Bought By The Beast

CHAPTER 12: Fractured Bond

The symptoms got worse over the next few days.

I couldn't keep anything down. Water, crackers, the bland soup David tried to make. Everything came back up within an hour. My body ached constantly, exhausted from throwing up and the lack of sleep.

And Caspian barely spoke to me.

He'd moved to the couch downstairs. Said he didn't want to disturb my rest with his tossing and turning. But through the bond, I felt the real reason.

He couldn't stand being that close to me. Couldn't stand smelling me, feeling my presence, knowing what was growing inside me.

It was killing us both.

I tried to reach out through the bond, tried to send him comfort, reassurance, anything. But he'd gotten better at building those walls. Better at shutting me out.

David watched us fall apart with increasing frustration.

"This is ridiculous," he said on the fourth morning, finding me hunched over the toilet again. "You two are bonded. You're supposed to be inseparable. Instead you're acting like strangers."

"We might as well be strangers." I rinsed my mouth, my hands shaking. "He won't touch me, David. Won't even look at me most of the time."

"Because he's hurt."

"So am I! You think I wanted this? You think I'm happy about being pregnant with Kieran's baby while bonded to Caspian?"

"I know you're not." David leaned against the doorframe. "But you're handling it. Caspian's not. He's spiraling and taking you both down with him."

"Then talk to him. Because he sure as hell won't listen to me."

"I've tried. He tells me to mind my own business." David sighed. "But for what it's worth, this isn't just about the pregnancy. It's about control. Caspian's spent two hundred years being in complete control of everything. His territory. His people. His life. And now he's bonded to you, which means he's not in control anymore. The bond controls him. And there's a baby coming that he has no control over. It's breaking something in him."

"So what do I do?"

"Give him time. Space. Let him work through it." David paused. "And maybe stop trying so hard to fix it. Sometimes the harder you push, the more he'll pull away."

I wanted to argue. Wanted to say that giving up wasn't an option. But I was too tired. Too sick. Too f*****g done with all of it.

"Fine. Space. Whatever."

I spent the day in bed, trying to rest, trying to keep water down. Through the bond, I felt Caspian downstairs. Felt his restlessness. His pain. His desperate need to check on me warring with his determination to stay away.

By evening, I couldn't take it anymore.

I dragged myself downstairs and found him in the kitchen, staring at his phone like it held answers to questions he hadn't asked yet.

"We need to talk," I said.

"About what?"

"About this. Us. The fact that we're both miserable and it's only getting worse."

"There's nothing to talk about, Rielle. The situation is what it is."

"The situation is that you're shutting me out. That you won't even touch me anymore. That I can feel you through the bond but you feel a million miles away."

"Because I need distance." He finally looked at me, and god, he looked as bad as I felt. Dark circles under his eyes. Face drawn. Like he hadn't slept in days. "I need time to process this without the bond screaming at me to claim you, mark you, make you completely mine."

"Would that be so bad?"

"Yes." The word came out harsh. "Because you're already carrying another male's child. Claiming you more thoroughly doesn't change that. It just makes it worse. Makes me more possessive of something that's not entirely mine."

"I'm yours. The bond makes me yours."

"Part of you is. The rest belongs to that baby. To Kieran's legacy growing inside you." His hands clenched into fists. "And I can't, I can't share you like that."

"You're not sharing me. You have all of me. The baby is just, it's just biology. It doesn't change how I feel about you."

"Doesn't it?" His silver eyes burned into mine. "Because every time you throw up, every time you're too tired to move, every time your body changes to accommodate that pregnancy, all I can think about is him. Kieran. The male who touched you first. Who created life with you first. Who has a piece of you I'll never have."

"That's not fair."

"Life isn't fair. You learned that when your boyfriend sold you at auction. I'm learning it now by being bonded to you while you carry his child."

The words hit like a slap.

"Wow." My voice shook. "Is that really how you see this? Like I'm some kind of, what, damaged goods because I slept with someone before you?"

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you meant."

"No. What I meant is that this situation is impossible. There's no good answer. No way for me to be okay with this without lying to both of us." He ran his hands through his hair. "And I won't lie to you, Rielle. I won't pretend I'm fine when I'm falling apart inside."

Through the bond, I felt his anguish. The war raging inside him between his love for me and his absolute inability to accept the pregnancy.

"So what happens now?" I asked quietly. "We just, what, exist in this limbo forever? You downstairs, me upstairs, both of us bonded but separate?"

"Until I figure out how to deal with this, yes."

