Page 78 of Shattered Omega: Part Two

Hating her for what she couldn’t control.

Hating me.

I should have never, for one moment, doubted her. I should have shown her everything sooner.

Her eyes were distant, not feral now, but reserved, as if she didn’t know what was happening as I drew the cloth along her skin. I was caring for her, and I knew she didn’t trust it.

She believed that these marks meant I couldn’t still love her.

I washed her hair, fingers running through her thick locks with conditioner before I rinsed it out, then sat her on the vanity, towelling off her hair and drying her skin in patches so as not to touch her wounds.

I hadn’t been able to get the black ink off, but her beautiful, tawny skin was mostly free of it.

Then, before I did anything else, I drew my jaw along her temple, leaving my mark.

Her scent shifted, panic turning to something… desperate. Like the faintest trace of hope trying to break through—as if a part of her was daring herself to believe what I was doing.

“I didn’t know,” I told her. “The papers you found about your history… I only just got them. I swear it.”

Her lip trembled as I said that, and she looked away.

She blamed herself for not believing.

How could she have?

I hadn’t given her that space or allowance.

“I’ve had so much worse stolen from me, Shatter,” I murmured, drawing a towel over her long hair again. “All of it, I dragged from the edge of hell itself. Carrying you back—I could do that with my eyes closed.”

She was still and her eyes fixed, body trembling as I drew new undergarments on. Umbra had made a trip to the store to stock up on food and essentials since we hadn’t had any clothes for her here.

The bralette was soft against her skin, and wouldn’t tug against the bites. The sharpie had mostly washed off, but I pulled the medical kit from the cupboard and got to work cleaning the bites. They were deep, deep enough to scar, but they weren’t bleeding anymore.

There were some truly deep ones across her breast and shoulder. They would need dressing, but I would do that after. Every bite, or red mark where their nails had dug in to keep her still, every bruise, they all carried her terror. All surfaced a thousand imaginings of how frightened she must have been, reflecting the moment in which she realised what her mates truly were.

As much as it frightened me, there had always been something beautiful about how much light she could see in darkness—her faith in even them.

And now they might have stolen that from her forever.

So, I committed each mark to memory. They were for me, not her. I would deliver this back to them ten-fold.

The pain and the humiliation.

The agony.

And the earth shattering moment in which they realised they had lost.

I loved her more than I had even known when I’d dared say it to her today.

She didn’t believe me, not yet, still fading in and out of reality. Still trying to run. I understood that more than most.

But running wouldn’t help her heal.

I left her only for a moment, to change into a dry pair of sweatpants before I took her in my arms and set her down on the edge of the bed.

Then I got the fireplace going, so there was a flickering, warm flame dancing in the hearth.

She was exactly where I’d left her when I returned, damp hair dripping down her golden skin and over her bites.

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