Page 167 of King Luna

But Steven only strengthens my resolve.

“Steven, you—” I take a deep breath, and speak my truth. “You think I tricked you. Forced you to hurt me. Hurt others. All because I was your girlfriend, and I never gave you a chance to debate it when I broke up with you.”

Steven’s mouth closes like I spoke for him.

Then he gives a weary, bloodied smirk. “So you agree with me, deep down? This is even more fucked up then. Letting your mate beat me to death, all for nothing?”

“No, stop. I just know exactly how you think, and what you want to say,” I snap. “Because I took time to actually see you. Listen to you. You never truly saw me, and you never wanted to.”

I swallow my shaking voice, but no matter how confident I want to seem, the pain he inflicted forces my entire being to keep quivering.

I continue anyway.

“All that time, I was there. You saw a kind, obedient woman, and thought it fit your mold of how life was supposed to look. But I had no other choice except to obey you. I never had a choice.”

Steven shakes his head against the stone wall, not even sparing me a glance. “Oh, come on. Clearly you did, otherwise we wouldn't be here after you broke my fucking heart in the most humiliating way.”

“I told you the truth! You didn't give me what I needed in the relationship, and I was leaving you out of fear! But even if you think that was cruel, why didn't you give me any other choice, then? In your fucked-up world, where a man deserves power over everything a woman says and does, wasn’t it your job to grant me that choice to stay? To protect me instead of hurt me?”

Steven takes a breath to speak, but I stand, my claws extending with my heightening volume.

“Maybe I did hurt you back. I broke your heart, breaking up with you when you expected me to remain loyal for life. Butno matter what, you hurt me irreparably that night you broke in. You saw a grieving, scared, and alone woman, and you did everything you could to make me feel weak!”

I let out a heavy sob, hardly able to catch my breath. Noah recoils with me, tempted to join my side. But I shake my head no.

And Steven scoffs. “If you understood me so well, you’d know exactly why I did that. You started acting like an Alpha, when you're really an Omega. You needed a reminder where you stood—”

I grip Steven by his shirt collar. The blood dripping from his nose and mouth sticks the fabric to my sweaty fists. “If you truly believe men should feel nothing, then fuckinglookat me as I’m talking to you!”

For the first time since we’ve started talking, Steven’s eyebrows flinch in visible fear.

But he still won't look at me.

“I would’ve talked it out with you! Instead, you took my health and safety from me! You claimed ownership over my body, and you hurt it in ways it’ll never heal from! Do you know what that was like to experience, right after losing my family? You were part of the family I lost too, and after you emotionally abused me, I grieved the person I thought you were—even before you hurt me worse! Then I had to grieve myself!”

Noah whimpers now, shuddering through angry tears.

But Steven’s eyes finally lock onto mine.

When I’m tempted to back away in fear, my wolf pushes to the surface, showing me she has my back now too.

“I couldn’t even hurt you back to stop you because I still cared about you!Thatwas real love, Steven. You took everything from me, but I was never yours to take!”

The resulting silence scares me more than anything Steven could say. Both men have their eyes on me, and I’m still holdingSteven with shaking fists. I drop him in a hurry, afraid to make a hypocrite of myself.

But as Noah rushes to my side, Steven finally snaps out of his petrified stupor.

“You did hurt me. I had to run for my fucking life.”

My skin erupts in goosebumps. I didn’t imagine it; my wolf came out to protect me.

And Steven’s suppression of her was intentional.

As my heart races faster, the hatred in Steven’s pale, empty eyes chatters my teeth. “So, because I had Alpha in me, and I was supposed to be your obedient Omega, you beat the shit out of me and raped me?”

Steven growls through a half-there laugh, thinly veiling his fear. “This makes no fucking sense. I was just trying to cheer you up after he died, but you blew up on me, all because I asked to have sex. You were my girlfriend, so, naturally, I thought—”

My teeth clench, my rage blasting in full force. Steven stops at my wild eyes alone.

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