Page 76 of The Omega Princess

“At least let me apologize.”

The door opened. He was standing there, dressed in a pair of sweats and a very tight tank top, which clung to him in the most mouth-watering of ways.

I was struck dumb at the sight of him. He was too beautiful to be mine. I wished I’d never messed this up so badly. Why had I gone with Sinclair today? Why had I—

“No, no, no,” he said. “You do not apologize. This is all on me.”

“But—”

“It is,” he insisted. “But sweetling, I’m just wallowing in being a fuckup right now. I don’t have it in me to grovel in the way you deserve. Can you understand that?”

“You don’t need to grovel or anything like that. I’m not angry with you, Devlin. I’m the one who screwed up—”

“We’ll do this later, sweetling.” He touched my face affectionately. “I adore you, omega. That hasn’t changed. That will never change. I’m only tired. All right?”

I let out a breath, feeling reassured. “Don’t beat yourself up, please, Devlin.”

He kissed my forehead. “I won’t. I’ll just rest. And we’ll fix everything when we’re not all exhausted.”

rohan

I FOUND SINCLAIR outside the palace next to the duck pond, which was out on the grounds and had a little stone bridge over it. Sinclair was sitting on a bench, though, contemplating an unlit cigarette.

I hadn’t been looking for him, but I swerved over to him and sat down on the bench next to him.

“Thought you’d be kissing Devlin’s boo-boos better,” he said.

“Yeah, not for lack of trying,” I said. “I left Eleri to talk to him, but I think she’s just going to apologize and say it’s all her fault, which is not what I think he needs right now.”

“That’s all you were going to do.”

I shook my head. It might have been true once, but things were different now. I was changing.

Sinclair put the cigarette in his mouth. He got out a lighter and flicked it on and off and on and off. He did not light the cigarette. Instead, he took it out of his mouth and broke it in half. He tossed it into the duck pond.

“You just, um, littered,” I said.

“Fucking omega,” he growled.

“Did you really quit smoking?” I was amused and a little astonished. “That can’t have worked. She can’t just tell you to quit smoking and then you—”

“You don’t know what happened with us,” he said. “We had this moment, and this thing happened. It was like we went into each other and got all, I don’t know, co-mingled, and then she said that to me, and… fucking omega.”

“Seriously?” I was a little jealous. I shifted on the bench, thinking that through. “So, what did happen with you two?”

“It was like we were on a runaway train going off a cliff,” he said. “I wanted to just wreck both of us, leave us mangled in a twist of bloody and broken limbs, and then—”

“Wait, what the fuck are you talking about?”

He blinked at me. “It’s a metaphor,” he said, deadpan.

I flipped him off.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Nothing pulls me back when I’m like that, is the thing.”

“When you’re like what?”

“You know, when I’m out of control.”

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