Hagen’s P.O.V

“Come on, Hagen! You’re doing great!”

I lift my head up, ignoring the way the world tilts to the left as I try to find Apollos. It wasn’t even that sunny out, but everything feels so bright to my squinting eyes that it takes me a moment to spot him. He’s perched up in the heavens, at the top of the tree I was clinging to with all my strength.

“You can do it!” He shouts, smiling down at me as if this wasn’t crazy.

When I started the day, the last thing I expected to do with my Sunday was climb a damn tree, but here I was, panting with blurring, way-too-bright vision at what was sadly only the midway point on this unnecessarily big as fuck pine tree.

“Yeah,” I manage through my cotton mouth. I throw a thumbs up over my head and lean against the prickly bark. “Just… just catching my breath!”

More like trying not to die on the spot because, as it turned out, the wolf I’d always thought was the pack’s most laid-back motherfucker was actually a big fat liar with a very well-hidden secret.

Apollos Amorenia had the strength of the Gods.

“You’re almost there!” He shouts, and maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t. It didn’t matter. If I moved right now with the way my heart was palpitating, I’d fucking die. Apollos doesn’t know that though, so he keeps cheering me on, but it all becomes background noise as I turn my head and look towards the Amorenia house.

My eyes snag on Nikola in an instant, as if I was made of steel and he was my magnet. He’s sitting on one of the deck chairs of the outer patio and just the sight of him eases the tightness within my chest that I hadn’t realised was even building.

It’s just the bond, is what I try to tell myself as my heartbeat calms and my body relaxes with Nikola filling my attention, but it’s not. I’d gotten used to the pull of the bond over the months, so used to it that I knew instinctively that this wasn’t that. This was just… me.

Before that realisation can fry my mind, a figure invades the space beside Nik, leaning close. The rest of the world spills back into frame, reminding me that that figure was Jacob, and for a split second, the same crazy that had possessed me when Max was close to Nikola flickers to life, but I swat it away quickly. Jacob might be objectively adorable and literally the nicest warlock to ever walk the earth, but he was Nikola’s best friend. That was it. But they were seated closely and there was a frown on Nikola’s face that matched the tight bundle of something I’d been feeling since this morning.

Nik said everything was fine, but he wasn’t acting himself, and it had nothing to do with the blowjob he’d given me. Before, he was distant, but then something happened and he’d become cagey, and now every time he looked at me, right when I thought maybe we were okay, this weird panic flooded his eyes.

It made my stomach queasy, and I was starting to feel itchy with the need to fix it, but Nikola had practically pawned me off to his dad the moment we’d gotten here. It was clear as shit that Apollos hadn’t known we were coming, but before I could question Nikola, he’d retreated to their patio, and then people had started showing up.

We couldn’t be far from one another, so I’d seen him with his first visitor, a lady I didn’t recognise who’d grinned at me through the patio windows as if I were a pearl she’d found in a clam. Then, there was his mom, which fair enough, was his mom, but now Jacob was here and they were close and— now wrapping an arm around Nikola?

Something was wrong and it had nothing to do with jealousy. Something was wrong with my mate. I knew it like I knew the sky was blue. Fuck it—I felt it.In my fucking bones. And all I wanted to do was help, but it seemed like Nik planned to talk to everybody else before he spoke to me.

Opening up to people takes time– Zyair replies with what feels like a mental shrug.And Nikola’s only just learning to trust us.

I guess, but… why can’t he talk to me? It’s a whine. I’m whining, but I can’t help it. I felt helpless and useless, and I hated it when Nikola was always the opposite for me.

Maybe he’s scared of how you’ll react.

“Hagen!” Uncle Apollos shouts, and this time, it’s a whole lot less supportive and more demanding. “Start climbing or we’re doing this fifteen more times.”

No, fucking, way.

Tearing my eyes off of my mate, I look up and nearly sob with still half a tree waiting for me to scale it, but I’d asked for this, and I couldn’t give up on day one. So I focus my mind on the branch directly overhead and start the climb, step by step. My organs groan and my muscles bawl from the unfamiliar excursion, but I eventually make it to the top, though with the world spinning again. The only thing that stops me from fainting is the rush of chilled air that slices by me when I settle at the second-highest branch. Up here, above the canopy, we’re exposed to the winter air with the sun shining straight down on us.

“Hey, you did it!” Uncle Apollos cheers with a way-too-big smile. “It wasn’t so hard, was it?”

