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I watch the way she avoids my gaze, a realization sinking in. “You’re angry with me.”
The words are a revelation. And a relief.
God, I’ve wanted her to be angry this whole time. What I did to her was unconscionable. I deserve for her to hate me.
Her pretty features pucker. “I’m not angry.”
But she is. I can feel it, seething in her stomach. Layered with uneasiness and maybe even guilt?
I want to grit my teeth and snarl. What the hell could she possibly have to feel guilty about?
When she brushes her hands over the front of her dress, I realize—she doesn’t think she deserves to be angry.
A sick twist impales my stomach.
“Serena.” I wait for her to look over at me. Falling into those luminous green eyes, I urge her, “You should be angry.”
Which is when it occurs to me—she never has been.
Not when my teeth sank into her perfect throat. Not when she woke up on that cold metal table. Not that first night when I had to tend my mark or I’d go insane.
She’s never even raised her voice to me.
Because she doesn’t think enough of herself to believe she has the right to.
I don’t know what’s changed in the last week, but it’s clear she’s struggling with it. Perhaps Avery taking her to the gym has helped her move past her initial block, and now she doesn’t know how to seal the fury back up.
Good.
She shouldn’t.
“Tell me,” I order, low and soft. “Tell me how much you hate me.”
I must be some kind of fucked-up masochist because I really want her to.
If she punishes me, maybe I won’t have to keep punishing myself. But she doesn’t make it easy.
“No,” she huffs. “I don’t hate you. You brought me here and gave me everything you possibly could. You and your pack are my?—”
Mates.
It’s true.
But it doesn’t excuse what happened that night. “I should have courted you,” I growl. “Properly, the way you deserve. I had no right to even touch you, let alone bond you.”
She’s so stiff, it looks like she’ll crumble. And inside she’s… hollow.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she repeats. “It was only a matter of time. With my perfume being so messed up… and I could never control it. If I hadn’t perfumed you wouldn’t have snapped like that.”
The words coming out of her mouth aren’t hers. It’s clearly a bunch of shit she was force-fed for years. Removing any and all culpability from the alphas who wanted to prey on her. Because she was “too” sweet-smelling and “too” sexy.
When, really, they were too weak.
I’ll always hate myself for being one of them. She deserves so much more than carrying shame for things that were never her fault.
Things that, really, shouldn’t be shameful at all.
“It is our fault,” I argue. “Alphas… we’re the shameful ones, gaslighting omegas out of the workforce and their educations. Telling you it’s your fault we can’t be trusted around you. It’s fucked up and inexcusable and exactly what I’ve spent my entire career combatting.”
