Chapter 2
904 Words
CHAPTER TWO
LEIGH
He came at past midnight, when the mansion had gone quiet and the celebration noise had finally died and there was nothing left in the world except me sitting on the edge of my bed with an ice pack pressed to my cheek, staring at the wall and thinking about absolutely nothing because thinking about something meant feeling it — the knock came.
I already knew.
The bond told me before the sound did.
I opened the door and Garrick Ashbourne was standing in my doorway looking like something the moon goddess designed specifically to be unfair.
Tall…Jaw set. Eyes carrying that thing he never talked about — that weight, that conflict, the part of him that knew exactly what he was doing and did it anyway.
He looked at my cheek first.
Then at my eyes.
"I didn't mean for tonight to happen that way," he said.
I stared at him.
"When," I said quietly, "....have you ever cared how I feel? Not once. Not in three years. But tonight —" My voice almost broke and I caught it, pulled it back, held it steady. "Tonight you stood there and you looked at me. You looked right at me and you let it happen."
"Leigh —"
"If you're going to keep doing this to me then just reject me." I hated that my eyes were burning. I hated that he could see it. "Please. Just end it. Let me go."
"I can't do that."
"You can —"
"The moon goddess closed you for me." He stepped into the room without being invited, the way he always did, filling the space the way Alphas fill spaces completely, without apology. His hand came up to my jaw. Careful. The way he was always careful when it was just us. "I can't reject a nature given bond. You know that."
"Don't say that crap." I turned my face away. "Today is your anniversary. You cannot stand in my room tonight after what you just…"
"You think I wanted that?" His voice dropped. Low. Private. The voice he only used here, in this room, when there was no audience. "You think sitting there knowing you were in that room, feeling everything the bond was putting through you, you think that was nothing to me?"
I didn't answer.
His lips touched my temple and I closed my eyes and I hated myself completely.
"You're the one in my head," he said. "Always. You know that."
And that was it.
That was all it ever took.
I knew what he was doing, the voice he'd use them in and exactly how the bond would light up the moment he was close enough to touch. I knew all of it.
I let him in anyway.
Because that is the specific cruelty of a mate bond. It doesn't care what you know. It doesn't care what he's done or what you watched tonight or what your face looks like right now. It just burns low and constant, completely beyond reason and when he's close enough the burning becomes something else entirely.
We didn't speak after that.
There was nothing to say that we hadn't already said in three years of this. I pressed my face into his shoulder and he held the back of my head and for a little while — just a little while — I let myself pretend this was something it wasn't.
We both sighed after.
That deep, settled exhale that comes when the bond is fed and the ache goes quiet. His chest rose and fell under my palm and for forty seconds I felt like a person who was loved.
Then he said: "You're going to have to go."
I went still.
"My people are arriving tomorrow. From the city." He was looking at the ceiling. "I've already started making arrangements. You'll be moved to the east compound with the workers."
"The workers compound at the East?" I repeated it slowly.
"It's temporary —"
"Garrick." I sat up. "You just said I have to go. Tonight you came to my room and now you're telling me I have to leave in the morning like I'm — " I stopped and laughed bitterly.
"Like I'm a schedule you need to clear."
"My friends are powerful people. More powerful than this pack. I need this meeting to go smoothly and I can't have them asking questions about —"
"About your mate? Your siphon mate who sleeps in the east wing in a uniform."
His jaw shifted.
"You're alive because of me," he said quietly. "Your kind doesn't get to exist in packs. You know what happens to siphons. I gave you your life and I gave you access to your daughter and I'm asking you for one thing —"
"You gave me access." The word came out like something broken. "You took my daughter and gave her to that woman and you call it giving me access."
"Leigh."
"I'm not leaving without Lola."
Silence.
He looked at me for a long time.
"Go to sleep," he said.
He got up. Straightened his clothes. Walked to the door with that Alpha calm that made everything he did look like a decision instead of a retreat.
"I'll send money to the compound," he said. "You'll be fine."
The door closed and my heart shattered in ways I couldn't pick up.
- Writer
