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My pack?
The words gave me whiplash, hearing that she wanted to choose—not just me, but Umbra and Ransom too? She would be ours forever…
“Is it a choice if you make it when you’re scared?—?”
“I chose you already when I came to your room. When I wasn’t scared, and Eric told me they wanted to offer me a place with them and I…” Her voice became choked. “And I believed him, but I still…I still chose you.”
My mind raced. “You aren’t in a good place tonight?—”
“I hurt.” Tears beaded in her eyes again. “I hurt so fucking much. Dusk please, I don’t want them to have any more power. I want you to have it?—”
“You don’t know what you’re asking?—”
“Don’t!”Her fingers closed around my neck, her voice suddenly harsh.“Like I haven’t spent all my life afraid of this.”
“I can’t be your monster?—”
“I was wrong about what I should have been scared of. I was wrong and I ran from you, and you were my choice and I don’t…” She choked on a sob. “I don’t want that taken from me, too.”
Her eyes glittered, tears finally tumbling down her cheeks, a thousand wounds in golden orbs.
My fault.
And she was begging me to fix it.
I never knew, until that moment, how weak I was in the face of her pain.
“We’re going back,” she whispered. “And I’m going to see them again.” Her voice trembled, and I could see her fear so starkly. “They’re going to be so angry, and what if… if they learnwho I am…” Her voice cracked. “I was wrong. They never wanted a princess bond?—”
“A princess bond?” I asked.
Why had she believed they wanted that? It wasn’t common, even outside of gold packs.
“I… it doesn’t matter. I think I made it up. I know they don’t want me, b-but I don’t want to live in a world where it’s possible that they bond me.”
My own blood turned to ice at those words. I knew she believed that they didn’t want her, but the marks across her body—they told me a different story. The Lincoln pack had brutalised her.
No. I didn’t believe they didn’t want her at all. I believed, down to my marrow, that the only reason Shatter had escaped today without a dark bond was because they didn’t know who she was, and they didn’t know she was gold pack.
“I won’t let them dark bond you, Shatter. Never in a million years.”
“Will you…” She swallowed. “You can make that promise real. If you?—”
“No.”
“P-Please,Dusk.”
I realised what she was asking for.
Safety.
That’s what my bite offered her.
I’d always wanted to bite her. Dreamed of it.
Just… not like this.
“I-I’ll do anything.” Her voice was thick. “You said… you said if I begged you.”
