“You’re making this difficult,” I whispered to my belly, where the twins continued their gymnastics. “I need to stay angry, and you keep responding to him like he’s worthy of your attention.”
As if in response, one of them kicked hard enough to be visible through my dress. A tiny foot or hand, pressing against the confines of their temporary home. Soon they’d be too big for even my expanded body to contain. Soon I’d have to face birthing alpha twins without the pack support that traditionally surrounded such events.
Would Damon be there? Would he hold my hand through contractions, coach me through the pain? Or would pack business pull him away, leaving me to labor alone as I’d lived alone these past months? The uncertainty made planningimpossible. I couldn’t rely on him, but I couldn’t entirely dismiss him either.
The door exploded open with enough force to crack plaster where the handle struck. I jerked upright, tea sloshing dangerously as Damon filled the doorway like an avenging angel. His presence radiated barely controlled violence, energy crackling around him in waves that made my omega instincts scream contradictory messages: run, submit, challenge, hide.
His eyes blazed with desperate intensity I hadn’t seen since the night everything fell apart. Papers crumpled in his clenched fist, probably Carlton’s report that had made him leave so abruptly. He stalked into the room like a caged predator finally freed, each step deliberate and dangerous.
“Tell me what happened that night. Every detail.” The words emerged as command and plea tangled together, his usual control shattered by whatever he’d discovered.
I set the tea aside with carefully steady hands, though my heart raced at his sudden appearance. “You already decided what happened. You announced it to the whole pack.”
The reminder should have calmed him. Instead, he moved closer, crowding my space with his presence. His scent overwhelmed me.
“I was wrong. God, Rhea, I was so wrong. Please, just tell me the truth.” The break in his voice undid me more than violence would have.
“Now you want the truth? After everything?” I pressed back into the window seat, needing distance he wouldn’t allow. “After youcondemned me publicly, carved me up, sent my family to die slowly?”
“I’m begging you. I need to know what I did.”
The last words stopped me cold. What he did. Not what I did. The implications of that pronoun shift made my breath catch. He knew. Somehow, he’d figured out what that night had cost us both.
“You don’t remember?” I studied his face, seeing fresh torment in familiar features.
“Fragments. Nightmares. But Carlton showed me... God, Rhea, the evidence...” He sank onto the ottoman across from me, papers falling forgotten as he buried his face in his hands. “Tell me. Please. I need to hear it from you.”
The raw pain in his voice cracked through defenses I’d spent months building. This wasn’t the Lycan King demanding answers. This was a man realizing he might have committed the very crime he’d condemned me for. The mighty Damon Kildare, brought low by the possibility of his own monstrosity.
Part of me wanted to let him suffer in uncertainty. The vindictive omega who’d survived exile alone wanted to watch him twist in the wind of not knowing. But the larger part, the part carrying his children, recognized that this truth needed speaking. For all our sakes.
He raised his head, eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion and anguish. When he leaned back, I saw his hands tremble before he clasped them together. He was afraid of the words an omegamight speak. The reversal of power should have satisfied me. Instead, I felt only weariness.
“I woke to sounds in my room,” I began, closing my eyes to better recall details I’d tried so hard to forget. “Shuffling by my bookshelf. At first, I thought it was you, coming to... I don’t know. Continue what we had started.”
The memory rose clear and terrible. The darkness of my childhood room, silver moonlight painting rectangles on familiar carpet. The disorientation of waking in a place that should have been safe, only to find shadows moving where no shadows should be.
“But it was Laziel.” I opened my eyes to watch Damon’s face transform with each word. “He was pacing by my window, agitated. When he saw I was awake, he started talking. Fast. Desperate. Like words he’d been holding back for years.”
“What did he say?” Damon’s voice came out strangled.
“He said I’d betrayed him. That he’d loved me for years, waited for me to see the truth. That you’d stolen what was meant to be his.” The words tasted bitter even in repetition. “He kept saying I’d chosen wrong, that I was meant for him.”
I watched Damon process this, and saw the moment he understood his brother’s delusion. Laziel had built a fantasy relationship that existed only in his mind, he had convinced himself I’d return feelings I’d never possessed. Classic obsession dressed up as romance, invisible until it exploded into violence.
“I tried to reason with him. Explained that you and I were fated mates, that there had never been anything between him and me.But he wouldn’t hear it. He kept saying that if you were gone, I’d see the truth. He was advancing on me, and I couldn’t tell if he meant to convince me or...” I trailed off, unable to voice what Laziel might have intended.
“Then you appeared in the doorway. Your eyes... they weren’t your eyes, Damon.” I shuddered at the memory. “Full wolf in human form. No recognition, no humanity. Just... instinct.”
The silence stretched between us, heavy with implications. Damon had gone completely still, absorbing each word like physical blows. I could see him trying to force memory from the blank space in his mind, willing himself to recall what came next.
“You didn’t speak. You just... attacked. It was like watching someone else wearing your body.” The clinical words couldn’t capture the horror of that moment. “Your own brother, and you tore into him without hesitation. He tried to talk to you, tried to say your name, but you were beyond hearing.”
“I tried to stop you, but you couldn’t hear me. You couldn’t hear anything.” My voice broke on the final words, remembering my desperate attempts to reach the man inside the monster.
Damon made a sound like a wounded animal. His hands clenched and unclenched, claws threatening to emerge. The mighty, untouchable Damon Kildare, faced with the truth of his own capacity for unconscious violence. I almost pitied him. Almost.
“After?” he managed to ask.
