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From this angle, I could see it better. His tongue would swipe over it, and then there would be a break, and I could see the two little half-moons of his upper teeth and his lower teeth. They were bleeding. I watched them well in with red, and then he swiped his tongue over it, and the blood stopped. He did that again and again and again.

I had thought that alphas had some coagulant in their saliva that made it scab up. Apparently, this was true, but the scabbing took time, longer than I had thought.

Some part of me had romanticized it, the biting part, making it into something that was the height of pleasure, but now, seeing it, it only seemed… savage.

He had bitten her and it was an ownership mark. He claimed her with blood.

Like losing my virginity, maybe, only he had claimed her, not me.

He didn’t even look at me. He just tended his stupid bite.

She looked at me sometimes. “You had everything,” she said to me. “Do you realize that?”

I gaped at her. What was she saying?

“It was mine,” she said. “And you took it from me. I was just taking it back.”

I shook my head. “He was never yours.”

“He is mine,” she said. “Damian?”

He grunted. He didn’t look at me. He licked. “I’m hers.” His voice was dull.

It was a nightmare. It had to be a nightmare.

She stroked the back of his head. “My alpha. My cyning. Mine.”

Sometimes, I would replay this whole thing in my head and imagine I’d done things like scream or throw myself at her or claw at her stupid face or hit them—just start hitting both of them.

I only sat there, though.

I only gaped at them.

I didn’t even cry, not then. The crying came later.

“Ancestors protect us, Opal,” muttered Vincent. “Did you do this on purpose?”

She held his gaze, lifting her chin, as if she was daring him to tell her she’d done something wrong.

Vincent nodded slowly. “Well, then. Always been him, huh? All this time, everything with you and me, and you’ve always wanted him?”

Opal looked away from him.

That was when Vincent stalked out of the room.

He might say he didn’t love Opal, and maybe he didn’t, but he felt something. There was some kind of betrayal there.

He shot me a look on the way out. “Come on, Leo,” he said.

But I stayed right where I was.

And eventually, my dad and the cyning showed up, and then everything turned to chaos.

I can hardly remember how it went, only that Opal was yelling at everyone, and her neck wound was spraying blood everywhere, and Damian was chasing her and pressing her into anything handy to put his mouth back on her neck, and I couldn’t stand watching that, because there was something horrifyingly erotic about the two of them connected, and I didn’t know if Damian had ever been that way with me.

My father tried to get Damian to stop licking Opal long enough to give an explanation, and Opal said she’d just put things back the way they were supposed to be.

“You wanted it this way, Daddy,” she said.