"And if you never figure it out?"

His jaw clenched. "Then we find a way to break the bond."

The words hung in the air like a death sentence.

"You can't break a lycan bond," I whispered. "You said it yourself. Even death doesn't fully break it."

"There are ways. Dangerous ways. Ways that would probably kill us both. But they exist."

"You'd rather die than stay bonded to me while I'm pregnant?"

"I'd rather die than spend the next however many months feeling like I'm sharing my mate with another male." His voice broke. "And I know that makes me a selfish bastard. I know you didn't choose this. But I can't help how I feel."

Tears streamed down my face. "I don't want to break the bond."

"Neither do I. But I also can't keep living like this. Feeling you through the connection, wanting you desperately, but knowing that wanting you means accepting the pregnancy. Accepting Kieran's claim on part of your life."

"He doesn't have a claim on me."

"The baby does. And the baby is his. That's a claim I can't erase, no matter how much I want to."

Another wave of nausea hit. I gripped the counter, breathing through it.

Caspian's concern immediately flooded the bond, but he still didn't move to help me. Didn't touch me. Just watched with those tortured silver eyes.

"You should rest," he said finally.

"I don't want to rest. I want my mate back. I want you to hold me and tell me we'll figure this out together."

"I can't."

"You mean you won't."

"No. I mean I can't." He looked away. "Because if I touch you right now, if I let myself hold you, I won't be able to let go. And when I don't let go, when I keep you too close, I'll say things I can't take back. Do things I can't undo. The claiming instinct is too strong."

"Then give in to it. Claim me. Mark me. Make me so completely yours that there's no doubt."

"And the baby?"

"We'll figure it out. Together. Like we're supposed to."

"You make it sound so simple."

"It is simple. You love me. I love you. Everything else is just noise."

"That noise is a whole f*****g baby, Rielle. It's not something we can ignore or wish away."

"I'm not asking you to ignore it. I'm asking you to fight for us. Fight for the bond. Fight for me."

"I am fighting." His voice turned rough. "Every second of every day, I'm fighting the urge to claim you so thoroughly that even you forget Kieran existed. Fighting the urge to mark over his claim until your scent is pure mine. Fighting the urge to flood your body with my presence until that baby has no choice but to recognize who the real alpha is."

The raw possession in his voice made my breath catch.

"Then stop fighting," I whispered.

"If I stop fighting, I'll hurt you. Scare you. Push you so hard into submission that you'll hate me for it."

"You could never make me hate you."

"You don't know that. You don't know what I'm capable of when the claiming instinct takes over." He finally looked at me again. "I've killed for less provocation than another male's baby growing in my mate's body."

"I'm not scared of you."

"You should be." But even as he said it, he took a step toward me. Then another. Like he couldn't help himself. "Because right now, all I want to do is claim you. Completely. Brutally. Until there's no question who you belong to."

My pulse hammered. Through the bond, I felt his desire. Dark and possessive and barely controlled.

"Then do it," I challenged.

"Rielle." A warning.

"I'm serious. Stop holding back. Stop building walls. Just, be with me. However you need to be."

He was in front of me now, close enough to touch. Close enough that I could see his pupils dilated, his breathing harsh.

"You don't know what you're asking."

"I know exactly what I'm asking. I'm asking for my mate. All of him. Even the parts that scare him."

His hand lifted, hovering near my face. Not quite touching. "If I start, I won't be able to stop."

"Good."

"You'll hate me after."

"Impossible."

His control snapped.

One second he was standing there fighting himself. The next, his mouth crashed down on mine, his hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise.

The kiss was brutal. Claiming. Everything he'd been holding back for days pouring out in one desperate, violent connection.

I kissed back just as hard, my hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer.

Through the bond, I felt everything. His rage at the situation. His jealousy of Kieran. His desperate love for me tangled up with possessive need to reclaim what he saw as his.

"Mine," he growled against my mouth. "Say it."

"Yours."

"Again."

"Yours. Only yours. Always yours."

His hand slid down to cup my stomach, and I felt his shudder of revulsion through the bond. The reminder of what was growing there. Who had put it there.

And just like that, his control came crashing back.

He pulled away, breathing hard, looking horrified.

"I can't," he said. "I'm sorry. I can't."

Then he was gone.

Out the door. Into the night. Running from me and the pregnancy and the bond he couldn't accept.

I stood there alone in the kitchen, lips swollen from his kiss, body aching for more, while the bond pulsed with his anguish and my own devastation.

We were falling apart.

And I didn't know how to stop it.