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I wasn’t ready to feel this or face this.
Not yet. My breaths were choked, ugly tears tracking my cheeks. And he held me tighter, even though I didn’t know why.
I didn’t understand.
I didn’t understand why I was here with him right now.
Was it possible they hadn’t seen the video? That it hadn’t reached them yet?
Nothing he offered would last. He would see the marks that seared across my body and he would vanish.
Ransom was awake, though. Would he dark bond me to ensure he would stay that way—even if I disgusted him?
I shoved Dusk away, terror blinding as sanity faded once more.
In a flicker of violence and rage and fear, he was gone.
I was left panting and alone on the bed.
I don’t know how bad it got, but the midnight opium that lingered in the room was edged with fear like I’d never imagined it could be.
My mind had vanished again, tugged down into murky depths at the fear of what would happen when they saw. I still had that sharpie in my pocket, the one Eric had pressed into my trembling fingers.
When they saw what I was, now…
I dared tug at my shirt and look down, and was met by the blossoming, angry bruises of their bites. Dried blood smeared my skin.
Marks of my own failure.
My own stupidity.
Not enough. Never enough. Not even for my mates…
I crossed toward the closet, desperate for anything that could protect me, the pen Eric had left me with clutched in my grip as reality faded completely.
DUSK
I waited an hour, and then I couldn’t wait any longer, my own fear of leaving her alone getting the better of me.
I’d had to leave.
She’d tumbled so far from sanity that her nails had dug into her own flesh until I pinned her by her wrists. Then she’d lost it, low wounded wails coming from her chest. Her scent was free in the space, and it was broken.
It wasn’t until I’d let her go and backed across the room that she had settled. Her body wracked with heaving sobs as she curled up in the bed, barely able to breathe.
But I couldn’t leave her alone for too long.
This was her sickness, I realised. I was witnessing what those logs described. The boundless agony of the instincts she was chained to.
She was an omega, and her mates had rejected her.
They hadn’tjustrejected her…
I knew her history. I knew she’d been in states like this before, and I knew she’d been suicidal.
When I finally dared return, it was to find her huddled up in the corner of my closet. She was wearing one of my bathrobes, and it was much too big for her.
That was good—at least, I thought it was.
