Page 43 of Jace

She was always ours, my beast taunted, all fucking smug.

I didn’t feel smug, I felt like a fucking animal. I paced the bedroom, eyes on the sleeping omega, feeling her peacefulness like a balm trying to hold my demons at bay, but nothing could keep them back.

There I was, a kid again, watching my sister sob and scream, nails clawing into her own skin to remove the marks alphas had left there. Our fuckup of a mother, fag hanging out her mouth as she tied my sister down to stop her hurting herself. And me, fucking helping her because I couldn’t stand to see my sister tearing her own flesh, even though those marks made me want to hurl too.

That’s not us, my beast said. She wanted what we did, she begged for it.

My sister had begged for it too, asked for it while the alphas were with her. It was only afterwards that the trauma reared its ugly head.

Rinse, cycle, repeat.

Sloane hadn’t been thinking straight when I’d taken her from the Dawn Agency, and I’d fucking known it too. I was no better than Snake, no better than a fucking dog.

Sloane fretted in her sleep, and instantly, all my focus shifted to the omega. I was upsetting her just by being in the same fucking room. I stalked to the closet, pulled on some sweat pants and a T-shirt, shoved my feet into sneakers, and headed for the door, ignoring the pain radiating from my chest.

I had no destination in mind, but what I found was Ma in the kitchen, putting together the finishing touches on a tray of what looked like lasagne she was about to shove in the oven. My stomach rumbled loud enough for her to hear.

“Jason!” Her smile was beaming as she pushed the great tray into the oven, but it dropped immediately after.

“What’s up? What’s happened? Is Sloane all right?”

I shook my head, somehow making it to the big kitchen table and slumping down.

“I’ve marked her,” I said, arm around my stomach. “I’ve mated her.”

“And?” Ma demanded, hands on her hips. “From what I heard, she wanted you to. Has something happened? Why aren’t you with her?”

“Yeah, something happened. I fucking marked her while she was in heat.” I stood and started pacing. Suddenly, the room felt too small to contain me. “Just like those alphas marked my sister.”

There, I’d said it, putting it out into the universe—my shame.

“Jason! You get a grip this minute! You’re not too big for me to box your damn ears. You have an omega now, a mate. You don’t get to skip out. If she told you to leave, then you damn well fight for her. You tell her you can work this out together.”

“She didn’t tell me to leave. I just—” I had no idea how to put this into words, but it was like a riot going on inside my head. “Ella.”

“Your sister? What does she have to do with you and Sloane?” Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see where this self-pity is going, and I’m not buying into it.”

Damn, for a tiny beta, Ma sure didn’t pull her punches. “It’s not self-pity,” I gritted out.

“I was there, remember,” she said. “I was the one who nursed your sister after your mother left. Jason, you’re nothing like those men, not even close, and don’t you dare suggest that you are.”

I gave her a baleful look.

After my mother got hauled away by the cops for stealing one too many times, it was Ma, Dane’s Ma, who took Ella and me in. I rubbed absently at the centre of my chest, my eyes lifting unerringly to where I knew Sloane would be. She was stirring, perhaps by my own feelings reaching her through the bond.

“When was the last time you spoke to Ella?” Ma persisted, because the tiny beta never let a matter drop.

“A while,” I said noncommittally.

“When was the last time you spoke to her about what happened?”

Never was the answer, and Ma saw that in my face, in the tic thumping in my jaw.

“You should go to your mate, but if you can’t do that until you put this to rest, you should talk to your sister now. She had an early breakfast, and she’s in her room. Then after, you need to see your mate and set straight with her whatever this nonsense is before you do real damage.”

“So, you’re saying that you wanted to be with them?” I rubbed absently at the centre of my chest, trying to focus on my sister’s words.

Her apartment was on the top floor, the penthouse, because when we were growing up, she was obsessed with stars. You couldn’t see them from the shitty place we’d called home back then. You couldn’t even see the sky between the layers of high-rise buildings. I remembered her saying that the stars were forever free.

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