I force a smile. Climbing a tree wasn’t that hard, no, but it got a lot fucking harder when the wolf ahead of you strapped weights to your chest and made a point of cutting off the sturdiest branches for the climb.

“You’re out of shape,” he adds as he watches me pant for dear life.

“Yeah,” I groan, not bothering to hide my grimace. “Not many places to run in the city,” but there were some, so I tack on the truth. “I’m also lazy as fuck.”

Apollos snorts as he looks out at the peaking trees. “With that in mind, you’ve been doing well with the physical trials today.”

“Really? Cause I’ve spent most of the day on my ass.”

“True, but you kept getting up, and you didn’t make any of the same mistakes twice,” he proclaims with a look that seems a little impressed. “Your mind is sharp as well.”

It’s my turn to laugh because the brain in my head was a lot of things, but sharp wasn’t one of them.

“I’m telling the truth,” Apollos continues despite me. “I didn’t do this to see if you could climb a tree. I wanted to see how you did it, especially with limited options, and in the end, you chose the quietest route.”

I frown, looking back down at the tree we’d scaled. There wasn’t any set option of routes, only what was left.

“And other than your panting, you barely made a sound coming up,” he adds, drawing my confused gaze back to him. He watches me closely, eyes narrowing, “… Did you not do that on purpose, Hagen?”

I shake my head and his eyes widen some.

“In that case, you’re not just sharp. You’ve got some good instincts,” he replies, his big smile returning quickly and it’s as honest as it always was. “Those are good traits for a pack warrior.”

I try not to preen too hard. We hadn’t done much yet, nothing that even constituted a warm-up for a usual warrior, and I was pretty sure he was just blowing smoke up my ass cause I was Nik’s mate, but I can’t help it. It was nice to feel excited about a win in my life, even if it was just a little one.

“Okay, what’s next?” I ask, energy renewed despite possible internal organ failure.

“Next, we’ll have to test your hearing range,” he says with a glance down. “You should’ve heard her coming by now.”

“Heard who?”

“HAGEN!”

I’d grown up with Josey, so I should’ve been used to her demon screams, but my name yelled from the top of her lungs still rattles around my skull and makes me wince as she appears out of thin air at the bottom of the tree.

I glance at a smirking Apollos, forgetting for a second about my crazy sister with newfound concern about how the hell he’d picked up on Josey’s approach from all the way up here, but then the tree is shaking and everything outside of the psycho I call a twin, is forgotten.

“Josey, what the fuck?!” I bellow as I cling to my suddenly meager-looking branch.

“No, Hagen. What the fuck, you!” She shoots back while her gorilla hands continue shaking the fuck out of the tree that had likely been here for hundreds of years. “Get down here right now!”

“How can I when you’re shaking the goddamn tree, you fucking psycho?!?!”

When I risk a glance away from the screwball down below, I expect to find a soldier in arms beside me. Instead, I’m reminded of the apparent fact that Uncle Apollos was a whole lot stronger than he let on. The guy was still slouched in the tree, smiling as if we were on a hammock as it swayed from side to side.

“Why don’t you take a break and talk to your sister?” He offers casually. “We can continue after.”

“If I’m alive after,” I grumble as I look back down at my old man’s leftover sperm. “I’m coming down so cool it!”

Finally, Josey abandons her plot to kill me and our uncle as she takes a step back from the base of the tree. But she doesn’t go far, taking up a sentry position with her arms folded over her chest, her unflinching gaze fixed on me.

I loved my sister with all my heart, even though she was a full-fledged maniac, and I knew she loved me just as much, but sometimes I really wished I swallowed her in the womb.

Thing is, we were twins, but given the fact that she was barely older than me (barely), and I’d been a fuck-up for most of my life, sometimes— a lot of the time— she acted more like my big sister than my twin sister. This was one of those times. I could already tell from the glare she aims my way when my feet find the ground again.

“You going to shake me too?” I ask in a personal attempt on my own life as she comes stomping towards me.

“I just might,” she grinds out before she grabs my arm and yanks me forward, dragging me deeper into the woods.

I glance back at the Amorenia house, my heart sinking with the distance being placed between Nik and me, but Nik doesn’t come rushing out to stop me, so I bite my lip and swallow the discomfort. If he could manage it, then so could I.

