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“Well, yeah,” Zee scoffed as if it were obvious.
Ishir chuffed out an amused sound. “I don’t think you need to worry about this. And if you do, I’ll tell you.”
Zee nodded slowly. “Okay.”
Ishir unearthed a doubt that had been spreading vines around his chest. “I have one more question, though.”
“Okay.”
“After your rut. Why were you so…nonchalant?”
The laugh Zee let out was incredulous, ripped at the edges. “Nonchalant. That’s funny.”
Ishir opened his mouth to argue his point, but Zee was already trampling ahead.
“I literally don’t have the words to tell you how it felt to watch you go shower after my rut. How it felt to let you out of my room, out of the apartment. Every fucking second I was just…losing it. Losing my goddamn mind and telling myself that I couldn’t show it. Couldn’t let you see what a fucking nutcase I was.”
Ishirhurt. For once, though, it wasn’t for himself. Every one of Zee’s words made a bruise bloom on his skin.
He’d been so fucking self-involved. So caught up in his own feelings that he hadn’t seenanyof it.
Zee wasn’t done.
“When I had to take the nest apart…” His words wobbled into a whisper. “You don’t know what that was like.”
Ishir squeezed Zee’s hands. “Zee…”
“I wasn’t ‘nonchalant.’ I was trying to hold it together, and that’s all I could give you.”
“Okay. I get that,” Ishir accepted softly, stroking his thumb across Zee’s palm.
They sat like that for a while, letting the debris settle until they could see more clearly.
“What do you want, then?” Ishir asked. “Because I already told you how I feel.”
“And I haven’t? Was ‘I want to own you’ too vague?”
Ishir laughed. “Okay, you kinda got me there. Still, though. You’re okay with being in a relationship with an Alpha?”
“I don’t give a shit about that. When you asked me that before, I didn’t answer because, no, I don’t see myself in a relationship with ‘an Alpha’, the same way I don’t see myself in a relationship with ‘an Omega.’ It’s justyou.”
Ishir’s heart thumped, his blood rushing in his head. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s only ever been you.”
Ishir couldn’t even attempt to keep the grin off his face, falling into a kiss.
Zee welcomed him readily, slotting their lips together, licking into his mouth, one hand clamped on the nape of Ishir’s neck, the other reeling him further in.
Ishir pressed their foreheads together as the kiss broke off. “I seriously have to thank the hockey Gods for trading you to the Cats. Like…what are the chances.”
There was an odd silence. “Actually…I might have had something to do with that,” Zee mumbled.
Ishir pulled away. “What do you mean?”
“I might have, you know. Told my agent to keep an eye on the Cats and suggest a trade if there was ever any interest.”
Ishir had to take a second to process that. “When did you tell him that? Last summer?”
