she had endured.What had she thought all these years, at the silence of her family? Of us?

“Tell me,” she demanded, that inner strength of hers shining through.

“Ava, your uncle never made it back,” I answered her. I’d started this. I couldn’t leave it to River and shy away from the hard bits now. “He and your mother died in a car accident late that night while driving back to the farm from the city. We only ever got a rushed message from him, saying you had gone to the Palace, but not telling us why or how. How did you not know that?”

Her lip trembled as she tried to hold it together, and the sight damn near killed me. “They died that night?”

I nodded. River shifted to sit behind her and wrapped his arms around her, unable to hold back any longer. She leaned into him and my decade of pent-up anger crumbled to nothing, not even leaving ash behind. It had only ever been a mirage. This was my Ava.What the hell was I doing yelling at her right now?

I suddenly felt sick. All I’d really wanted to do since the moment she’d left was hold her in my arms again. Now I had the chance, and I was blowing it because I was holding onto my fear and confusion more than I was holding onto her. “Ava, I’m so sorry.”

The words felt cheap and empty the moment they left my lips. They weren’t enough. Not for what I had just done.

Her eyes seemed suddenly far away, and I wasn’t sure she even heard me. “Nobody told me. My uncle said he’d get me out. I just had to hide in plain sight, be patient, and play their game. That you would come for me at my debut if you couldn’t get me out before then. I waited for years for any kind of message, but all I got was silence. Then the Crash came, and you still didn’t come.”

My heart clenched, as if it might actually stop beating altogether. She’d been alone in hell all these years, waiting for us to rescue her, and I couldn’t even have faith in who I knew she was as a person.

“Is that why you insisted we wait for days, hiding in the library, even though you told Maia we’d follow her?” Cary asked when I couldn’t seem to find any words. I’d flung so many at her moments ago. But the words I needed to fix the mess I’d made wouldn’t seem to come. I felt frozen.

Ava just nodded, still with that faraway look in her eyes.

“So that’s why you looked so mad at us when you introduced us as your mates to Lexie last night?” River asked, as he tightened his arms around her. “You thought we’d abandoned you?”

She nodded again, almost absentmindedly. I suddenly worried we’d pushed her too far tonight. Or I’d pushed her too far. Omegas were emotional creatures by nature, and we’d exposed her to too much, too quickly.

“Ava?” She looked at me slowly and a boulder settled in my lungs. She looked so beautiful, yet delicate. Her skin looked like porcelain in the moonlight, but her eyes showed how shattered she felt. I’d never meant to hurt her. I should have had more faith in her. As River had.I’m an asshole.

“Why didn’t you come?” She asked, so softly I had to strain to hear her, even though the only competition was the crickets sending their mating calls into the night. The guys around us were quiet, but I could feel the weight of their angry stares.

“We were coming, we just weren’t nearby or prepared when the Crash happened. Our years of planning went to shit. It’s a war zone out there. We got here as fast as we could.” It wasn’t good enough, but it was the truth.

“Why didn’t you get me a message before that?”

I sighed. “When your mom and uncle died, our parents knew it wasn’t an accident. One of your uncle’s colleagues got them a message before dawn warning we could be targets too. They shipped us off to military school first thing in the morning, trying to show we were part of the establishment and were willing to play by the rules. We couldn’t get a message to you without putting you at risk. There were too many eyes on us all. We figured you’d know that when you heard about your family. We never imagined they wouldn’t tell you.”

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