Page 24 of Ava: Part Two

“Ladies, please sit down and enjoy the delicious food you have prepared,” he said.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the bolder one started with her eyes down. “We can’t do that.”

He looked pointedly at Ava before he picked his cutlery back up. But Ava wasn’t pleased. She gave him a look before pushing her chair out and standing. He thought she was leaving the dining room, but instead, she went to stand next to the Omegas and put her head down as well.

“What are you going, Ava?” he growled.

“I’m an Omega. This is where I belong.”

She was his future Luna. She belonged by his side.

“What, you’re just going to take my orders? Do everything I say without question?” he challenged her. “Are you going to submit to me, Ava Morgan?”

She didn’t even lift her head when she answered him.

“Yes. That is my place,” she said through her teeth.

But her tone suggested that she would never submit. Shadow growled in his head, eager to make her submit for real, eager to have her offer herself and her neck the way she had done before. She was trying his patience in ways he had not known were possible.

He threw his cutlery down and then pushed his chair out, too. The other Omegas flinched, but Ava stood her ground. He stormed towards her and grabbed her hand before pulling her out of the room.

“What are you doing?” Ava asked.

“Don’t question me, Omega,” he growled as he walked up the stairs.

Ava said nothing else as he pulled her along, but he didn’t release her until they were in his bedroom, and he closed the door behind him.

“Have I done something wrong?” she asked quietly, standing in the middle of his room.

“Stop acting like you have a submissive bone in your body,” he growled. “When you submit to me, Ava, you will do it willingly. You will do it because I would have earned it.”

He stalked her and watched her body tense the closer he got. But she still kept her eyes down. There was none of the usual fire he usually saw in her eyes, even when she was scared.

He stopped in front of her and raised his hand. Ava sucked in a breath, but she didn't step away. Did that mean she knew, deep down, that he would never hurt her? Her scent wrapped around him, and he closed his eyes as he savoured it. His body reacted as it always did around her.

“You will do it because you will realise that what I said is true. You’re mine,” he whispered.

He pulled himself away from her with great difficulty and walked towards the chairs at the other end of his room. He moved them so they were facing each other and then sat in one of them, making sure he adjusted himself so he didn’t scare his skittish human.

“Now, please sit down, Ava. We need to talk.”

Ava finally looked up at him and then slowly walked to take the seat he offered.

“Yes, we do need to talk,” she said. “Firstly, you need to know that I will never be yours because you’re an Alpha and because I intend to leave this awful place one way or another. And second, we’re in trouble with the Council, and it’s my fault. I didn’t mean to drag you into it. If I’d just stopped being so scared and remembered my training, I would never have been in those situations to start with.”

He ignored the first sentence because she would be his, no matter what.

“I would have come on the Council’s radar, sooner or later. I’ve prepared myself since my first shift,” he admitted.

“But if you hadn’t attacked Claire... If you hadn’t had to save me from her so many times—”

“Claire should have kept herself in line. After my first warning, she should have stayed away,” he cut in. “I will shield you from the Council as best as I can, Ava, but I need to know what happened in your meeting.”

“Nothing. I think they were eager to get rid of me, but in the end, they had the nerve to say I’m exactly where I need to be even though it’s obvious I’m human. I didn’t understand it until detention tonight. They know we went into the forest. And they’re coming back to punish us.”

“Did they ask you about it? Did you think about it?”

Ava was human and didn’t have the necessary skills to keep such strong Council members out of her head. Maybe they knew everything now. They knew what she had done to Claire. Perhaps that was how they had found Claire in the first place.

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