Page 114 of Shattered Omega: Part Two

“I know I was running from it before… but then…” She trailed off, as if she wasn’t sure how to explain it.

That was okay.

I could see her.

Everything she’d placed on a pedestal had turned to dust. The script had flipped—and this,thisbond was the only part she could control when the cramped world of dreams that she had left had been torn from under her.

That was going to have to change. I wanted her to build her world of dreams and choices that was bigger than she could ever even imagine.

“I’m… Iamokay with the dark bond,” she whispered.

A purr rumbled to life in my chest as I drew her closer. “That’s trust I don’t know what to do with.”

She leaned back, finally brightening a little.Trulybrightening and not just in a frenzy. She drew me close, pressing her lips to mine.

I slid my dripping fingers through her hair, ignoring how they tangled in her locks, and drew her against me further, lifting her and kissing her.

She took one of my wrists, her other hand still holding me in a kiss and ever so slowly, drew it beneath her shirt, lifting it higher as if she perhaps wanted me to know. Wanted to risk letting me find her wounds and discovering I might push her away.

Never.

She broke the kiss, eyes holding mine, wild hair backlit by the moon, a shadow cast across her face, golden eyes glinting dimly like a dying firefly at night. She’d paused with my hand at her ribs. Her lip caught in her teeth, and her breaths came sharper.

I felt her delicate fingers shake.

“You don’t have to, Nightshade. Not until you’re ready. I won’t love you any less.”

One more beat passed, and then she curled in on herself. I dropped my hands, pulling her tight against me once more.

She was so small.

It was hard to reckon with what had happened. To imagine anyone hurting her.

I shut my eyes, violent hatred lurking between the cracks splintering across my mind. The only thing keeping me tetheredwas the cool petals of nightshade tangling with the hot tub chemicals, and the earth and pine in the forest beyond.

Justenough to lull to sleep that dormant beast. The half of me that had lived in the Cimmerian Vaults. It had woken once for her, already. When I’d seen those alphas with their hands on her… without a care for her fear, or spirit or soul—what made someone important. Creatures like that, if they were no more, karma had no complaints.

She had to understand, though, and I don’t know if she did.

“They’re going to die,” I said.

She was gentle, but this wasn’t something I could protect her from.

“The price cannot be you,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“Glasses, remember?”

The fact was, I knew I was broken. But before, I’d been so broken, that I’d never cared that I was.

But now?

I cared if it meant not being enough to protect her.

There was a gift in there somewhere, the frightening fragments of a person long gone. A piece to claim back. As dangerous as it was tempting, and equally impossible to ignore.

I was a shell, left to scrounge from the rubble of a person I would never be again. There had been a monster before the experiments, a monster from the Cimmerian Vaults but that wasn’t where the rubble came from. The rubble came from destruction before that. The faintest flash of memory and life I felt when I rubbed a coin between my fingers, or shuffled a deck of cards. In the moment I’d watched a young boy tumble from monkey bars when we’d brought Ransom to the park, or when I caught the sweet scents of a candy shop.

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