Chapter 5

IXORA

I followed him, no not because I trusted him but or because of safety. I followed him because at this point Kade’s threat had teeth and I’d experienced those claws too many times to wait for more marks.

“You are dead to me”

I felt my heart feel nothing, it should have stung, but all I felt was chills, like my heart had long been exiled on the matter.

Outside, the air hit my face like a slap, I expected him to look back, soften a bit like I had seen on that instant but he didn’t instead the words came out flatly from his throat

“I didn’t do it for you, all this was done for my sake”

 A feeling I couldn’t explained ran through me as his words cut, there was something underneath them, something lingering, lurking behind those sharp steeler blue eyes. It made the wolf in me stir.

Reality set in even if no one said anything I felt it

I was his, and that terrified both of us.

The pull was something I could not imagine, from the second I saw him, my instincts screamed. Not in fear, more of recognition in a way, the kind that sinks deep in your blood, the kind I was yet to explain. But I couldn’t rely on my instincts, not when my whole life they’d done nothing to save me.

So, I followed silently, hands folded in my laps like a child being punished, his car was sleek, cold, and silent- just like him. I stared at the window and pretended I wasn’t shaking

When we arrived, I sated at the mansion, it was too perfect, too sharp, it looked like something that had been carved out of ice, and yet I felt the flames. I had no place here, but I had nowhere else.

Ronan summoned a maid

“Lock her in a room, not mine, not the west wing, she’s not to wander”

That stung

He didn’t want to look at me as if all he would see was problems and not a person.

Wordlessly I trailed behind the maid, when the doors slammed shut behind me, I stood there for a long moment hugging myself. Trying to breathe. Trying to feel like I was not a prisoner in Kade’s presence. I sat down on the bed, my thoughts were racing, clawing at me from the inside.

That’s when it hit me. My phone!!

Id left it in the car, it was probably dead, but that was the only piece of my old life I still had left that was mine. I needed it

So, I slipped out.

The halls were quieted, shadows long. I expected to be stopped. No one came and so I made it to the front door. It creaked open, loud almost accusatory. I winced

I reached the car, opened the door. My phone was still there, still cracked, still mine.

When I turned around, I didn’t go back.

On my way back I couldn’t explain why yet again, maybe the light from the garden, maybe it was the strange tug at my chest. But I followed it.

The garden looked like something from a dream. Lanterns glowed softly above rose lined paths and at the centre___

A Blue rose

It called to me. A pulse. A pull. I didn’t even think. I just knelt

I touched it gently

And it snapped

Before I could even breathe. He was there. His voice was a thunderclap.

“What do you think you are doing?!”

I flinched, for some reason the fear was instant, electric.

“I didn’t mean to, I, I, just found, I”

“You picked it” he cut me off

“It was an accident, I swear”

With heightened precision his hands wrapped around my wrist iron tight

“You don’t get to swear, you don’t get to touch what doesn’t belong to you”

I tried pulling away my heart hammering “You are hurting me”

His voice dropped into something cruel and distant

“When I brought you here, I never promised I wouldn’t hurt you if you crossed me”

 Then everything changed.

His hand flew to my throat.

I couldn’t breathe

I scratched. Kicked. Gasped

“Let me go please!”

Something flickered in his eyes then, A shadow of guilt? Of realization? He let go. I collapsed to the ground coughing with my chest burning

I looked at him broken “What is wrong with you?”

He didn’t answer. His jaw was clenched like stone.

“You were told not to leave your room” he said finally.

“You didn’t tell me why”

“Because I owe you no explanations, because this garden is mine, that rose is mine. And it only blooms for my mate”

I stared at him, frozen

“…what?”

“My wolf knows you” he said tightly. “That rose? Bloomed the moment you stepped into this home, it’s a sign”

I looked down at the crushed petal in my palm

My eyes widened

“You choked me... because you are scared of how you feel, are you going to reject me because I am wolf less and an omega?”  

His eyes narrowed “I choked you because you reached for something sacred. And yes I  am afraid. I have no idea what to do with this” I wasn’t going to accept or reject you. I hadn’t decided yet”

I stood up slowly. My body trembled but I was done feeling small.

“You don’t get to hurt me and then excuse yourself to me. Don’t forget I didn’t ask for any of this”

His face twisted from mine. “Go to your room and stay there until you are released. Or else I will kill you”

The words were cold. But I wasn’t afraid anymore.

Not of him

I stared at him like a stranger and then I walked away

I left the broken flower behind, but it wasn’t the only thing that had snapped tonight.

Something had broken in him; a lot had awakened in me.