Page 176 of Unmarked
“You’re not mad that I bonded them,” I murmur. “You’re mad that I needed anyone at all.”
His jaw ticks, hard enough that I feel it in the bond. “This estate was designed to keep omegas safe. Every Vale property has been. Long before I was born. Built like fortresses, disguised as homes. Walls thicker than most vaults. Surveillance in every shadow. A dozen escape protocols coded into the foundation.”
I blink. “Romantic.”
He ignores that. “It was meant to protect what’s precious. That’s the legacy - that’s thepoint. And I still watched you give yourself away in what feels like every room.”
“I didn’t give myself away,” I say. “I survived. I burned. Ichose.”
He exhales like that word physically pains him.
“I don’t belong to this house,” I continue. “And I don’t belong to your legacy. I belong to myself.”
“And now?” he asks, voice quiet but sharp. “Do you still feel like you do?”
I close my eyes. “Now... I think I’m figuring out what it means to belong with someone. Not to them.”
Another pause stretches. The air between us hums with the bond, still new, still raw. Still real.
“I don’t even live here,” he mutters suddenly.
“What?”
“I live in the city. In my penthouse. You think I want to spend my nights in this creaky ancestral bunker surrounded by whispering portraits and guilt-coded floorboards?”
“Wait - you commuted toreject me?” I stare at the ceiling. “You’re the worst romantic lead I’ve ever met.”
“And yet,” he murmurs, smug, “you begged.”
I groan and try to shift again - awkwardly, becausehello, still knotted- but Lucian adjusts with me, arm sliding under my head, hand curling around my waist like it’s a reflex.
Like I’m already his, and we’re both just catching up to it.
I go quiet for a moment, feeling the bond hum between us - low, steady, warm as embers.
“I keep thinking,” I say softly, “what happens when the OMB finds out.”
“I wouldn't be surprised if they already know. You disappeared from a high-profile gala with four alphas, all of whom are... let’s say... not especially subtle.”
“Looking at you, or Kai?”
He snorts -actually snorts- and it startles a laugh out of me.
“They’ll spin it however they want. That your bonds were reckless. That your heat was unstable. That we endangered you -”
“I mean,” I mutter, “technically not wrong.”
He growls under his breath. “They don’t care about your safety. They care about control. And what you’ve done - whatwe’vedone - undermines everything they’ve built their doctrine on.”
“Because I picked all of you.”
“Because you weren’t picked for someone else.”
That lands heavy.
“But they can’t act yet,” he adds. “You’re mid-bond. Unmarked, you were vulnerable. But now? Any move they make on you is a move on four bonded alphas. There are laws. Even the OMB has to pretend to care about those.”
I sigh. “Great. So I’ve got a heat-bonded, emotionally repressed power play on one side of me and impending government sanctions on the other.”
