His expression is blank, but he watches me move about the cabin. I pour a cup of water and hand it over. He takes it, drinks it down in one gulp. I refill it and hand it back, tilting my chin toward the sleeping omega.
It takes every effort not to look. Not to enjoy her naked form. I’ve seen naked bodies before, but not like this. Not like hers.
Silas shakes his head. I argue, “She needs to drink. She isn’t healing.”
His expression tightens, but he shakes it off. He’s definitely more lucid now. “She needs sleep. If I wake her, she’ll try to fuck.”
I can’t argue with that. So, I walk to the other side of the cabin and lean against a small counter. Then, I let myself look.
She’s curled into a ball, her back to me. Her round ass is a perfect shape, like a painting. If she were draped in fabrics and wore a floral crown, I’d mistake her for a goddess. Maybe she is. Nothing less could make me this… distracted.
I look away before my erection strains harder. If I could use magic on myself to take away this feeling of unrelenting want and need, I’d do it in a heartbeat. It’s been difficult enough to refuse over the last few days, and I’ve only indulged in jerking off a few times. Considering I just met my fated mate and her scent is the sweetest most enticing thing I’ve ever encountered in my entire fucking life, and, on top of that, she was in fucking heat, her perfumeintoxicating—I’d say I held off quite well.
It’s only, I suspect, because I’m half-witch that I didn’t fall into a rut right alongside Silas.
The fact that my heart feels like it’s torn into a million pieces, that rejecting her feels like I’m dragging myself across broken glass while carrying the weight of a fucking redwood, has only added to my torment. Even the sound of her voice—God, her voice, low and soft, raspy from all the pleasure—makes me want to curl up next to her and beg for forgiveness. To tell her I changed my mind, please let me in.
But I won’t. I can’t. I don’t deserve a mate like her, and I’m better off alone, anyway.
I tear off pieces of the squirrel meat, arranging them in a bowl for when she wakes. I don’t know if she’d prefer it cooked, but she needs the nutrients, so I’ll leave it raw.
“You need to get control of yourself,” I tell him without looking up.
Carefully, he leans away from Mona, coming to sit at the edge of the bed. He’s still hard, somehow.
“I didn’t mean to rut her,” he says shamefully.
I shake my head. “That’s not what I mean.”
His brow furrows.
“You’re bonded now. She can feel what you feel.”
“I know that—” he starts, then, reading between the lines, he hangs his head in his hands and whispers, “Fuck.”
I feel uncomfortable. His scent changes from possessive and threatening to something more bitter. Hatred, or something like it. Self-hatred, maybe. More nuance tacks onto it. Disgust. Anger.
I shouldn’t care. He means nothing to me, I don’t know him. And he’s obviously a fucking mess.
Silas might be used to burying his emotions, but he won’t be able to hide all his darkness from her now that they’re bonded.
Omegas are natural empaths. Add in a fated mating bond—if she can connect with all his darkness, all that toxic rage inside him, it’ll flood her system. I don’t want that for her, not after everything she’s already endured. My alpha demands we find a solution.
Strictly speaking, the trek back to Silent Peak would be an even bigger pain in the ass if she’s breaking down under the weight of Silas’s emotional baggage. Really, that’s all this is. Efficiency. We’re in a rush, after all, and I’ve got other shit I need to deal with.
“I need to find a way to block her,” he says, coming to the same conclusion.
“I think you can.” I filter back through things I’ve read about omegas, about fated mates and mating bonds, piecing bits of knowledge together with my own understanding of how threads of magic work. Things I see other shifters can’t.
An idea forms. “Try to picture the bond… it’s like a thread, right?” He nods. “Look at it. Inside yourself, find the bond.”
He scoffs. “Easy enough. It’s the brightest thing inside me.”
“Right. Well… you should be able to pluck it—don’t, though,” I raise my hand quickly, and his gaze lifts to meet mine. His eyes are still black, but a ring of green iris shows. He’s more present than he’s been in days. “Don’t pluck the bond, you’ll wake her up.”
He nods in understanding.
“Wait until she’s awake. But, mates check in with each other by plucking the bond. So, imagine stepping on a garden hose, cutting off the flow. Instead of activating it by plucking it, visualize stepping on it, cutting it off. It won’t break the bond completely—mating bonds can’t be broken. Actually, that isn’t strictly true.”
