DELTA_Sybil Bartel by Sybil Bartel

Author:Sybil Bartel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Alpha Elite Series
Publisher: Sybil Bartel
Published: 2023-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Hanna

In public, I’m Delta or Ridge.

I lived my life on the edge of a cliff.

He was named after one.

His seed was dripping out of me. I was dressed in his shirt. He was in a towel, and I was surrounded by his lavender haze.

This was all new to me.

I didn’t have questions. I had a mountain of them. A mountain I didn’t know how to climb.

His thumb stroked my cheek in the softest of caresses. “Speak, little one.”

I inhaled.

Then I asked. “Why do I remind you of a life you left behind when you were fifteen?”

His steady breath and penetrating stare didn’t waver. “I said you bring out my native language.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” He had implied he’d hated his childhood. How could it be good that I brought that out in him?

“No.”

I waited, but he didn’t say any more. “I don’t understand.”

“You weren’t meant to. It was a cryptic response. Ask what you really want to know, matákia mu.”

“Why would it be good that I make you want to speak Greek when you said you left that life behind because you had an unhappy childhood?”

“I haven’t entirely left Greece behind.”

“What does that mean?”

“Stay more than a day, and I’ll tell you.”

Reality came crashing in. “I… can’t.”

“So you’ve said.” His hand stilled, and his expression didn’t change, but I felt the shift. I’d disappointed or angered him.

I couldn’t even blame him, but this wasn’t how I wanted to spend what precious little time I had with him. “I’m sorry.”

“For something you’re going to do or something you’ve already done?”

In that moment, I had regret.

I tried to never let it in. Regret was as invasive as anger, and I knew the depths of either could swallow me whole, but I regretted that I’d never paid better attention in school. I wasn’t smart, not like him. I couldn’t keep up with his mind or his conversation or the way he seemed to know what I was going to say before I said it.

I wished I’d had the energy to do more at school than run track. I wished I hadn’t spent every night half awake, frightened to fall asleep, waiting for an anger storm to come at me. But even if I hadn’t had the upbringing I did, even if I’d slept every night in peace and had no worries and studied my hardest, I knew it wouldn’t have prepared me for a grass-green-eyed Navy SEAL who spoke like he knew the answers before he asked the questions.

He deserved more than who I was, but that was all I had.

I was me, and I couldn’t apologize for what would come after tomorrow. “I’m sorry I’m not smarter.”

“Your intellect is greater than you give yourself credit for, and I don’t need you to be anyone other than who you are.”

For the second time in two days, I wished for hate. “I don’t like compliments.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Then why do you give them?”

“I wasn’t complimenting you. I was stating fact.”

His hand on my cheek, his

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