AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No…” she said, staring at me now, shaking her head, brows drawn together, but I nodded.
“Yes. They…we, I should say…” holding her gaze was the hardest thing I had ever done. “We’ve been very, very lucky to find our true mates. All–” I gulped. “All four of us.”
Ella
It all made sense.
With a flash of clarity, I understood: why he had this magnetic pull over me, why he felt so good against me–
Why someone like Charlie Prince was interested inmeat all.
It all made sense: it wasn’tme.It had never been me, or even–bitterness twisted my lips into a sneer–the fictionalLara Stevens, editor,who he had met at the gala. It was… myomega. His instincts. Our genes, or pheromones, or whatever, conspiring to bring us together.
My devastation must have shown on my face, because confusion was obvious on his.
“You’re not happy?”
“Oh, fuckoff, Charlie!” I whispered, too furious to even cry.
“Ella, wait,” he said, but I was already out of my chair, and halfway to the door of the cafe. “Ella–”
I threw open the door, the bells jangling violently above my head as I stormed out onto the sidewalk. The bells chimed again as he followed me, and I had only made it a handful of steps before I felt his hand clamp tight on my wrist. I wrenched it away, but turned to face him.
“What do youwant, Charlie?” I hissed. “I told you Sunday that Ican’t!This,” I gestured at the coffee shop, “is aprofessional meeting.Now you’re telling me we’re fuckingfated mates, like some stupid fairy tale? I should never have called you.” I turned to go, then back to Charlie. “So whatdoyou want? You want tomateme? Get married and live happily ever after?”
“Yes, I do!” he yelled, his brows knit together.
“No, you don’t!” I screamed back, eyes overflowing. I dropped my voice lower, aware that I was making a scene. “You never did! It’s been your alpha this whole time, toying with me! Well, I’m done being toyed with! I don’t need you, or anyone else,” I hissed. “I’ve been fine without you so far, and I don’t need a boyfriend or an alpha or a mate or a fuckingPrinceto come rescue me now. Buy the advertisements, or don’t, I don’t fucking care.” I tried to turn away from his intense blue stare, but he had grabbed my wrists again, his grip just this side of bruising. I struggled against it. “Let me go!”
“No, I won’t!” he said, his voice low and controlled but his eyes shooting sparks, “not until you tell me what the fuck is going on! I don’t understand why you’re so upset, and I’m sick of finding out everything third-hand from Margaret, or Jack! Something is wrong, and I don’t know what it is, and I want to fix it, but I can’t becausenobody fucking thinks to tell Charlie anything fucking important!”
“I don’t owe you anything,” I whispered, feeling hollow. “Just because you think I’m your destiny doesn’t mean that’s how it works.” He dropped my hands. I might as well have slapped him. “You dangle this possibility in front of me, everything I’ve ever wanted! A home, a family, a lover, a–a family of my own, with children, and aunts and uncles and reunions andyour stupid fucking family dinners!Andthen? It’s notyou, it’s just–justhormones, or–orpheromones, or something, I don’t know how it works.Ifit works. If it’s evenreal–”
“It is real, and you know it, Ella,” he said, his voice soft and pleading. “Iknowyou can feel it, what I feel, I want that with you, I want you–”
“No, you don’t, do you? It’s your alpha, it always has been–” I sobbed.
The next moment I was in his arms, strong and firm around my shaking shoulders, the juniper scent I craved enveloping me. I stiffened, trying desperately to resist its anesthetizing hold over me. “Ella, it’syou, it always has been,” he said, his voice shaking. “From the moment you told me you spent nine dollars on truffle tots, it’s always been you for me. Not my alpha, not your omega, whatever that even means,you.”
“You didn’t even know who I was–” I protested into the soft cotton of his juniper-scented shirt, my arms stiff at my sides.
“I knew you were mine,” he said, “even if I didn’t know your name, I knew you were mine. And I knew I was yours. Even if you turned out to be… I don’t know. A trashy gossip columnist.” He held me out at arms length, his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. His blue eyes were wide and honest.
And I knew, as I looked at him: he hadn’t known. He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t lying now, and he hadn’t lied then.
And that meant that it–
It was all true.
“But you’re not. You’re a beautiful, smart, funny, wonderful person, and you’re determined, and you’re ambitious, and you are using your voice to make something better in the world. Can’t you let me make something better for you?”
It was all true.
I knew I had chosen Charlie. I knew it was him at the gala, when our fingers touched and I felt stars under my skin and saw fireworks behind my eyelids. After our first date, when I had taken him home and stripped myself bare for him. In his childhood bedroom, when my heart thrilled at the feeling of teeth on my skin–
But I had never believed that he would choose me. That he would wake up every day, day after day after day, and choose me.
That he would stay.
