Page 69 of Knot Mine

Her own twin?

And then she’d inserted herself in between us.

While I was humiliated and bullied, she got to run off into the sunset with the hot jock?

Exhaling, I choke out, “You left me there to take him home? And what? Just crawled into his bed and pretended you were the one he’d tried to drunkenly bond with?”

Biting her lip she avoids my stare. “Something like that.”

“Oh, Romilly…” My father sighs and there’s a sadness in his eyes that I hate seeing there.

She slaps her hand against the coffee table, making Bell flinch from where they’re sitting on the rug. “You don’t understand.”

Anger simmers down the bond, tinged with the bitterness of guilt. Combined with my own emotions, I’m raging. Furious at how twisted the whole situation has become.

Romilly was the shining star in our family, Miss Perfect. The whole universe revolved around her. And yet, she still had to claim ownership over my drunken hook-up and steal my Mate? She still needed to help herself to it all.

“No,youdon’t.” I hiss, through my welling tears. “You have everything. EVERYTHING. And you even tried to take this too.”

My parents look shocked as I meet Romilly’s glare, refusing to back down. The guilt I’d been carrying fades away, because while what I did was horrible…what she did was malicious. There was intent behind her actions. She planned it. And dragged it out for months just so she could get her greedy little paws on what was mine. Fuck that.

“You don’t want it, Shiloh!” She protests, getting to her feet like she had any right to stand over me. “You don’t want this life, the babies, the Mate, the bonding. You hate everything about being an omega.”

She had it wrong.

What I hated were the expectations placed on me. The idea that I would give up everything for an alpha. That my needs came second because of my secondary gender.

I scoff at her, she really knows nothing about me or what I want. “I don’t hate it, I just wanted to choose Romilly! I wanted my life choices to bemine.”

She opens her mouth before closing it again. It’s always been so easy for her because she always accepted what we were. She loved being an omega, submitting and charming those aroundher came naturally, but for me it was like a rock, lodged in my throat.

“He only fucked you because of your heat!” She snaps, clearly running out of things to hurl at me from across the room.

“Romilly!” My mother scolds. “Maybe we should all take a deep breath, and calm down.”

“No, I didn’t.” Zale growls, letting some of his alpha pheromones leak into the air and she freezes.

“What?”

My cheeks heat as Zale links his hand with mine. “It started before the heat.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding.” Romilly looks around in disbelief, gesturing to me and then my parents as if to say ‘See, look what he’s done.’

“Fucking, fuck you, Shiloh!”

“I choose him, Rom.” I reach up and run my fingers over the mating mark. I guess the reason the original mark hadn’t faded was because we were Fated Mates, and he was always nearby. In a strange way, my body recognized my alpha all along, it had just taken me accepting him for the bond to fully click into place.

“I want the bond, the babies, the life because it’s with him.”

“You don’t even know him,” she spits, still clinging to her wrath, her righteous indignation that I’m the only problem here.

“I know there’s so much more to him than meets the eye. He’s afraid of the dark, he gets drunk easily and football means more to him than partying. His studies are important, so he works hard but his real passion is tied up with the Riverview Community Center. If he wasn’t the heir to Blackwood Tech, he’d go into sports management and work with teenagers and young people. He has a secret romantic side, a filthy mouth and a giant fucking knot.” I turn to Zale, and lift out entwined hands to my mouth, placing a kiss on his fingers. “I know that he looksat me like I’m his entire world, and being an omega has nothing to do with it.”

“You tried to deny me my Mate,” he says quietly, looking at Romilly with pity in his eyes but his mouth is drawn into a tight line. “You lied to me, repeatedly.”

I shake my head at her. “And you made me the bad guy when it all started unravelling.”

She starts pacing, her anger keeping her from staying still. “You stole my boyfriend and fucked him on my birthday Shiloh, so don’t act like you’re above it all. You humiliated me. On. My. Birthday.”

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