Page 60 of The Alpha's Forsaken Vow
“Is that what you are going with? That every time you moaned my name, you were out of your senses? That every time you fucking begged me to kiss you, you were out of your senses? That when you opened your legs, urging me inside—”
“Stop!”
“That you didn’t feel a thing every time we kissed? Every time you—”
“Stop it!”
“I’ll stop if you fucking stop denying what’s going on between us, Lila. I want to haul you over to me and kiss you, wild one, but don’t mistake my affection for tolerance. You wanted me as much as I wanted you, Lila.”
I scoff at the absurdity of his words.
“Do you fuck and want all women who aren’t your Luna, Alaric?”
“No, you are the exception.” He smiles.
He fucking smiles at me like that’s supposed to make me feel better.
“We are done here, Alaric. This…this will never—”
“Me finding the woman who was supposed to be my Luna? It was an arrangement, Lila. One made before I even met you.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No, baby, but it’s what I should have told you last night when I followed you.”
“Don’t baby me.”
And he didn’t follow me immediately if Julian had the time to spike my champagne. But even my vain self has to admit it wasn’t Alaric’s fault that I got drugged.
He smiles. “You don’t like it. Do you prefer ‘wild one’, then?”
“You should have told me. Before we kissed, before I came here, before I got humiliated in front of your entire pack!”
“I didn’t know how to. And would you have given me a chance to tell you that you are the only woman who has ever mattered to me? That I'm sorry for how I left things six years ago? Lila Winter, you’ve been in my mind for every fucking second since I laid eyes on you. There’s no other woman because you are it for me.”
He steps out of bed, walking toward me like he doesn’t care that he’s naked and ridiculous.
“Stop,” I whisper. “Don’t say things you can’t take back.”
“I’m not taking them back,” he says, stepping closer. “I love you, Lila.”
The air leaves my lungs. My heart stutters.
He says it like it’s simple.
Like one, two, three.
Like love doesn’t come with a cost.
Like we’re not already drowning in the consequences of last night.
“Words are easy,” I whisper. “But you? You hurt me. More than once. And I don’t have the luxury of trusting you again just because the bond between us is singing.”
There’s no point in denying the bond between us anymore.
“I know I hurt you,” he says, stepping so close I feel his heat. “And I will spend every day proving to you that I’m not that man anymore. That I see you. I don’t want anything from you except your truth. So, tell me, baby…do you regret me? Or just what happened?”
I swallow hard, eyes locked on him. “I don’t know.”
