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Yeah, it never prevented me from fucking up either. I took a step toward him with my palms itching to stroke his face and hair.
And his ramrod,my brain said.
No, that was the spell talking. I tensed, forcing my body to be still. “You don’t deserve forgiveness. You’ve done nothing to earn it.”
Ram sighed. “I deserve that. I know you haven’t loved me for years. This mate spell will fight to change that, but you don’t want it.” Tears spilled from his eyes, though his voice remained calm and steady. “So I’ll spare you from the spell. You don’t have to deal with me ever again once we’re free of this bubble dimension.”
“This what?” Elliot said.
“Not now,” I muttered.
Finally, Ram broke off our stare and turned his gaze to the floor. “I reject the mate spell. I don’t want you.”
It was a lie. I knew it, and he knew it, but that was all it took to break the spell, anyway.
Pain exploded through my chest like my heart bursting. I screamed and doubled over. Dimly, under the sound of my shouts, I heard Ram screaming in agony too.
It felt like an alien was clawing its way out of my body, one of those fucking chest-buster things. I always wanted to be in a sci-fi world, but not like this.
“Alyssa!” Jag, Elliot, and Moe shouted, almost in unison. Hands grabbed my shoulders and my arms, holding me up as the pain turned my vision to stars.
Then, as quickly as it had started, it ended.
The shattering agony vanished like a calm after a storm. The ribbon of gold that had stretched between Ram and me was gone, though the three that connected me to the other men remained.
Ram had dropped to his knees with his hands gripping his chest. Beverly tugged on his jumpsuit with her little hands as though to check on him. But he kept his red-rimmed gaze on me, and I knew he had just broken his own heart.
It was the only thing he had ever done for me without an ulterior motive.
But when I looked at him, I felt only a dim anger. No racing heart or fluttering stomach. I saw the man who had fucked me over a dozen times and who I had fucked over in return.
Chapter 14
Jag,Elliot,andMoewrapped their arms around me, overlapping with each other across my shoulders and waist. Jag’s breath stirred my hair just above my left ear while Elliot kissed the back of my head and Moe nuzzled my neck.
I was flooded with a gentle sense of safety like dozing in your bed under thick blankets.
Ram, however, kneeled on the orange shag with his head down and face hidden. Beverly nosed at his hand as though to provide comfort, or maybe she wanted pets. The fated mates spell had handed him a powerful way to manipulate me, but he had thrown it away instead. For no gain.
I could hardly believe it. In all the years I had known Ram, he had never picked someone else’s well-being over his own… except once before. The last time Juniper and I had fought him, he could have struck me, but he’d pulled back at the last second. That hesitation meant he’d lost the battle and ended up in prison.
A weird sensation churned in my chest, fizzing and violent, like a storm made of carbonated water.
Go away, I thought.
Noooo,my brain said and made the fizziness churn more. Fucking brain.Ram said he never stopped loving us. This is a big deal.
He fucking hid it well, I thought.
But he avoided hurting us in that fight, and he kept his prison gang from attacking us for stealing from them.
A shudder went through me, like someone had walked on my grave. In this case, on the grave of a love that should remain very, very dead but was trying to claw its way out of the wet dirt.
I’d have to beat it with a shovel until it went back down into the dark where it belonged. Everything Ram had said was the mate spell talking. Even if some part of him cared for me, it wasn’t enough to stop him from threatening my best friend and blackmailing me into even deeper legal trouble to save his own pathetic ass.
Love didn’t make him a good person. He had said so himself.
“Are you all right? What just happened?” Jag demanded.