Josey doesn’t take us too far, just far enough to escape any peering ears, which I suddenly realised might not include the God Nikola called his father, still perched within the trees like a hawk. But before I can say as much, Josey is whirling on me and huffing out an exasperated breath.

“Hagen,” she begins and I scowl.

“What?” How wasshethe tired one here when I still had weights strapped to my chest?!

Josey throws her arms up and lets them fall limply against her sides while she all but gapes at me. “What are you doing, Hagen?”

“I mean, I was climbing a tree and was about to train my ears—”

“About Nikola!” She bites out, her gaze serious. “What are you doing about Nikola?”

My scowl returns and this time, with a sharp anger at its side, “What am I doing ‘about’ Nikola? What the fuck does that mean.”

“About you and him and your fucked-up mate bond!” She snaps back. “I tell you what I learned about mate awareness, and you ghost me as if it’s not a glaring red flag waving right in front of your face? He’s doing something.”

“You don’t know that,” I argue, surprised to find my voice so cold when it comes out. “AndI knowthat he isn’t.”

“You guys have been living together for months, Hagen. Months, and that shit is still keeping you together when it never has for any other pair of mates, and you don’t find that suspicious at all?”

“It’s weird,” I admit with a nod, “but it’s not Nikola.”

Josey’s glare doesn’t fade, but the tension keeping her all wound up eases a little as she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

“Hagen, when you and Nik started out, and you said he apologized for the shit he did, I thought it was as good a start as you two were ever going to get. Then you had your kiss freakout, and you told me that you hadn’t talked about any of your old shit, like, at all. But you said you were trying, that it wasn’t easy, and that you were getting to it.” Her tone isn’t mocking, but it might as well be when it sounds that way to my ears. “But you never got to it? Did you? It just faded away, and I didn’t say shit because a— it’s your relationship, and b— you are clearly happy, and I’ve missed seeing you this happy, but Hagen… come on.” She says my name like a plea, and it carries through in her gaze as it finds mine and latches on. “You really think Nikola—Nikola—wouldn’t drag out any chance he had to spend every minute he can with you?”

Anger swells inside of me so quickly, I have to bite back the words that bubble up with it, ready to lash out at Josey for talking about Nikola as if he was some predator when he wasn’t anything like that.

“It’s not Nik,” I repeat slowly, forcing myself to breathe past the rage. “I’m going to talk to him about it.” Josey snorts, and it’s like a physical lash. “I am.” I protest, hating the mistrust in her eyes. “I’ve already tried, this morning in fact, but Nik’s been in his head all weekend since we… did something.”

While I try not to die of embarrassment, Josey shakes her head, her eyes closing like she is saying some solemn prayer. “You’re like a sheep tying the wool over their own eyes, Hagen. How long are you going to keep prancing aroundhappy landbefore you take a look at the dead shit surrounding it?”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“Am I?” She shoots back.

And fuck her, because yes, she was being fucking dramatic and blowing everything out of proportion. I knew Josey just wanted the best for me, but she wasn’t in our relationship, day in and day out. She didn’t know how hard it was to eventhinkabout bringing shit up from our past when we were barely navigating the present, and I want to tell her as much, but I can’t. I can’t because deep down I know she’s right and Ihateit.

A few months ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated to bring up what Josey had learned about mate awareness to Nikola, and even if that had come from a place of mistrust that didn’t really exist anymore, I would’ve done it. But here I was, still dilly-dallying with the revelation as if it meant nothing— as if ignorantly spending days on end with Nikola meant more. It felt like it did, which is a fucking terrifying realisation that makes my heart start beating faster.

“He’s not lying to me,” I state because that was a fact I wasn’t going to challenge. I knew Nikola now, and I knew he wouldn’t do that. So, I meet Josey’s gaze with all the rage her words provoke in me, “It is weird that we’re still locked together, but we haven’t actually tried being apart, so don’t just assume that it’s his doing and don’tevertalk about him like that again.”

Josey doesn’t back down from my glare, but she doesn’t challenge it either. Her lips twist to one side, and after a horrible long moment, she nods, “Fine. So what are you going to do?”

“That’s my business,” I try, but Josey rolls her eyes and groans.

“When I’m the one on the other side of the snitch channel, feeling every time you freak out, it becomes my business too.”

It didn’t work like that, and we both knew it, but what was the point of holding out when we both knew I always told Josey everything, no matter what.

