Chapter 51
The reflection staring back at me in the dresser mirror was not mine
It had my eyes, my lips, and my slightly messy brown hair, but the smile plastered across her face was so wide, so bright, it looked like a mask. A cheap, plastic mask.
Three days.
It had been three full days since I went to Alpha Kyle for help.
And in those three days, nothing in my life had changed.
I still woke up in my perfect bed. I still made coffee and pretended that the laughter I gave me over breakfast was genuine. Astor was trying so hard to play ‘Happy Family.‘ He was trying things he never bothered with before.
He took me on a ridiculous hot air balloon ride yesterday. He bought me a tiny silver chain with a wolf pendant today. He kept telling me, “He was trying to be better for me and our relationship.”
I let him. I went on the dates, I took the gifts, and I kept the fake smile glued
- on.
He never noticed it was fake.
He didn’t notice because he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at his idea of me–the perfect, docile mate who should just be happy he decided being an asshole of course and tell somebody tells him something about me and
he believes it without even asking me again.
It reinforced my decision. If three days of effort from him didn’t make me feel
safe, then nothing ever would. I was leaving. Tonight.
I also spent the last three days thinking about Alpha Kyle. He agreed to help too easily. He promised me a route out and guaranteed that Astor would
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never be able to track me across the border. But deep down, I knew he wasn’t doing this just out of the kindness of his heart
I don’t care though.
Chun
Whatever Kyle was planning, it wasn’t going to work on me because he is not
going to see me either. I didn’t need a savior; I just needed a key to unlock the exit door. I need his help to cover my tracks, and that was it.
My fingers traced the edge of the mirror, my eyes fixed on the distant, cold look in my own gaze. I was ready.
“You look beautiful, mate.”
I froze. Astors voice was a deep rumble right behind me. He hadn’t made a sound. He was right there.
His large hands settled on my bare arms, right above the lace straps of my black dress. He started rubbing slow, circular motions on my skin. It was meant to be comforting, familiar, but it felt like a cage closing around me.
I inhaled, held the air for a second, then quickly pulled my mask back down.
I pivoted slightly, forcing a dazzling, excited smile. “Do I? Good. I want tonight to be perfect.”
“It will be.” His eyes were dark and possessive, sweeping over the sleek black material of the dress. “We are going to have fun. I still can’t believe you’ve never been to a club.”
I shrugged, trying to keep my breathing even. “I’ve been busy, I guess.” Or, rather, he and everybody in my life has kept me locked away so tightly that socializing wasn’t an option.
When I mentioned earlier that I had never been dancing at a club, he insisted that we had to go. He needed to be the first. He was my mate, and he needed to show me everything. I let him because it works perfectly with the
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plan at hand.
“I’m ready,” I said, my voice falsely light.
Astor leaned down and placed a hard, deep kiss on my neck, right on the scent gland. “Good. Let’s go make some memories we’ll never forget.”
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No, Astor, I thought fiercely, pushing back the small wave of nausea. Let’s go make the last memory we will ever share.
The club was everything I imagined: loud, crowded, and pulsing with music that vibrated in my chest. Thick sweat hung in the air, smelling of cheap cologne and expensive liquor.
But I wasn’t paying attention to the flashing lights or the pulsing lyrics. I was watching Astor.
He was drinking too much. Heavy shots of whiskey, one after the other. He kept insisting he was just “loosening up, but I knew the truth. He was trying to medicate his guilt, trying to make the past few years disappear.
He dragged me to a corner booth and leaned in, his breath hot and sticky with alcohol.
“Faith,” he slurred, grabbing my hand and squeezing it too tightly. “I am so
sorry.”
The words tumbled out of him like spilled water: “I was bad to you. I know I was. I wish I wasn’t that man. I wish I could go back and fix it.”
He looked pained and heartbroken. His eyes were red–rimmed and glassy, completely unguarded for the first time in a while.
“I love you,” he whispered, pressing my hand against his cheek. “God, Faith, I love you, and I promise, I will be better. I swear it.”
I stared at him.
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Weeks ago, those three words would have shattered me, crumbling all my
defenses. They would have made me stay.
Claim
Now? They were just noise. They didn’t move me. They landed flat, distant, like a radio playing in another room.
I gave him a sympathetic, weak smile–the real version this time. “I know, Astor. I know you do.”
I knew he loved me in his own broken way. But love wasn’t enough to heal the scars he left on my soul. Love wasn’t enough to make me forget the
terror.
He drank until he was barely coherent. He was clinging to my arm, leaning his massive weight against me as I guided him out of the deafening club and into the cool night air.
“Home,” he mumbled, letting his head rest against my shoulder in the car. “I want to go home with my mate.”
I drove us back to the house, my plan clicking into place. Freedom was only a couple of hours away. I just had to get him settled, wait for the designated signal, and walk away.
I practically carried him up the sweeping staircase and into our bedroom. He was too heavy, too drunk to help himself.
I gently lowered him onto the bed, and started working on his buttons.
pulled his sharp suit jacket off first, then started on the complicated ties of his dress shirt. I unbuttoned the cuffs and slipped the expensive fabric off his thick shoulders.
As I undid his final buttons, exposing his powerful chest, my hand brushed against his warm skin.
It was strange. He was never this vulnerable. Usually, he was a wall of
Chapter 51
aggression and control. Now, he was just a heavy, sleeping and hestarcken
man.
A sense of closeness, terrible and unexpected, washed over me. This man the man who broke me, was also the man who held my heart. The man I still maddeningly, loved.
I hesitated, his shirt pooling around his waist. I could feel the heat radiating
off him.
He stirred, his eyes opening halfway. They focused on my face, blurry witha alcohol, but the raw need in them was still there.
“Faith,” he breathed, reaching up clumsy hands and cupping my jaw.
I didn’t pull back. Logic screamed at me, reminding me that this was the very last moment I would ever be this close to him, and I needed to use it to
escape.
But my heart, that foolish, stubborn thing, didn’t listen.
He pulled me down, his lips crushing against mine. The kiss tasted like whiskey and regret, hungry and desperate. I welcomed it, leaning into the warmth of his body, letting myself pretend, just for a moment, that the man who killed my soul was gone and only the mate remained.
I kissed him back, a flood of repressed emotion rising up, and I let my fingers tangle in his thick hair as he rolled me onto the mattress.
The plan was seconds away. Freedom was waiting.
But right now, all that mattered was the weight of his body pressing down on mine, and the terrifying, wonderful realization that I was sinking, one last time, into the arms of the man I was leaving forever.
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