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I jerk, shocked at his words. “Really?” I ask before I can think.
“Yes. I…” Ian looks around the room, then walks to the patio doors. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Silver. Despite our differences, I care about you as a person.”
I blink at his back. “I care about you and your pack, too, Ian. That’s why you can trust me when I say it won’t happen again.”
“What won’t?” Ian asks sharply, turning around.
“Me thinking that I can use people to make my life better. I appreciate all you’re doing for me, but I will find a way to pay you back. I don’t expect this,” I hold out my bitten wrist, “to mean anything. It was an aberration-”
“It was intentional,” Ian says with a queer look in his eyes. “It was so fucking intentional, I can’t even deny it to myself anymore.”
I get the powerful urge to walk backwards and keep going until my back’s against the wall.
“But-”
Ian cocks his head to the side and moves towards me. “I made a choice, again, to help you. To keep you. Silver, I don’t make mistakes, and despite how it ended the first time, I made a conscious choice to follow my instincts, the same as the day I first saw you, when you bumped into me and ran. I followed you and found you hiding in the gardens. I wasn’t going to let you escape me then, and I sure as shit won’t allow you to now.”
He’s standing right beside me, facing the other way. We are shoulder-to-shoulder. There is something so intimate about the two of us alone in a room together, talking about this, separated by an inch of thick air.
I shiver and blink rapidly as I stare at the window. There is so much emotion whirling chaotically around inside me. Surprise, regret, longing.
“It’s done, Omega. You will always be a part of this pack,” he snorts softly. I glance at him, finding him smiling wryly. “It’s your choice how deep in this pack you want to go. We won’t demand anything from you, Silver. This is your choice.”
On that note, Ian steps past me and slips out of the room, the two cats following him obediently.
Did he mean all that?
My chest is tight, and I’ve got these strange tingles that I haven’t felt in years. A tiny smile plays on my lips before I force myself to return to Earth and remember that they deserve better than an omega like me.
Don’t they?
nine
Silver
Three years and two weeks ago.
Three nights before the Omega Meet
Onyx yelled at me tonight. She said she’s tired. Onyx said she’s sick of my bitchy behaviour. She said that I should try harder. My twin will never know how much she sounded like our mother in that moment or how much that hurt.
I can’t tell her anything. She would never believe me.
So, I stay silent. And I play the part of the narcissistic twin. Because, that way, she hates me. That way, she doesn’t ask why. And she never really looks at me.
Present Day
I keep expecting someone to come to me and say, ‘Look, Silver, enough's enough, you need to leave’, but no one ever does. For three weeks, they let me heal. Ian, despite his gruffness, keeps bringing me food. Every time I turn around, he’s dropped biscuits, a plate of snacks, candy, or chocolate beside me. There are no words, just the silent actions of an alpha whose eyes are transforming from arctic to confused.
I glance sideways at the slice of mud cake he’s just deposited.
West has been my almost constant companion. He eyes the cake now, and then picks up the fork. I watch him, trying not to smile as he cuts off a bit and picks it up.
“Try this,” he murmurs.
I hesitate, but he brings the fork to my mouth, smiling in a way that I’m becoming smitten by. I open my mouth and moan as the rich taste floods my mouth.
“Oh, god, this is good.”
