Chapter 40
FORTY
ROGUE
I surfaced from madness, waking in a bond with a splitting headache and foggy thoughts.
That was… something impossible.
Something so right and wrong at the same time. Thistle was mine, but… “Fuck…” My voice was a cracked, low croak.
I was fucking dead.
Knox was never pressing that reset button again.
How long did I have?
Her form was still curled up as we lay on the stone floor. She shivered in my arms as she clutched me and Bunny, eyes squeezed tight shut.
Slowly, I got to my feet, lifting her with me, and her arms wound around my neck as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
My shoes scuffed the cracked concrete as I stepped to the bed and sat us down, a strange numbness in my mind.
She was mine.
The way she was always meant to be.
I could feel her in the bond with me, and she was chaos, like a picture that kept changing colours and shapes and size, a scribble of energy that couldn’t make up its mind. There was nothing in this connection I could pin down at all, and sometimes she shifted into something that didn’t feel like her at all. A dark shadow that swallowed the fragile edges, like an outer shell. A layer of protection.
It was something vicious, snarling, and dangerous.
I blinked, finding my gaze on Bunny, who she had released from a death grip. Violet galaxies blinked to life between smudged black eyeliner that blurred around her eyes and down her cheeks.
“We did it, Bunny,” she whispered, a smile wobbling on her lips as she drank me in. “We keep him forever.”
“You do.” The words were rough, and I shut my eyes, dread seeping into my bones.
Because my forever wouldn’t last.
When I gathered the courage to open them again, she was frowning.
“It’s okay.” She wriggled from my grip. “Just give me a minute. I can cheer you up.”
She didn’t know, yet.
I couldn’t tell her.
She scent marked me before I left, settling my nerves and sending my mind into a swamp of calm that had barely caught up before she was back in my vision, Bunny swinging in her arm, knife in her other hand.
Those eyes were so bright, so happy…
She held up the knife, eyes hopeful. “Can I…?”
I numbly tugged up the sleeve of my t-shirt as she clambered on the bed beside me.
I cleared my throat. “I’m yours, Kitten. You can do whatever you like.”
Her expression lit up, and next thing I knew, she sank her teeth into my arm with a little chirp of delight. She drew back, giving me a curious look as a drop of blood seeped down my skin.
The smile that tugged on my lips was real, though, as I eyed the mark she’d left. At my lack of complaint, she flipped the knife and got to work.
Watching her take her time carving out another heart along my flesh was like watching someone having an out-of-body experience.
Frosted moonflower was a blanket of calm contentment as she held the knife steady in her hand, and her eyes were fixed so intently on it, it was as if she wasn’t here anymore.
I almost got swept up in the trance. In the unfurling petals of her dark scent. A hum—which might have been a purr if she were capable of one—sounded in her throat. Finally, when she was done, violet galaxies peered up at me through thick black lashes.
“You like it?” she asked.
I peered at what she’d done, seeing a few little jagged hearts, and one large one containing the letters ‘T+R’ in the middle.
“Love it.” The words were thick.
Would they be healed by the time I was buried?
Yet this part, I realised, I didn’t regret.
Dying with her claim…
Dying with something to show for this miserable fucking life.
Still, the world flickered in and out, the last traces of my descent into madness lingering. Next thing I knew, Thistle had returned to my lap, her hands cupping my cheeks, her eyes dazed with joy.
Joy I’d given her.
She was mine; this strange and perfect Omega, almost feral with instincts trying to claw their way free, rough with edges of madness trying to contain a void, and eyes that, despite everything, hadn’t lost their wonder.
She was pushing me back on the bed, muttering about all the blood and telling Bunny he needed to wait until we’d rested up.
Wait for what?
But she was already burrowing beneath my shirt and scent marking me again and the question died in my mind.
I swallowed, holding her close with one hand, the other trailing up to my neck. I fingered the bump, touch sticky with the blood from the wound I’d made cutting away the muzzle.
The ticking timer on my death clock.
One handed, and where she couldn’t see, I fought with a blood smeared phone screen to send the text I didn’t want to.
Me: When did you last reset it?
I didn’t expect a response right away—or at all—but one came, anyway.
Knox: five days.
I stared at that. Something caught in my throat.
Two days left?
But if that was all I had, I wouldn’t let him take her from me. He couldn’t. His leverage was gone.
I had two days left to live, and I was going to spend them with her.
Deep breath.
I had to pull it together.
For her.
“It’s gonna be fine, you know?” she said, glancing up and giving me a crooked half smile. “I’ll talk to him.”
There was nothing to talk about.
She just didn’t know that yet.
“He’s gonna come around,” she whispered, soft palms running up and down my abdomen, making my eyelids heavy as the swamp of fatigue crept in. “And we’re all gonna be a pack.”
I shut my eyes, letting her breaths calm the feral edges that had almost devoured me entirely.
Knox had been right about one thing.
She didn’t know who I was.
What I was.
And I’d just proven to Knox that, without the shadow of a doubt, I hadn’t changed at all. The kind of Alpha that, when offered power, had held it over another—when offered a claim I had no right to, had taken it, anyway.
Last time, it should have meant my death.
This time, it would.
