*Abi POV*
It’s been just over four months since I was here but it feels like years. So much has changed about me in that short period. I have discovered the good and bad about me and I have embraced it. I now know exactly who I am. Still, I am not ready to face my enemy. I shouldn’t be back here, not yet, but I couldn’t wait.
I take a deep breath, with my head high and step so ever sure, I walk into the courtyard. They all turn to look at me and my bestie flashes me a big smile. I bet the rest have no idea who I am. I don’t blame them, all they know is a battered malnourished slave. Well, not anymore. Even I was surprised when those hollow bones got filled by muscle and fat. My human agent says I’m angelic, whatever that means.
Mint, honey and cinnamon…mmmh. I don’t know if that’s even a flavour but that’s what’s been calling me all the way from my hiding.
“Ooh la lah!” my sworn enemy exclaims and licks his lustrous lips when I stroll past him.
Yuck! That’s an image I will need to wipe out of my head.
Luna Nala knocks his side with her elbow, poor woman. Still dealing with this trash.
I am a few steps away from the aisle when Omario walks towards me and narrows his sexy eyes at me.
Should I be mad that he is looking this fine for a union with someone else?
“Abi?”
I can’t help but smile at him. Heaven’s know how much I have missed him.
“I object!”I say boldly, shocking everyone and myself.
This is what I came here for. It’s what the infatuating weird scent and Titan brought me here for.
He chuckles and literally ogles at me until I am blushing and I can’t breathe.
“Hi, Mate.”
My breathless whisper snaps him out of it. He looks back at Olivia then at me and shakes his head.
“Rio?” Olivia calls to him with confusion on her face and the guest start whispering amongst each other.
I fold my arms over my chest. This man was mine when I was pain to look at and had no self confidence. I have come to stamp my authority on his heart, if he will let me.
“Tell her the truth,”I dare him.
Surely he can’t continue denying this, not after all this time, not with this pull.
“Abi, please don’t do this,” he pleads and my head starts spinning. He can’t still believe that she is his mate.
“Easy for you to say. You are not the one in pain. If you won’t tell her, then I will,” I threaten. He had enough time to deal with this, I am done waiting for him to make up his mind. Maybe Olivia has also felt her mate and him clinging to a lie is just keeping both of them from being happy.
He sighs and pulls me to the side room.
“Abi, we spoke about this,” he says sternly the moment we are inside. So much for a reunion.
Our passionate goodbye kiss still plays in my head. Somehow I thought this would be another memorable moment but I thought wrong.
“April 5,7,10,15,20. May 1,5,9,12,25 and two nights ago. Do those dates ring a bell to you?”
He swallows his saliva and avoids my eyes. He knows. The sexy, adorable bastard!
“Excruciating pain I have ever felt in my life. You know that I have been through a lot of it and I can take it, but not this one. I thought I was sick, Omario. To an extent that I even consented to having an operation for the doctors to find the source of my pain.”
“And?”
His response is raising an uncomfortable feeling inside. I no longer want to kiss him, I now want to punch him on the face.
“Are you being serious right now?”
“Abi, I don’t want to fight. You know that I can’t take it.”
I know that he can’t take it? I can’t believe this man! He still remembers the pain he had when we had a fight months ago yet he’s been putting me through hell!
I try to calm myself down and explain myself.
“The humans tried their best to treat me but they know nothing about this. I was being wheeled to theatre when a wolf nurse told me what it was. You are choosing her over our bond. Everything you do with her hurts me.”
“Abi, we spoke about this.”
I wish he would stop with all this denial.
“No, Omario, we didn’t!” I snap at him and he narrows his eyes at me. “You spoke and I listened. Now I speak. Reject me, then marry her,” It’s a bold ultimatum but things can’t go on like this.
I actually have life, a good one. I could be very happy and content if it were not for this pain that renders me incapacitated for hours. I am not ashamed to say that I am actually happy living with humans. Most of them are compassionate, tolerant and always encouraging me to be the best.
The change was not easy at first but it was the freedom my body and soul needed. I started as a domestic worker by day and waitress at night and nothing I did was even close to the work I did here. I was happy with the wages I earned and could support myself. It was three months later that I finally reached what was meant to be my weight and everything dramatically changed. One day I was Rebecca’s domestic worker, the next I was her most successful model. I still can’t believe that I make money by posing for photographs, which in my books equates to doing absolutely nothing.
“Abi, I can’t reject you because we are not mates.”
That’s it, I’m done. I did not come back to beg, this thing is meant to a partnership between us.
“Fine!” I snap. He has no idea how many options I actually have out there.
He looks sharply at me. “Fine what?”
“I am going to pull the next guy I meet and fuck his brains out. Good luck with your union. You might need pain killers and a physician,” I say and head towards the door.
I am done convincing him of something he clearly feels, but I will be damned if I live my life like his mother. If he won’t reject me and sever this bond, then we will both be in excruciating pain. Fighting fire with fire is a side of me I have discovered and made peace with.
I am marching out when I get whisked off my feet before even touching the door knob.
He takes deep breaths before covering my lips with his and his arms snake around my waist, pulling me closer to him.
Mint, honey and cinnamon, it is a flavour, his flavour. This man tastes sooo gooood!
My heart flutters and knees become wobbly as I wrap my arms around his neck.
We have kissed before and it was great but not close to this. This is what dreams are made of.
We are both breathless by the time he breaks off our kiss and looks at me.
I look into his beautiful eyes and my heart sinks. Tears roll down my face, excruciating pain rips through my chest. I untangle myself from his arms and bend down to force in air into my lungs.
“Abi.”
“Don’t say it, because I will not say it back. I will never say it back!”
I thought I was strong and ready for his rejection, I was wrong. I slowly walk out of the side room and find all eyes on me.
“Abi!” he shouts behind me.
I can feel something stirring inside as I push myself forward, away from him. My heart is shuttered into tiny pieces. He saved me from the torture his father and friends put me through but the worse, most excruciating pain I have ever experienced is from him.
I am at the aisle when I bend down to take another breath. Terrence runs to my side and I completely break down in his arms. My bestie, forever there for me.
“Abigail the slave. I should have known,” Olivia laughs and sneers.
I guess everyone now knows who I am.
“Oli, don’t.” Omario warns and she laughs in disbelief.
“What exactly did she expect coming here, crashing our union and even objecting? The audacity of a sex slave!”
“Oli, please.”
His gentle tone when he speaks to her hurt more than her words. She, I don’t care about, but him, everything he does, everything he says and his every expression matters.
“You might be beautiful and even look all royalty but you are still just a slave. You are nothing and you never meant anything to him. You were just a toy he used to satisfy his desires, he told me that,”she continues, her last words cutting through my heart.
Omario always treated me better. I thought he saw more to me than just a slave, but maybe I was so used to being abused that I read more into the one who didn’t. He is definitely my mate but maybe I imagined intimacy and everything else about him.
I can feel Terrence tense up before all hell break loose. Before I could react, he has moved me to the side and has punched Omario on the face really hard.
An ordinary person would have fallen over and probably having a nose bleed, but Omario is invincible. The impact only makes him stumble a bit. He does not even flinch.
Alpha Theo jumps into his feet with his fists clenched. His Betas and Gammas all stand and approach us.
Shit! Attacking a royal is an offence punishable by death in any pack and kingdom.
I instinctively stand between them and Terrence. I will die first before I let them get to him. I can hear Omario cursing behind us but he is now the last person in my head.
On second thought, maybe this is why I am here….