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“I want to make sure that you keep your word on the changes you said you’d make for the Betas. I want to see it.”
“Of course you’re gonna fuckin’ see it. You’re the Dark City Omega…”
Our voices are getting louder and louder, overlapping and thickening. The others in the room with us have faded into the floral background, truly wallflowers now. It’s just us.
I shout, “I can still be the Dark City Omega but I can’t beyourOmega.” Aggression charges the air. “I’ll live in the garden house. I’ll be available for events. You can live in the manor with someone new. Another omega…”
“That’s what you want?” Adam voice is unrecognizable. It matches the set of his shoulders, which are bare and flash wounds made by zombie Alphas proudly. But no wounds grab my attention like X carved over his heart.
I close my eyes for longer than a standard blink, open them and meet his gaze. His gaze, that piercing gold mirrored in a face just as lovely. Right now it’s cold. Colder than cold. And holding his eyeline? Harder than hard. But I need him to know that I’m sure. “Yeah.”
His rage pummels the air. In my peripheries, I can see the Alphas in the door stir, agitated. Barbero backs out of the tree towards Vi, pulling Balcazar with him. Whiskey and Sierra huddle close. Peate has moved back to join them. “You want to see me with another Omega?”
No. “I don’t care. I just know that if you’re seen with an Omega it won’t be me. The man in the cave wants us to work together. All of us. To do that I need to forgive you so we can move on.”
“Move on,” he says flatly.
“Yeah, move on. I forgive you but I can’t love you again. The trust between us is gone, broken, over. We’re over, Adam. Hell, I’ll even fuck you during my heats if you still want to, but I won’t believe in you. I trust Freya more than I trust you. I trustMerlinmore than you. Both want me dead, I’m pretty sure, but neither’s lied to me yet.” I snort and glance at Freya who doesn’t bother to contradict me. Instead, I’m a little surprised to see that she’s backed up to the edge of the tree, too. Her arms remain crossed over her chest and she watches Adam with a frown. It’s as I follow her gaze back to him that my heart begins to pound.
It’s the way he’s watching me. His eyes are huge in his face, his lips are drawn tight across his face, his mouth hangs agape. He’s looking at me like something about what I’ve said has shocked him to his forgotten Beta core. That’s when I realize that the air in the room is still thick, but it’s not thick with anger anymore.
It’s thick with lust.
“Fuck. We gotta get outta here,” Peate says, but Whiskey grabs Sierra by the arm and hauls her against her body.
“Are you kidding? We’re not goin’ anywhere…”
I feel my cheeks heat though I’m not quite sure why. Ignoring the stiffness of my muscles, I sit up straighter on the cot and squeeze my knees. “The Fates told you that you’d find your Omega in Paradise Hole. It didn’t have to be me and it still doesn’t. It could be another Omega — it could be Freya, even.” I’d be ravenous with jealousy at the thought if it weren’t for the fact that Adam doesn’t seem to see her or anyone else in the room — the uhh…tree — at all. He doesn’t even seem like he hears me.
“Adam, are you…”
He lunges at me, arriving at the edge of the cot and landing on his knees. My knees are pressed against his chest until he parts them, pushing forward, his heat crashing into me. He doesn’t make a move to grab my hands, but grabs either side of my face and crushes his mouth to mine. His lips are fire and silk and so heartbreakingly familiar. I whimper as our torsos collide and my fingers fumble lamely, settling on his bloodied abdomen. I’m not used to being touched. Am I even doing this right? He groans and makes a choking sound in the back of his throat and a smile threatens the corners of my lips, but I fight it.He isn’t used to being touched, either.
Adam jerks back abruptly, breaking the kiss before it’s begun. “Fates told me I’d find my Omega in the woods. But I fell in love withyou.”
Still struck dumb, I don’t answer, not that he gives me a chance to. He traps my face between his hands and brings our noses and foreheads to touch. “Know you don’t believe me, but I’m gonna spend the rest a’ my life provin’ it. I’m a bastard, Echo, in more ways than one. In all the fuckin’ ways, but I love you with every bit a’ my black heart. That’s how I know this shit between us ain’t over.” He’s breathing hard with urgency that scares the living daylights out of me, but his voice is soft and gentle and so are his fingers stroking patterns lovingly down the sides of my face and across my cheeks as he whispers, “You saidagain.”
“Wh…what?” I hiss, so confused by the direction this moment has taken and distracted by his touch.I’ve missed this.
“Again.You said you wouldn’t love me again. That meant you loved me once and if a worthless fuck like me could make you fall in love with me once, then I know I can do it twice…”
“Adam,” I yelp, my voice strangling. Tears needle the backs of my eyes and my back muscles bunch and heat and my heart thumps and my lungs turn to lead. I try to push away from him, but he doesn’t allow my retreat. I sputter, “I didn’t…” He kisses me. “I don’t…” He kisses me and grabs me by the back of the head to hold us where we are.
“Shut the fuck up, Echo. You said it’s over, soagainis all I’ve got left.” He grabs my wrists and gathers them to the center of his chest, pulling back enough for me to be able to see his face. It’s a smart move in this battle, because everything is a battle between us. This right here is how he softens the battlefield, with his red cheeks and redder lips and his red eyes. It’s the gloss sheening his eyes though that make me so afraid, my best friend Fear runs right out of the room along with the other Alphas and Freya.
We’re alone. I wish we weren’t alone…
My heart is pounding rapidly — too fast to match his languid movements. Slowly, slowly, he brings my hands up to his lips. He kisses my filthy fingertips. “Not gonna let you take it from me.”
His gaze locks with mine. I don’t know exactly what he means by that, all I know is that the tone he’s using is one that I’ve never heard him use before and feels designed to make me cry.Desperate. It’s desperation. Desperate like a wounded Beta boy calling for his murdered sister in the night.
I shake my head and tug at my hands, but he doesn’t release them. Instead, he leans forward. His breath flutters against my earlobe. He kisses it. Then he kisses the side of my neck where I can still feel the lingering pain of the platinum digging into my skin, carving the trust I had for him out of my body, like sucking marrow out of the bone. And before that, the mark he left behind when an evil Berserker bit a runaway Omega he didn’t know in the woods.
“Don’t take it from me.” He kisses the other side of my neck, coming as close to me as our positions allow, like he’s trying to absorb me into his skin. “Please don’t take it from me, Echo.” His voice cracks.
“I hate you,” I tell him, only because it’s true. Every inch of me wants to say no — every inch, but the one inch more powerful than the rest. And its in that inch and in his touch that I come to understand a solitary truth. He doesn’t manipulate my powers, heprovokesthem. Because he provokesfeelingin me. So much feeling. Infinite feeling. Most of it terrible. But not that last inch. Because it’s that inch that feels so wonderful its very existence is in defiance of nature itself.
He inhales deep and quick. “Hate me like an Omega hates a Berserker…or like a wife hates her husband?” He doesn’t give up. Just like I don’t give up.
