Chapter 77 What I Deserved

Chapter 77 What I Deserved
Colt POV~

The floor was cold against my back when I finally came to life.

My limbs felt like they belonged to someone else, heavy and disobedient, and for a second I couldn't remember why I was lying at the bottom of my own staircase.

Then it came back in pieces. Ember's face. The syringe. The way she'd looked at me like I was something she'd scraped off her shoe.

"Ember." Her name came out cracked, barely a whisper.

She was gone. Of course she was gone.

I dragged myself up using the banister, every muscle screaming, and made it three steps before my knees buckled again. I caught myself against the wall.

Whatever was in that syringe, it wasn't meant to kill me. She'd made sure of that. Even now, even after everything, she couldn't bring herself to finish it.

That should have comforted me. It didn't. It just made the whole thing worse that even in her rage, she was still softer than I deserved.

I heard the front door open before I saw who it was.

"Colt?" Aphrodite voice, sharp with alarm.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"Nothing." I forced myself upright, swallowing down the way my vision tilted.

"I'm fine Aph."

"You don't look fine. You look like you got hit by a truck." She crossed the room fast, gripping my arm to steady me.

"Where's Ember? I thought you two had left."

Something in my chest went tight at her name.

"She's not here."

"What do you mean she's not here? You said..."

"I said she's not here, Aphrodite." My voice came out harder than I meant it to, and she actually flinched.

She studied me for a long moment, and I watched the pieces click together behind her eyes the state of me, the empty house, the way I couldn't say her name without something ugly crawling into my voice.

"What did you do to her, Colt?"

"What did I do?" I laughed, and it came out bitter and hollow.

"I gave that girl everything. Every damn thing. And she looked at me like I was a monster."

"That's not an answer."

"She poisoned me, Aphrodite. Injected me with something and walked out the door like I was nothing to her."

Aphrodite went quiet, and I could see her recalculating everything she thought she knew about me.

"Why would she do that unless you gave her a reason to?"

I didn't answer right away. The truth was sitting right there in my throat, and some stubborn, wrecked part of me still didn't want to say it out loud, like keeping it unspoken meant it wasn't fully real yet.

"She found out I'm not her brother," I said finally.

Aphrodite grip on my arm loosened like she'd been burned. "What the fuck!"

"You heard me."

"Colt, what does that mean, you're not her brother? You grew up with her. You've protected that girl her entire..."

"I know what I did." My jaw tightened.

"I know exactly what I did, Aph, you don't have to remind me."

"Then what was all of it? The overprotectiveness, the way you never let anyone near her, the way you..." She stopped herself, horror creeping into her expression as the pieces finished assembling.

"Colt. Tell me it wasn't what I think it was."

I didn't say anything.

"Goddess above." She stepped back from me like I'd turned into something unrecognizable.

"You loved her. Actually loved her. That's why none of this ever made sense. That's why you fought so hard to keep her away from Zane."

"Don't say it like it's some kind of sin."

"It is a sin, Colt! She thought you were her brother!"

"She's not my sister!" I roared it, and the walls seemed to shrink around us.

"Not by blood, not by anything that matters. I never touched her wrong.

I never crossed a line I shouldn't have. I waited. Do you understand that? I waited for her to be old enough, waited for the right time, and the second I finally told her the truth she looked at me like I was filth."

"Because you are, Colt. Do you hear yourself right now?"

I sank down onto the stairs, the fight draining out of me as fast as it had come.

"She's carrying his pups," I said quietly. "Zane's."

Aphrodite face went slack. "You knew that and you were still trying to take her?"

"I thought..." My voice cracked, and I hated myself for it.

"I thought if I got her far enough away, if I gave her enough time, she'd forget about him.

That she'd choose the life I could give her instead."

"That's not love, Colt. That's a cage with better lighting."

The words landed like a blow, harder than anything Ember had managed to throw at me on her way out the door.

"Where is she now?" Aphrodite asked, and there was no softness left in her voice.

"I don't know. She left in already.
Didn't give an address I could hear."

"Then we need to find her. Before Zane does, or after doesn't matter.

She's pregnant and alone out there, and whatever twisted thing you were building in your head doesn't change the fact that she needs protection."

"From what?" I asked, bitter. "From me?"

"Maybe." Aphrodite eyes were hard, no trace of the loyalty she'd shown me minutes ago.

"I need you to hear this clearly, Colt. I've stood behind you for years. I believed in what you were building here. But this...this isn't something I can stand behind."

"So what, you're leaving too?"

"I'm going to help find Ember, and make sure she's safe. Whether that includes you being anywhere near her again is not my call to make. That's hers."

She turned toward the door, then paused, looking back at me with something that might have been pity if it wasn't so cold.

"You should've just told her the truth years ago, Colt. Instead of building a whole prison around a girl who thought you were the only person keeping her safe."

She left.

I sat there on the stairs, alone in the dark, my body still heavy from whatever Ember had put in me, and for the first time in years, I let myself feel exactly how much of a monster I'd become.