“I’ll talk to Nikola about it tonight,” I promise her and myself. “We’ll test it out, see what happens, and after… I’ll tell him that we should start making a plan about how we want to address the other stuff. Nik likes plans.”

“Goddess, you’ve got it bad,” Josey groans, but she nods nevertheless. “That sounds good, but if you want to talk about it, you might want to start with getting comfortable calling it what it was. He tormented you, Hagen. Yeah, it was love or whatever, but it was still fucked up, not just ‘stuff’.”

“I know that Josey, fuck,” I groan as a familiar unease stirs inside of me. “I know, will you back off?”

“I’m not trying to be a dick, Hagen,” she replies, quietly this time and so damn gentle that it makes me flinch even before her hand comes over my shoulder. “I just don’t want you to get hurt, and that’s what will happen if you keep—” she stops herself, as if hearing her own lecture incoming and cutting it short before I have to. “Look, Hagen. I know it’s probably easier just to sweep it under the rug and forget about it ’cause you’re happy now with him and things are different, but it’ll always be there, Hagen. It’ll never go away, all the hurt he caused you and the things you never got to say, it’ll all just be waiting there. And if you pretend it doesn’t exist, one day down the line, the rug will shift, and it’ll be in your face, and it’ll be so much worse dealing with it then.”

“I said, I know,” I groan as I rub my palms over my eyes. “I get it, Josey, so can you please stop chasing the psychology degree and back off.”

Josey snorts like I want/intend for her, too, and even though she knows I’m wiggling my way out of this conversation, she lets me.

“Okay, I’m done,” she states, patting my arm before she lets go and lifts her hands high in surrender. “I got everything out, so I’ll just listen from here on, when you want me to.”

“We both know that’s a fucking lie. You can’t shut up for the life of you,” I grumble as I turn and head back for the house.

“Rude,” she remarks, shoving my back as she falls into step beside me. “I just want what’s best for you, little bro.”

“We’re the same fucking age!” I shout, annoyance making my hands itch to strangle her.

Josey smiles wickedly as if she just wanted me to try it, “Not when we’re counting minutes too.”

I groan and carry on, ignoring the demon beside me as we break through the trees and reach the Amorenia property line again. Apollos isn’t in the trees anymore, but there’s no trace of him anywhere in the backyard, and there’s no trace of Jacob either as Nikola steps out of the back patio door.

He looks tired. No, Nik looksdrained, which feels impossible when this morning he’d been all worried frown lines and blurted nonsense, but happy at the end of it, so the shift to this— where he stands with slumped shoulders and heavy eyes, has me rushing towards him, Josey completely forgotten.

“Hey,” I whisper, my heart lodged in my throat as I take his hand in mine without a second thought. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

Nikola looks down at our hands, stares at them, and then he frowns, his stare angry, almost hateful. It clogs my chest so quickly, I try to pull back, but his fingers tighten around mine in the blink of an eye. That makes something big and bright burst in my chest, even as his grip turns vice-like, to the point that it actually hurts, enough to draw a gasp from me. Still, his grip keeps tightening and tightening and it makes me… relax all over.

“Hello, Josey.”

I blink away from our hands, looking at Nik but he’s not looking at me. His gaze is fixed on something over my shoulder. I follow it to where my sister stands behind us, and for a moment, I’m shocked to see her there and then even more surprised to realise I’d forgotten about her entirely. She stares at Nikola, really she glares at him, and then at the way he strangles my hand with his.

“Nikola,” she greets after a minute before her eyes flick my way, questioning.

I shake my head. I didn’t know what was going on or what had happened, but Nik wasn’t hurting me, not really. I mean, the grip was turning numbing and my heart was racing with something precariously close to fear, but the pressure of it had gotten rid of that awful itchy feeling and it all felt weirdly nice. Just like his magic was starting to feel when it was around me. Which was weird, I know, but I wasn’t about to get into that with Josey, and not now when something was wrong.

“Where’s your dad?” I ask, drawing Nik’s grey eyes back to me. “Where did everyone go?”

They’re muddled in a way Nikola’s clear grey eyes never were, and as I look up at him, I realise it’s sadness. He’s not just tired— he’s sad.

“Nik,” I whisper, reaching a hand up for his face, but he pulls away.

Jaw clenching, he shifts back as his angry frown returns as he puts space between us— or tries to, his unflinching grip on my hand only ends up dragging me forward with him. He frowns at that too, but the sadness in his eyes eases, if only for one second.

