AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You could have lied,” I said. Bile built in my throat, choking my anger. “You could have had sworn on the goddess, on anything that they had forced you, that they had threatened your family. You could have painted them the villain and I would have believed you. Forgiven you and hated them more. Why did you have to tell the truth?”
“Because I love you and I have been carrying the guilt for years. I was addicted to you before you even saw me.”
“Like Romeo loving Rosalind in the morning and Juliet by midnight,” I sneered. “What about that omega you loved?”
“I was a boy.”
“You are still a boy. Three and twenty. I am three years your senior, Puck another four, and Oberon must be at least thirty-six.”
“Did you think I was a boy as I fucked you through your heats?” he snapped, some of his old self breaking through his haze of self-loathing. “Did you beg for a knot then?”
To my fury my core clenched. No. I hadn’t whined for a knot when Jude had eased my heat. I’d taken it to mean I didn’t need a knot. That I was immune to knots.
“You aren’t a boy,” I conceded. “But do not delude yourself. You were one then. Eighteen to my twenty one. I should not have touched you so–”
“Is there someone to tend to you?” he interrupted. Oh, to be ignorant of his meaning. My body thrummed with need and my nights were haunted with unfulfilled desire—all proof that my heat was near. I flushed as he began to scent the air in a way I’d never seen him do.
“No,” I said with a curtness intended to remind him that not so long ago he had been under my control, not Oberon’s.
“I’m still yours. If you need—”
“You sold yourself to a new master,” I said as cruelly as possible.
“Pol, how many times did you tell me your heart was mine to protect?”
“Too many. And you did a poor job of it.” I paused attempting to control the helplessness that threatened to overwhelm what little dignity I had. “Aristophanes was right to dismiss those who claimed they could not be whole until they’d found their soul mate.”
“You speak clever words to an ignorant farmer’s son,” he snapped.
Tears pricked my eyes. “You mock me as I attempt to understand how you could do this to me?”
“I do not mock.”
No, he couldn’t. Jude was too disgustingly pure and earnest. I had thought he had no pretence, that he could not dissemble.
“I am disgusted,” I hissed. “You disgust me.”
For a moment his eyes flashed that same bright fire that had made him so beautiful to me. “At least you still feel something for me.” He closed his eyes. “I can live with that. Had you—“
My hold on the dagger shifted, the blade now facing away from him, and I pull pulled my fist back and punched his jaw with as much force as I was able. Shock meant my blow knocked his head to the side. But he recovered quickly, and he looked back at me with a brightness to his gaze that had not been there before. “Another.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Hit me again.”
I shook my head and rose to my feet. “You’ve spent too much time with Oberon. He is the sadist not me.”
“I deserve it. Give it to me. If you ever loved me, beat me… please.”
It was the pleading from a man who had never asked me for anything that made my stomach churn with anguish. I’d not spend another moment in the same room. It was too painful, too enraging. And I wondered where my curse was when I needed it most. It came with ease when I needed to defend another but when I needed to defend myself it never appeared. “Never.”
I turned away and headed for the door, for my cage, and the unforeseen protection it afforded me. The door locked and key in the hole, I found the guest room again and climbed to my room and cage.
Stripping off the clothes that smelled faintly of Jude, I stuffed them at the far end of the cage under a mound of pillows. All the while my hands shook. I refused to call what I did nesting.
“You are just weak for his scent. Your feelings were of long standing. If his actions are beyond forgiveness, why not steal his scent? His scent cannot hurt you.”
A liar would have stared back at me if I’d been fool enough to look into a mirror. So instead I crawled under the blankets and waited for Puck to arrive with my dinner and the cloth drenched in laudanum.
