LOGINShare
Chapter 5
Last Updated:
2025-12-30 19:47:00His revulsion was a physical blow. It hurt more than the fire had.
I tried to pull my hand back, but my body was still weak, buzzing with the after-effects of that incredible relief. My fingers felt heavy, clumsy.
Lorenzo didn’t just look horrified. He looked furious. At me. At himself. At whatever was happening.
“Don’t,” he snarled, the word ripped from his throat. He took a sharp step back, breaking the contact. The moment his skin left mine, the hollow emptiness and the low-grade fire rushed back in, worse than before. I gasped, curling in on myself.
“Get up,” he ordered, his voice like cracked ice. He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring at the wall, his chest rising and falling too fast. “Get up off the floor. Now.”
I tried. My legs were jelly. I pushed against the door, stumbling to my feet. I was a mess—sweaty, trembling, my clothes wrinkled. He, in contrast, looked like he was made of stone, even if that stone was cracking from the inside.
“What is this?” I whispered, the words raw. “What’s happening to me?”
He finally looked at me, and the storm in his eyes was terrifying. “You’re an Enigma,” he said, the word dropping into the room like a bomb.
I stared at him blankly. “A what?”
“A myth. A legend. A genetic fluke that shouldn’t exist,” he spat out, as if the words tasted bitter. “You don’t present as Alpha, Beta, or Omega at birth. You hide. You wait. And then something… triggers you.” His gaze swept over me, full of disgust. “It seems I was the trigger.”
His scent. His touch. That’s what did it. The realization hit me, making me dizzier. My awakening… was tied to him.
“Why?” I asked, my voice small. “Why you?”
“I don’t know!” he snapped, losing his icy control for a second. He raked a hand through his hair. “And I don’t care. All I know is that an active, unstable Enigma is a walking disaster. Your scent affects every Alpha in the vicinity. It clouds judgment. It incites… baser instincts.” His eyes flickered to where I’d touched him, then away. “You cannot be near my daughter. You cannot be near anyone.”
Baser instincts. The way he’d looked at me with hunger before the horror. The way my own body had cried out for his touch. A hot wave of shame washed over me, mixing with the physical sickness. This was wrong. We were wrong.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I said, anger giving me a little strength.
“No one does,” he said, his voice flat again. He turned and walked a few steps into the room, putting more distance between us. “But it doesn’t change the facts. You’re a danger, Chase. To my family. To my command. To yourself.”
He pulled out his communication device. “Matteo. The blue room. Now. Bring the car to the south service entrance. And a sedative. The strong one.”
My blood ran cold. “A sedative? Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere you can’t hurt anyone,” he said, not looking at me. “Somewhere they can figure out what to do with you.”
They. Like I was a rabid animal to be studied. The fear was instant, paralyzing. “No. Please. I won’t cause trouble. I’ll… I’ll leave. I’ll go back to America. Just let me go.”
He finally turned, and for a second, I thought I saw something pained in his eyes. But it was gone too fast. “It’s too late for that. You’re a loose end. Loose ends get tied up.” His voice was brutal. “You should have stayed a Beta. You should have stayed ordinary.”
The words were meant to cut, and they did. Deep. I wasn’t ordinary. I was a monster. A problem he needed to lock away in a darker cage.
Matteo arrived moments later, with another man. They didn’t speak. Matteo’s eyes were cold and assessing as he looked at me. He held a syringe.
I backed up until I hit the wall. “Don’t.”
Lorenzo nodded once. Matteo and the other man moved. I fought, but I was weak, confused. They were strong, efficient. A sharp pinch in my arm. A cold rush spread through my veins.
The world started to go fuzzy at the edges. The last thing I saw was Lorenzo’s face, watching from a few feet away. His expression was hard. Closed off. The perfect, unfeeling admiral.
But as the darkness pulled me under, I thought I heard him whisper, so quiet I almost missed it.
“Dio, perdonami.” God, forgive me.
Then, nothing.