“We’re going to go, if that’s okay with you, Josey,” Nikola says suddenly, his gaze back on Josey. His expression is flat and serious enough to hide the sadness there from her, but I could still see it. “Hagen and I need to talk… about our bond.”

He’d heard. Everything we’d said, everythingJoseyhad said, he’d heard it all.

I should feel relieved, that I don’t have to muster up a way to talk about it, that I don’t have to put a foot into what was finally turning good between us, but all it does is trigger a fear in me like nothing I’d ever felt before.

“Niko—”

“Good,” Josey replies, cutting me off before I can finish. I throw a glare at her, but she doesn’t even bother trying to look remorseful. “Call me if you need me.”

With that, Josey turns and leaves, and then it’s me and Nik. I face him again, hating the resignation in his gaze, as if he’d already made his mind up about us when we hadn’t even talked. Was it our past or the mate awareness? Josey had been ruthless in the woods, but I’d defended him— he must’ve heard that too, right? He must’ve known thatItrusted him.

But before I can say as much, or try to, Nikola’s magic is encircling us and we’re back in my apartment, which feels so much darker than when we’d left, even though the sun was still shining outside.

“Nik,” I start again, and it’s like a trigger. He jerks, releasing my hand so quickly it almost feels like he’s shoving me away. It’s so shockingly painful that I have to breathe past the ache that wells within our bond. “I know you heard us, but I trust you, Nikola.”

Nik’s jaw tightens, same as his empty hand that clenches into a tight fist as he steps back, as if he’d stopping himself from reaching for me again, and I hate it, especially with the way my palm tingles where he’d been clinging to.

“Goddess hates me,” he whispers to himself, not to me because he’s not looking at me. He’s glaring at his fists, at the ground, but not at me. Then, he’s walking away, to the bedroom without me.

It feels like just a few nights ago when he’d needed space after the hurt I’d caused him, but this time I can’t just let him be. There’s a part of me that screams in warning to do just that, but that part pales in comparison to the rest of me that wants to make things better. To make Nik’s lips tilt up into one of his half smiles, and to make sure that he knew that he could lean on me, that he could talk to me.

I follow him, abandoning fear and caution. I follow him.

Nikola stands in the centre of my room, just beyond the doorway, his shoulders still slumped, his back towards me.

It’s wrong. Everything feels so wrong.

“Josey worries and she doesn’t know how to stop, so she says too much sometimes,” I say as I take a tentative step forward. “She’s protective and that doesn’t always come out in the best way. I… I know you wouldn’t do what she thinks. I know you wouldn’t.”

Nikola sighs, and the sound hurts. It physically hurts because inside it, I hear all his misery, and there’s so much of it.

“You should break our bond, Hagen.”

A ringing starts in my ears, the type that comes when you initially get hurt and your body doesn’t know how to compute it for a moment, so there’s just that ringing. When it patters out and the pain slams into me, my eyes feel wet.

I’m not breathing. I’m too scared to, too scared to move, but my lips manage to somehow.

“W-What?” It’s barely a word, but I know Nik hears it because he flinches.

“… I can’t say it again,” he mumbles, as his head drops. “Don’t make me say it again.”

The words shake as he says them, rattled by the violent beat of his heart, and that’s the only way to describe it— violent. It’s beating too fast, unnaturally fast, like mine, and it rattles our bond. Our shaking, trembling bond.

I realise I’m moving only when my hand comes around Nikola’s shoulder, forcing him to face me. He tries to keep looking down, at the floor, but I force his head up as I take his face in both my hands and meet his tearful eyes.

“Why would you say that?” It’s accusatory, and that’s good because he should never say that, right? Not after how far we’ve come, not after everything. And I know he doesn’t mean it, so, “Why would you say that, Nik?”

Nikola’s teeth clench, and I feel his magic surge forward, in that bone-deep way it did before it came around me, protective and claiming. It tappers off before it gets the chance too, and Nikola tenses all over with effort, but he doesn’t reply.

It’s wrong.

“Because of what Josey said?” I ask, my voice trembling too because… I’m scared. I’m so fucking scared. “About the mate awareness? We haven’t even checked, but I don’t care if it’s gone. You can stay here even if it is.” Nik’s eyes spark a little, with surprise? Hope? I need whatever it is to stay there, so I keep talking, “You can keep living with me. I-I want you to stay here. I want you to stay with me.”

