All Chapters of Loving His Sigma Mate: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Brie's POVI don’t sleep so much as collapse into the thin mattress and let the dark take me. The second my eyes shut, the tears come harder.They soak the rough pillow, salt stinging the scrapes on my cheeks. My body aches in places I refuse to name. Every shift of muscle pulls at torn skin and deep bruises. I keep running my tongue over my teeth, like I can scrub the memory out of my mouth.Jackling stirs inside me, soft and careful. Warmth spills through my veins like someone pouring honey over open cuts.She doesn’t speak at first. She just presses close, nose against the raw edges of the bond that no longer exists, licking at the hollow space where Damien’s presence used to live.‘I’m here,’ she whispers. ‘I’ve got you. Breathe with me.’I do. In. Out. Shaky as hell, but I do it. She works while I cry, knitting the worst of the soreness, dulling the sharpest edges so I won’t wake unable to walk.By the time the first gray light leaks through the barred window, the pain has settle

Jackson’s POVThe grease on the bottom of the tin plate is starting to congeal into a thick, yellowish film. I stare at it, the half-eaten roasted venison stranded in the middle like a carcass in a dried-up creek bed.My jaw aches. Not from fighting, not from taking a blow like Damien did down in the Alpha’s study, though the entire keep seems determined to talk of nothing else, but from biting down on the inside of my cheek until the copper taste drowns out everything else.Eight months, three weeks, and two days since the harvest moon festival. Since the back room of the lower tavern smelled like cheap wine, spilled beer, sweat, and smoke.Since Sorrel’s fingers dug so hard into the muscles of my lower back that the purple-blue crescents stayed under my skin for a fortnight.She hasn’t looked me in the eye since. Not once. When she passes me in the courtyard, her chin is tucked so low her nose brushes the linen of her uniform, her scent spikes with a sharp, sour hit of terror that m

Damien’s POVThe headache hits first, thick and pulsing behind my eyes like someone has driven a spike straight through my skull. Then the low growl Voss directs at me from inside my already painful mind.Whiskey residue coats my tongue, sour and sticky. My mouth tastes like ash and regret. My ears ring from the constant snarling of my wolf.I shift on the mattress. Every muscle protests. The claw marks on my shoulders pull tight under dried blood, a sharp reminder of what came before. My father’s hands. The wall. The way Voss snarled at Alpha Dexter and then went quiet under the weight of rank.Something warm presses against my side.I turn my head.Blond hair spills across the pillow. Not the damp, dark, tangled mess I remember. Not the scent of soap and cold water with heather underneath, the scent that had finally quieted the hollow place in my chest.This is beeswax and something floral, heavy and cloying even in sleep. Silk sheets tangled around bare legs. A pale shoulder marked

Brie’s POVI stare at the same dark smudge on the floorboards until my eyes burn.The sound of Lori and Annabel’s laughter feels like a knife between my ribs, twisting deeper with every echoing note.He called her name. He growled ‘mine’ against her skin, bit her shoulder until it bruised, and buried himself inside her while the memory of my body still lingered in the sheets.It doesn’t matter if it was a mistake born of whiskey and midnight despair, he let it happen.When the shadows finally swallow the last trace of daylight from the high windows, Lori dismisses me with a lazy wave.I slip out of the room like a ghost, my bare feet silent against the stone corridors. I don’t head down to the kitchens or back to my cell.I decent, past the guard posts, all the way to my dark, damp cell at the lower east wing.Once the door clicks shut, the heavy numbness shatters and I collapse against the wooden door, my hands flying to my mouth to stifle the raw, tearing sob that rips from my throa

Brie’s POVThe marble floor is freezing against my kneecaps, but I don’t feel it. I feel the wet, sticky heat of the wine soaking into the hem of my apron.I feel the stinging, throbbing welt blooming across my left cheek where Lori’s heavy silver ring has split the skin.Mostly, I feel the sickening, hollow thrum of every single pair of eyes in that glittering room drilling into the back of my skull.‘Just stay small,’ I tell myself, biting down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep the tremor out of my jaw. ‘Don’t look up. Don’t give them the satisfaction of a tear.’My fingers clamp so tightly around the edge of the wooden tray that my knuckles turn paper-white.