Alpha Damon (Sienna) novel Chapter 266

Delilah:

The courtyard was quiet.

Lysandra was long awake, but I needed some time alone. I knew that I was in no shape to be able to face her, nor was I in a position to be able to look at her right now, nor without tears in my eyes. She had seen them yesterday and I did not want them to be seen by her today.

The late afternoon breeze drifted past the tall stone walls, stirring the edges of my cloak. I stood by the edge of the sparring ring, watching two young warriors go through the motions I used to find comforting. Familiar.

Now it just felt distant.

Detached.

No matter how hard I trained, I couldn’t get the pain, the forming stone, the anger and the rage to settle. I was furious and I was hurt. I couldn’t even describe it.

Everything in me still felt like it was unraveling, silently, thread by thread. I just found myself getting lost. The woman that I thought I knew myself as I thought I knew her, was just leaving me.

“You’re hard to catch alone,” a voice said behind me. “And you are very hard to speak to and you don’t want to be spoken to.” I didn’t need to turn around to look at him to know that he was approaching me. I did not think that he would have the guts to come and speak to me again. It seemed to me that I would be dealing with a lot more of him. Until I left at least.

I let out a slow breath, bracing myself. “Maybe that’s the point. I’m doing my best to stay alone, but you seem to have a hard time understanding that.”

I turned around to face him, avoiding looking him in the eye for a moment as I took a breath. But when my eyes met his, I had to fight every instinct to yell, to cry, or to let out my pain.

Ethan stepped closer, but didn’t cross the invisible line between us. His voice was steady. Gentle in a way that made it worse. “I’m not going to cross a limit you don’t want me to. And I’m not going to say anything that will annoy you or anger you.”

I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “Then leave. You being in front of me, even speaking to me, is crossing a limit that I don’t want you to cross.”

“I’m not asking you to forgive me, Delilah.” He said, choosing to ignore my statement.

“I didn’t say I was ready to forgive,” I muttered. “I said I don’t want to talk. I said that I did not want you around me, and I said that I did not want to breathe the same air as you.”

He nodded once. And then, he did exactly what I told him not to.

He talked anyway.

Breathed the same air that I did.

Understood in my parameter.

“I was angry. Confused. And stupid. And I didn’t want to admit how I felt. But what I said to Carter, about feeling sorry for you, it wasn’t the truth. Not really. It was me trying to explain something I didn’t understand.” He whispered, looking away from me. “I was doing my best to try and understand something that I never felt before. I thought that I did, but it turns out that it was nothing more than a lie in my eyes.”

Only pain. And honesty. And something raw that looked too much like regret.

“I’m not asking you to come back. Or to forget what I said. But I need you to know that you weren’t a mistake, I need you to understand that I did not mean anything that I said. I was stupid to say what I did. But it’s not your fault.” he said, voice steady. “You were the one thing I didn’t expect to find when I thought everything inside me was already broken. You were the one person that I did not expect to meet when I believed that everything else around me was just collapsing.”

I swallowed.

“I don’t know what to do with this, I don’t know how to handle anything when it comes to this.” I said, barely above a whisper. “To you.”

“Then don’t do anything,” he replied. “Not yet. Just… hear me out. Let me speak when I need to. Let me show up, even if you don’t say a word. Let me show you that I’m going to be there by your side, and not because I pitied you, not because I felt sorry for you, but because I want to be by your side. And one way or the other, I want you to want me back.”

I stayed still.

He didn’t touch me.

He just stood there. Waiting.

“That’s the one chance that I’m asking from you for a moment. Just a moment where you can think about trusting me. After that, once that moment is over, he can make your final judgment.”