The sound Nikola makes is one I’ll never forget. I thought admitting what I’d only just realised would make him happy, but it’s the opposite because the sound he makes is tortured and pained, as if I’d just torn his heart out.

“Hagen,” he sounds so sad, and I don’t understand why. Isn’t that what he wanted? Didn’t he want to stay with me too?

“I know it took a while, but I’m in this,” I’d told him that before, and I still meant it, but it was hard to admit now when Nikola was looking at me with so much regret. “So, whether or not there’s something forcing us to be together, I want y—”

“The mate awareness is no longer between us, Hagen,” Nikola says as he takes a breath, as if he was the one who needed it.

My hands stay on his face, holding on even as the rest of me seems to wither. There’s that fear again, but I run from it, not willing to have it consume me again. I didn’t want to feel things like that with him— never again.

Nik’s eyes dart between mine, suddenly desperate as if he needed to memorise something quickly. “It faded after my third night here.”

We stare at one another for a long time, or at least it feels like a long time. It feels like forever since I looked up at Nikola, fighting the tears trying to fill my eyes because no. Not again. No. There was no way. He wouldn’t. I knew he wouldn’t.

“I didn’t do anything,” he adds quickly as my hands begin to slip, to fall. Of course, he didn’t. I already knew that. “I didn’t do anything.”

No, he hadn’t.

The mate awareness affecting our bond slipped away, and Nikola knew, and he didn’t do anything.

He didn’t extend it. He didn’t fake its presence. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t do anything.

My hands fall limply at my sides and I take a step back, staring at the floor now because I suddenly couldn’t look at him even though a moment ago, I’d felt like I couldn’t breathe unless I was looking at him.

Was it anger or sadness currently clawing at my insides? Hurt? Betrayal? Or was it just all of it? Wasn’t it always all of it? Because there’d never been just anger and hatred with Nikola, and now there was even more this time…. It wasn’t as easy to find anger and stick with it. Before, I could be angry because I expected these things from Nikola, and I’d never felt so much… for him. I didn’t trust him. I did—had… did now. So I couldn’t just be angry. There was too much else.

“… Why?”

Why didn’t you say anything?

Why did you leave it this long?

Why did you do this, again?

Why would you do this to us?

Why would you do this to me?

Why do youalwaysdo this?

“I don’t know,” Nik mumbles. “No, I didn’t know before. I knew that I should’ve given you the choice. I understood that and I wanted to do it— to make you happy, but…” It’s a while before he speaks again. “When it comes to you, I’m selfish, Hagen. Even when I don’t want to be, even when I try not to be, there’s always a part of me that’s selfish with you.”

I sigh and it resembles the sound he’d made, and I understand it too well now.

I step back, needing space but knowing I couldn’t make it far enough away from him— I never could. So I walk to the bed so that I can sit because right now, my legs felt like they’d give at any second if I didn’t. The bed was something solid, unlike the trust crumbling around me, or it should’ve been, but the sight of the perfectly made sheets just capsizes me all over again.

A few hours ago, we were sleeping there, then awake and talking, and I was laughing because Nikola always made me feel… made me feel safe, and now….

“You should break—” Nikola mumbles and his voice is trembling again, “it.”

Don’t make me say it again.He can’t say the words.

“I’ll always want more,” Nikola doesn’t sound like himself. He sounds disgusted now, like he hates himself, and that’s good. He should. He should fucking— “I thought I was over this. I thought that it was just what happened because I was too young to understand my feelings for you mixed with the bond, and the link. I thought it went away, and that if I did things the right way, it would work out fine. But, fine isn’t enough, Hagen. I don’t want what other mates have. I want more. I’m tired of— I didn’t realise I was even tired.” He’s not making sense. He must know it cause he takes a desperate breath, shaking his head over and over again. “I can’t keep myself on a leash forever. I want you to want me just as I’ve always wanted you, and even then… I think I always want more, so you have to— I could never. I would never take you away from me, so you have to—” His breaths are short now, like they were in the bathroom when he’d had his panic attack. “Hagen.”

“Don’t!” I snap as I look up, meeting his eyes and hating the terror I see running rampant in his gaze, and hating how desperately I still want to fix it even more. “Don’t fucking put this on me! You— you are so—” he winces, and my heart bleeds. “Fuck you, Nikola!”

“I’m sorry,” he says so sincerely that I nearly scream.

