Alpha Ruined by Liliana Carlisle

Author:Liliana Carlisle [Carlisle, Liliana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

COLE

He can smell her shame and fear radiating from her, her sweetness soured by her volatile emotions.

What is she afraid of? Nothing she could show him would ever make him leave her.

It clicks into place as her scars reveal themselves, thick, pink jagged lines that travel horizontally from the inside of her wrist almost to the crook of her elbow.

They’re violent and deep, and he’s careful as he caresses the delicate skin, whatever is left of his heart sinking as the air fills with the salt of her tears.

They’re self-inflicted.

It makes sense why she wears the robe to bed and why she panicked when they were kissing the other night—he almost saw her scars.

“I have almost identical marks on the other side,” she laughs shakily. “I wanted to get the job done.”

He gently runs a thumb delicately down the inside of her wrist and she shivers. Then, he brings her wrist to his lips, kissing the marks.

She shakes her head. “You don’t have to do that,” she whispers. “I know they’re revolting.”

As if he could ever find his mate revolting.

“They’re part of your story,” he says simply. “They’re a part of you.”

He curses himself for not being there earlier, to stop whatever chaos was in her mind.

But then she tells him her story.

“My father died when I was fourteen,” she murmurs, fixing her gaze on a headstone. “He was my best friend, even when I was a shitty teenager. He was the buffer between me and my mother, stopping us from fighting all the time. He loved both of us a lot.”

He squeezes her hand, and she squeezes it back.

“After that, I was awful to my mom, and she was awful right back to me. We didn’t know how to cope with him being gone. Then, when I turned eighteen…I presented.”

She lets out a shaky breath, and he fights the urge to pull her into his arms.

But he needs to hear her story.

All of it.

“I wasn’t expecting it.” Bree turns to him, her eyes glossy with tears. “My mother sure as hell didn’t know what to do, and…it terrified me. I felt helpless, and alone.”

“You’re not alone,” he murmurs. “You’ll never be alone again.”

She gifts him a small smile. “Still…the feeling never went away. It loomed in the back of my mind, and it got to be too much one day.” She clears her throat and swallows. “I rented a hotel room, downed a bunch of my mom’s anxiety meds and alcohol, then used a box cutter.”

The image of a younger Bree, heartbroken and desperate to end her life, is almost enough to drive him insane.

Still, she continues.

“I rented the room for four days, and put up the Do Not Disturb sign, but the cleaners came in anyway. They found me the next morning.”

A rumble starts in his chest, subtle and slow, as she speaks.

“The doctors made it clear I should have died. I was on the verge of bleeding out, and I vomited in my sleep—if I had turned onto my back, I would have suffocated.

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