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Only the desperate need to survive.
Tears streamed down my face, and it felt like maybe they’d stay like that forever. I didn’t know how to explain everything I was feeling to Cassius even if I wanted to, or why it was grief taking over instead of something else that might make a little more sense.
Whether Liam’s and Cassius’s pheromones miraculously fixed mine or not didn’t matter, because I was pretty fucking sure they wouldn’t be able to overcome the nurturing I’d received.
Nature could only do so much, and in my case, I knew it wasn’t enough. I would destroy them both without even meaning to. I would never trust them not to take advantage of my needs, and their alpha natures couldn’t handle that. Not over years anyway.
I really didn’t think I could do this, and it had nothing to do with what I wanted or how I felt. It was simply a fact, and if I didn’t end this now, it would destroy everyone, not just me.
Maybe I really was a dominant omega, and maybe that meant something – something different than what we’d all been taught, but I didn’t have enough information to base a decision off of just a guess.
I did know who I was though, and what I was like when I became obsessed with something. It would consume me, and the way my father had instilled his own distrust of alphas in me was too thorough for me to assume some pleasing pheromones could change anything.
The only way I could really protect these two from me was to end things, but in a way that made them feel like they were making the choice. If I told them how afraid I was, how desperate I was for them – they might just do anything and everything they could to help me.
I couldn’t let them turn out just like Frankie. I’d already destroyed one alpha. More than that would just be cruel.
They were good alphas, but I still couldn’t trust them, and I wasn’t going to let myself ruin anything else.
“Cassius?”
His body stiffened, almost as if he sensed a shift in my tone and I was pretty sure he was the first person to ever notice the difference. I smiled slightly, wondering if he’d walk away after this or try to break me into pieces so he could put me back together in a way that would suit him, not me.
Never me.
Honestly…
I kind of hoped he’d break me.
“What is it, Lucy?” There was that cruelty that kept me coming back. It was sharp enough I could almost taste the blood on my tongue. Cassius was a lot like me, honestly. Neither of us knew how to trust the other.
But I’d finally broken through his armor, and now we’d see just how strong he really was.
I smiled at him through my tears and couldn’t help but feel pleased to see those psychotic blue eyes weren’t empty anymore. “Would you like to know why my father killed my mother?”
CHAPTER 40
Cassius
I’ve never seen anything so beautifully tragic as this omega, and that was saying something.
But that question…did she know? Did she figure it out somehow? I wouldn’t put it past her. Lucy was a fucking genius after all. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d figured out who Liam really was, and that by default I knew who she was.
The look in her eyes though – I was pretty fucking sure I’d never seen that look in an omega’s eyes before. It was…haunted. There was a vicious cruelty in them that was all mixed up in grief and disgust.
I’d known something like this would happen, but I hadn’t expected whatever the fuck this was. Lucy was feeling scared and vulnerable, which made sense, but she was crying and I couldn’t figure out why.
Then, like it was nothing, she smiled at me and it felt like I was finally seeing who she really was. Lucy was giving me the opportunity to see into her soul, and I had no idea why, but I knew without a fucking doubt that this was about to blow up in my face if I wasn’t very, very careful.
I didn’t want to think about what would happen if she left because of me. Liam really would kill me then, if I didn’t beat him to it.
Maybe that was a dramatic way of looking at it, but Lucy had never been like other omegas. Yeah, I’d known what she was the moment I saw her, but the way she distanced herself – the vicious confidence she’d had when she’d pointed that gun at me…
Lucy was a different breed – as different as a legacy alpha to the rest of us, and I think I was finally starting to understand how.
I could see exactly what made her different as she looked at me through her tears, as well as the way she’d posed her question – turning it into a trap. If I lied to her and said I didn’t know anything about her parents…
My instincts were telling me she’d know I was lying, and that would be the end of whatever we’d started during her heat. There was no fucking way I was going to risk that, but if I said anything that implied I knew who she really was, that would fuck this all up too.