“You’re sorry?!” I bellow, back on my feet now and shaking, even where my fists clench at my sides. “You’re sorry after all of the shit you’ve just thrown at me!You’resorry?!”

“I—”

“I was ready to break the bond! Months ago—yearsago! I would’ve done it, but you asked for a chance!” I shout, voice cracking as I glare at him. “You fucking promised you’d be better, and I promised I’d try and give it a chance. And now what?! You’re telling me that was all fake— that you “can’t help” being what you were before?!? So we’re back here?! We’re hereagainand you want me to break our bond?! Now! When you know—” that I can’t.

I can’t.

I wish I could. Goddess, in this moment, I wish I could just say the words and rid myself of Nikola once and for all, but I can’t. It’s too different now.

He’s not just Nikola, the kid I used to care about that turned into a little psycho who wouldn’t leave me alone. He’s Nikola, the guy who freaks out if he thinks there’s even a chance I’m sick, and who leaves chocolate in corners of my apartment to find. He’s the guy who smiles quietly at his book if I ever sit down next to him during his quiet times. He’s Nikola, who doesn’t think I’m a fuck up, but someone who’s just finding my way in life and wants to be there every step of the way. Nikola, who kisses me as if I’m the most precious thing in the world, as if there’s nothing more important in the world to him.

He’s Nikola.MyNikola, and I… I….

My lips pull tight as my heart rages in my chest, ”Fuck you, Nikola.”

The tears falling now, angry fucking tears and I hate myself for letting them out, but I can’t stop them. There’s just too much going on inside of me and I can’t control any of it.

Regret for sweeping everything under that goddamn rug. Regret for being so fucking stupid. Longing for what we’d been working towards, what we’d been so close to having. Anger for ever thinking we could be better, that we could be more. And sadness. There’s so much fucking sadness that I can barely breathe around it.

“Hagen—”

“Get out!” I shout, wiping at my tears as I march towards his nightstand, grabbing everything I can so I can throw it at him. “Get the fuck out!”

I don’t see if it lands, I don’t fucking care. I reach for everything I can, everything that’s ‘him’ in this place, so I can tear it from where it’d just started to take root. But he’s everywhere now, even in the things he didn’t bring, he’severywhere. So I’m just grabbing things, trying to tear him out, but it’s impossible when his roots are already so deep within me.

Through blurred eyes, I see black and red glitter just before my hands. I stall, my heart fucking breaks and Zyair howls desperately, but hands pull me back before I can destroy that too.

Nikola grips my shoulders tightly, forcing me back, and his touch burns as much as it threatens to make me melt, but the safety is fake. It’s all fucking fake. Like him. The fucking— “Liar! You’re such a fucking liar!” So I fight against the hold, against him, but he’s stronger than me, so there’s no real fight.

Nikola forces me to face him, and he stays still like a statue even as I slam my fist against his chest, kicking at him so I can get away because being this close to him hurts so fucking much. He holds on, even as tears slip past his own vacant eyes.

“Break it, Hagen,” he says, voice still trembling. “After what I’ve told you, if you don’t want to be with me—”

“I don’t!” I scream in his face, and he flinches. “I don’t want you!”

He swallows, breathes, then bites out, “Then break it.”

I can’t. I want to scream at him again, but admitting that to him is the one thing I can stop myself from doing. ButIknow, so the tears are worse because I understand quickly what this is.

It’s not a stalemate. If I don’t break our bond, then there’s no ‘my side and his’, there’s only ‘his’.

“You have to,now, because I don’t know how to not be selfish with you,” he whispers as those awfully mournful grey eyes hold mine. “If I can have you….” He’s shaking his head again. “I love you too much, Hagen.”

The words hurt. They hurt so much because I know they’re true, and because it’s always been true. Nikola loves me too much. They cast that familiar fear back inside of me, and something like comfort, and they scare me in equal measure. He scares me, and so do all the feelings I have for him now, so I say words I know will hurt him.

“Ihateyou, Nikola.”

Nikola stiffens, his expression twisting into something of pure agony and I feel the wreckage it causes inside of him. It erupts through our bond like the pain he’d caused me. I hope it breaks it, breaks us, but our bond is too strong for anything but the words neither of us could say to break it.

So, locked in agony, Nikola’s eyes hold mine, begging and apologetic before they clear, and become expressionless as he tries to hide behind a mask I’d long learned to read.

“I rather you hate me than lose you,” he says, resolutely. “And if you can’t break our bond then I can make you love me again, even like this.”

