Page 199 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“Yours,” she whispers. “Max, I’m yours.”

I’m rutting into her now, deep and relentless, one hand gripping her hip as she arches into me and meets every stroke. Her nails rake down my back, the sting sharpening everything, and her moans climb higher.

And somewhere beneath all of it, I feel the bond beginning to form between us. A tether taking hold somewhere inside my chest, pulling toward something answering in hers.

“I love you,” I say, and my voice breaks around the words. “I love you, Sophie. I have loved you for⁠—”

“I know,” she whispers. Her hands find my face, holding me, her thumbs on my cheekbones, her eyes on mine. “I know, Max. I love you too.”

I hold her gaze. Our breathing tangles together. I can feel her pulse everywhere, from the flutter in her throat to the way her body grips my cock. My pulse matches hers, beat for beat, both of them racing toward the same inevitable thing.

“Mark me,” she whispers.

She tilts her head, keeping her eyes on mine as she turns and bares the long line of her throat. Her pulse beats fast beneath the skin.

The world narrows to her.

To the scent of rain and rose petals and the heat of her around me and the trust she’s giving me after a decade of making herself impossible to reach, choosing now to let me all the way in.

I lower my head.

She comes the moment my mouth touches her throat, her whole body tightening around me. And I follow her, thrusting deep and holding there as the knot begins to swell. She gasps at the stretch, opening for me, and I can feel the bond waiting at the edge of us.

Then I bite down.

A broken cry tears out of her. I feel the bond lock into place—warmth flooding through me from the mark outward, spreading through my chest and into my blood. Like a door opening onto a room I didn’t know was mine. Like every wall I’ve ever built being understood instead of torn down.

And beneath all of it—her.

Her scent weaves into mine with the permanence of something being written. Rain and crushed rose petals winding through warm bourbon and dark chocolate until I can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins. I feel her through the bond like a second heartbeat—her heat, her relief, the enormous wave of emotion she’s riding and the love in it.

The love.

I lift my head.

My mark on her throat, small and permanent.

She’s crying quietly, tears slipping into her hair, and there’s a look on her face I’ve never seen before. Wonder, yes, but also the look of someone who has survived a very long time without this and is only now realizing she has it.

She turns her head and looks at me.

“I love you,” she whispers. The words leave her like a first breath, fragile and certain at once. “I love you, Max.”

They land in my chest like light.

“I love you, little one,” I say. “I love you more than you’ll ever know.”

We’re still locked together, my knot holding us in place, her heat pulsing warm around me, our scents wound into one. Finn’s hand finds the back of her head, his lips pressing to her temple. Ethan covers her hand with his, turns it over, kisses her palm.

Nobody speaks.

The bond settles deeper, rooting itself into something beyond words or confirmation—steady as the river, solid as the foundations of this house, permanent and patient.

I wrap both arms around her.

I have spent my life rebuilding things. Tearing down what was rotten and building something better in its place, with my will and a stubborn refusal to let my father’s legacy be the final word. I have built a company and a life I could be proud of.

I have never built anything like this.