Mated To My Sister's Fiance

Chapter 14

Amara

My mate was inside that room

With her. They were f*****g.

The tears came fast and completely without my permission, sliding down my cheeks.

I hadn't even realized how cold my body had gone. A sob escaped through my lips before I could stop it, small and broken and awful, swallowed immediately by the quiet of the night.

I pressed my hand harder against my mouth. My shoulders shook. I squeezed my eyes shut the same way I had squeezed them just hours ago when I was waiting for the rogue to kill me.

This hurt worse than death, because at least then it was only my body at risk. Not my heart.

My legs wavered like they wanted to give up but somehow I steadied myself and finally remembered how to move.

I turned away from that room and walked, then faster, until I was back inside the house, up the stairs, inside my room with the door closed behind me. I pressed my back against it and slid slowly down to the floor and sat there in the dark, crying.

What had I become? A cry baby? I rarely cried before Magnus. I barely recognized myself anymore. Since that man came into my life everything had shifted inside me, down to my whole self.

I wiped my cheeks harshly. No. No, Amara. You will not cry for that asshole man anymore. He is nothing to you. Forget him.

After sitting with my grief and my bad luck long enough, I made up my mind.

Tomorrow morning, my first task would be to find that asshole Alpha and reject him. Cut every tie between us. Not that there were many to begin with, only the mate bond remained, the last thread connecting us. That is why it is hurting me more.

After I broke it I would be free from every heartache and every pain. No mate bond, no mate, of course no pain.

But the pain returned again anyway, pressing against the inside of my chest, and I found myself asking the same question into the dark.

Why, Moon Goddess? Why him? Am I really that bad? I never asked for an Alpha, never asked for someone out of my league. Just a mate who would love me. Someone I could love back. A simple happily ever after, my happy ending.

Was that really too much?

My head was pounding and only then I realized I had shut Zia out, our shared mind completely silent. Oh Goddess. She would have felt everything I felt, witnessed everything I witnessed, and I had locked her out for hours. I opened our mind link.

Before I could even begin to console her she exploded.

‘You shut me off, Amara! For Goddess sake, how many hours have I been trying to reach you? Do you know how desperate I was?’

She kept screaming at me and I stood there stunned. Honestly I had expected her to be sobbing. Zia was more obsessed with Magnus than I was, so I expected wailing, not rage.

‘I'm sorry, Zia,’ I said quietly.

She ignored my apology completely.

"Did you not hear it? Magnus and Chloe, together in that room. How are you this calm right now?"

‘Magnus was not intimate with her’, she said, her tone flat but certain.

I blinked. ‘Are you blind? Are you deaf? I clearly heard the moaning, Zia. That was Chloe's voice.’

‘Yes, that was Chloe's voice. But she was not with Magnus.’

‘How can you possibly be sure of that?’

‘Because if Magnus had been intimate with anyone, we would have felt the cheating pain. The marks would have shown on our bodies. Amara, look at yourself. We are perfectly fine’.

My eyes widened slowly. She was right. I hadn't felt a single thing. No burning, no phantom marks, nothing.

‘So you're saying Chloe was with someone else.’ I let that settle for a moment.

‘Of course Chloe was with someone else, what can you expect from that b***h’. Zia normally said.

‘But she's his chosen mate. They're engaged. Why would she—’ I stopped. ‘Does Magnus even know?’

‘This is our chance’, Zia said, and I could feel the shift in her, the excitement building. ‘We tell him. We tell Magnus his precious chosen mate is cheating on him and he ends things with her’.

‘No,’I said firmly. ‘Even if Chloe is cheating, that is not our business. He chose her. Whatever is between them is between them. And for all we know they have some kind of arrangement. He made it very clear what he wanted, Zia, and it wasn't me.’

‘But—’

‘No. You have no self respect, Zia, but I do. I am not going to chase a man who has never looked at me as anything but a burden. Tomorrow I reject him. That's final.’

Zia went quiet. Not agreement, but she didn't push again.

I lay in bed for a long time, too tired to sleep. My mind kept circling back to Magnus.

He had been staying here for days and not once had I felt the cheating pain, not even from a kiss. What kind of relationship did he and Chloe actually have? What was really happening between them?

I didn't have an answer and I was too exhausted to look for one.

Eventually thirst pulled me out of bed. I had forgotten to bring my water bottle upstairs.

I went down to the kitchen without bothering with the lights, grabbed the bottle off the counter, and turned to head back.

I collided with a hard wall.

No. Not a wall, but a body, hard and immovable, and the familiar forest air scent filled my nostrils.

My heart slammed against my ribs. His arms caught me before I could stumble back and for one terrible second I forgot how to breathe. s**t.

My body remembered things my mind was still trying to forget, including exactly how dangerous this man was. I had watched him tear through rogues alone without slowing down.

“What are you doing here, Omega?”