‘Again’. I flinch and his hands tighten around me.

“I donotlove you.” Maybe I was close. Maybe, but, “I have never loved you.”

Nikola watches me soundly. “Iamsorry, Hagen,” it’s so fucking imploring. So fucking Nikola. “I didn’t do this on purpose.”

“I don’t believe you,” I bite out with so much fucking venom it makes my jaw ache.

Nikola looks away then, as if being forced by the thread still managing to tether us together, he faces me again, “I know, but I didn’t want it to be like this.Idon’t want to be like this, but I’m tired of always holding myself back with you.”

I glare at him, wanting to punch him and then hug him, if only to make the muddle in his eyes disappear, and I hate him all the more for it.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says, and it could only be to himself cause the prospect of an ‘us’ made me feel all sorts of angry. “We’ll figure it out, somehow, and then—” his gaze turns determined, but I don’t let him speak the hopeful thought.

“I will never love you, Nikola,” I promise in a vow to myself.

Nikola’s teeth clench, “Yes, you will.”

“I won’t!” I seethe, seeing red.

“You will,” he replies, so fucking sure. I try to punch him again, try to claw the skin from his face.

“I will never let you mark me— you’ll have to force it on me because I will never,everaccept you.”

There’s fear in Nikola’s eyes for a moment, and the part of me that wanted to hurt him as badly as he kept hurting me is happy to see it. Happy to know that he’s scared that it’s the truth. Goddess, I hope it’s the truth. But he doesn’t let me go, because he would never let me go first.

Instead, a tendril of his magic runs along my face like a faint touch. His eyes follow the invisible thread as it drifts down my neck, gentle in its caress, “I would never force myself on you, Hagen. Never.”

He says nothing else, as if he doesn’tneedto deny the rest. The words rise to the tip of my tongue, so easy it would barely take a second and then this would be over. But that’s as far as they go.

“I’ll go,” he says finally, his voice empty like his gaze. “But I’ll come back.”

I don’t reply, having nothing to say but hateful lies that hurt even to think now.

Nikola stares at me, and in his gaze, I see all the happiness we’d had these last few months, these last few nights. I see the person I’d come to yearn for, the one I’d started wanting to protect and have close and—

“Get. The. Fuck. Out.”

Nikola leaves, taking every trace of him with him, but he doesn’t get the roots. Those stay like little prickling reminders that only my eyes can see, and it’s so empty. It’s so horribly empty, worse than before.

I hate him. I hate him, I really do.

I hate him for everything and I… I shake my head, ignoring the tears streaming down my face, ignoring the pained cry that escapes me, and the way my fingers clench aimlessly for a warmth that wasn’t there.

No. There was nothing else. I wouldn’t allow anything else. I fucking hate him.

———-

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh

Now, let the games begin 🙃

Thoughts??????

Thoughts on Nik’s revelation to Hagen??? Thoughts on Hagen’s reaction?????

We kind of knew it was coming from what happened last chapter, but we didn’t know it would happen like this. Like with the mate awareness detail… Nikola is fuckeedddd up, and I love him for it. Someone actually called it with the unreliable narrator comment, so good on whoever that was!!!

Just to clarify – WE ARE NOT STARTING FROM SCRATCH WITH THESE EVENTS, if anything, we’re curtailing it forward now, cause Nikola isn’t going to be holding back.

It is undeniably fucked up what’s going on here, and it’ll only get worse, so once again, this is your reminder that this book is a dark romance. They will reach a happy end, but it’ll be a mess getting there.

Lucky for us, it’ll be a sexy, fun, smutty mess!

All that aside, I feel so bad for Hagen. Like this shit keeps happening to him and he keeps giving Nik chances, cause he’s naive and loving, and they both thought Nik could be better, but they both know the truth now. So it’s like damnnnnn.

I know a lot of you thought the book up to now was kind of running in circles, and that was intentional. It was Hagen and Nik trying for something that would never really work in the long term and running into problems constantly because of it.

Nikola can’t give up control, and Hagen doesn’t want to or doesn’t trust Nikola to. But now, with things like this, someone will have to break for their relationship to work.

Alrgiht, I’ma stop before I say too much!!!!

So excited for the following chapters, which will include a Neo and Zyair interaction soon!!!!

Vote and comment if you enjoyed this chapter!!!

Until next time,
Byeeeeeeee Humanssssssssss