Latest chapter
Scars of Silence(MxM) Chapter 79
I don’t know how long I stayed on the floor. Time lost all meaning. The quiet in the apartment wasn’t peaceful; it was the quiet of a tomb. The silence of the bond was the worst part. It had been a constant in my life for so long—a hum, a warmth, a storm, a comfort. Now it was just… nothing. A void where Lorenzo used to be.The crumpled list of terms lay on the floorboards like a dead thing. I couldn’t look at it. I couldn’t touch it. Non-negotiable conditions. His words. Final. Absolute.My mind tried to process. To find a third option, a compromise, a crack in the logic. But there was none. Lorenzo hadn’t left any room. It was his way, or it was over. A part of me, the part that was still the man who had fallen in love with a storm, wanted to scream, to fight, to argue. But who would I argue with? The door was closed. The channel was shut.I thought about taking the deal. I imagined it. Packing up our life. Going to some sun-drenched villa in Tuscany. Sitting in silence with a thera
Scars of Silence(MxM) Chapter 78
Two days passed. Two days of suffocating silence. Alessia went back to Milan, her face etched with worry. “Call me,” she begged, hugging me tight at the station. “The second anything changes. Or if you need me to come back.”I promised. Then I was alone in the apartment. The silence was complete now, a living thing that followed me from room to room. I didn’t go to the office. I couldn’t face pretending. I worked from home, or tried to. Mostly, I stared at walls.The bond was a constant, low-grade ache. Not the sharp pain of a fresh wound, but the deep, throbbing pain of a limb held in the wrong position for too long. I could feel him out there. He wasn’t gone. He was… holding himself apart. The connection was stretched so thin it felt like a single, frayed thread. One good tug would snap it.On the morning of the third day, the thread finally twitched.Not a call. Not a text. An email. From Lorenzo’s secure account, the one he used for business.Ethan,We cannot continue like this. T
Scars of Silence(MxM) Chapter 77
Lorenzo didn’t come back that night. The silence in the apartment was a physical weight, heavier than any threat we’d faced. Alessia and I cleaned up the cold pasta in a wordless, grim ritual. The slammed door seemed to have sucked all the air, all the warmth, out of the rooms.She made up the sofa for herself. “I’ll stay tonight,” she said, her voice small. “In case… you know.”In case he came back raging? In case I fell apart? I just nodded, numb.I lay in our bed, in the dark, surrounded by the scent of him on the pillows. The bond was a strange, hollow ache. It wasn’t the sharp pain of a break. It was a dull, empty throb, like a phantom limb. He was out there, alive, furious, hurt. But the connection felt muted, stretched thin, as if he’d put a wall around his end of it. Or maybe I had.Sleep was impossible. Every sound from the street—a car door, a distant siren—made my heart lurch. Was it him? But the door never opened.By dawn, I was a wreck. I got up, made coffee. Alessia was
Scars of Silence(MxM) Chapter 76
The drive back from the symposium was a blur. The neat rows of grapevines, the soft evening light—it all felt unreal, like a painting I was looking at from the wrong side of the glass. Dr. Thorne’s words echoed in my head. Asynchronous evolution. A living bridge. The beautiful lie.The white business card was in my wallet. A secret. My first real secret from Lorenzo.I parked the car and sat for a moment, staring at the familiar facade of our apartment building. Our fortress. Our cage. The lights were on in our living room. He was home.I took a deep, shaky breath and went inside.The smell of garlic and herbs hit me as I opened the door. Lorenzo was in the kitchen, stirring something in a pot. He looked up as I came in. His expression was carefully neutral, but his eyes scanned my face, looking for… something. Guilt? Defiance?“Hey,” he said, his voice casual. Too casual. “How was the office?”“Fine. Busy.” The lie tasted like ash. I hung up my coat, my back to him. “Smells good.”“P
Scars of Silence(MxM) Chapter 75
Alessia stayed with us. The apartment, which had started to feel like a silent battleground between Lorenzo and me, was now filled with the quiet, raw sounds of her grief. She moved like a ghost, her eyes red and puffy, eating little, sleeping less. We tiptoed around her, our own argument buried under the immediate need to care for her.Lorenzo was in his element. The protector. The father. He made her soup. He sat with her for hours, not talking, just being there. He called her professors, arranged for extensions. He was building a fortress around her, just like he wanted to build one around us. And it was working. Slowly, she began to emerge from the worst of it, propped up by his unwavering, solid presence.I tried to help. I listened. I hugged her. But I felt… sidelined. An observer. Their shared history, their shared blood, created a bubble I couldn’t fully enter. My attempts to talk about the future, about other possibilities, felt hollow next to Lorenzo’s silent, steadfast guar
Scars of Silence(MxM) Chapter 74
The argument about the research institute hung in the air between us for days, a low-grade static that made the quiet apartment feel charged. We moved around each other carefully. We talked about work, about the weather, about Alessia’s upcoming visit. We didn’t talk about the email. We didn’t talk about the bond. It was the first thing we’d ever truly agreed not to discuss, and the silence felt like a wall.I didn’t reply to Dr. Thorne’s email. But I didn’t delete it either. It sat in my inbox, a tiny, glowing ember of possibility. I’d read it again when Lorenzo was in the shower, or out on the balcony. Rare interpersonal dynamics. Sustained synergy. The words were a siren song to the part of me that felt adrift.Lorenzo, sensing my continued interest, doubled down on “normal.” He planned a weekend trip to the mountains. He bought tickets to a symphony. He suggested we finally get that dog we’d half-joked about. It was all meant to be comforting, to anchor me in the life we had. But
You may also like
A Beta's Heart
Abigail Phillips24.9K viewsHis Girlfriend's Brother
Angela Lynn Carver40.0K viewsBonded
Addie Bell33.7K viewsIt's Just I Love You (English)
MaidenRose728.3K viewsTempting you
N Chandra2.9K viewsArrange Marriage
NeeNia32.8K viewsHe Left With Nothing
Ainsley C.10.6K viewsForbidden Addiction
Perps1.4K views
