Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Regret. Is that what I was feeling?

The emotion in my chest was unfamiliar as I tucked her into bed and plugged her phone into the charger. I sat there beside her in her pitch black dorm room, slumped over with my face in my palms.

Everything should have been fine. In every sense, I'd won tonight, didn't I?

"I want him." She'd said, while I had her in my hands and on my lap. "He fills me so perfectly." She had the mind to add.

She wanted both of us.

But she especially wanted him .

No matter how boldly I'd taunted Adrian up until now, we could never exist harmoniously with the same girl. That had never been a legitimate option. It didn't have to be. This was all just a game.

I wanted to humiliate him. I wanted to show him what it felt like to care about someone so much it killed you, only for that person to reject you over something you couldn't control. I wanted to rip off that goddamn mask he always wore, with his bullshit humanity and fake pleasantries, and show him who he really was, even if it meant there were a few casualties in the interim.

Here I thought I'd put him in a position where he would break his tightly held moral code, fall in love with her, and then have to watch, helplessly, as I stole her away, but instead, they were both getting mixed up with each other, and I was falling by the wayside.

Again.

Maybe that was my destiny. To always be the person that no one wanted.

Funny, isn't it? The harder I hit my stone knife against his armor, the more obvious it became that we were both made of the same crumbling sand.

I glanced down at the sleeping princess at my side, and I brushed her hair away from my mark on her neck. I pressed my thumb to the mate scar just to share in the comfort of her quiet, restful state.

I drifted the backs of my fingers higher on her neck, enjoying the feel of her silky black hair sliding over my knuckles.

And then my eyes widened and my jaw dropped as I felt the smooth texture of some sort of scales, hidden by the long, beautiful hair that always covered the back of her neck. I rolled her onto her side, then followed the trail down her spine. The scales were hardly visible, their color near identical to her skin, and the plates so small and tightly woven that they were imperceptible without the right lighting. The inviting texture was positioned sparsely but purposefully, shielding her vitals, like an invisible exoskeleton .

How had I never noticed?

I suppose I'd only been with her while she was in shifted form in instances where I was completely out of my mind. Observing small things like an invisible roughness in small portions of her skin never would have registered loudly enough to retain the information when shifting back. It was enough to parse the big events from the sudden consciousness dump. Small details like a slightly coarse spinal texture wouldn't have made it anywhere near my radar of importance.

I released a held breath and stared into Lila's sleeping face.

Her phone started buzzing on the nightstand, ‘Mom' appearing boldly on the screen. The vibration on the hard wood surface was startling and loud, as if trying to shout the answers that we both needed.

I hit the volume to silence it and let the call go to voicemail, not wanting any chance of waking her up right now. She'd already been through enough tonight.

With one last calming exhale, I leaned over her and placed a soft kiss on her forehead.

"Tomorrow." I whispered in the silent room. "But for tonight, I hope you have the sweetest dreams, Baby Doll."