Chapter 165 165
Damien left the house at the first hint of dawn. Sleep had evaded him again the night before. He had spent hours shifting restlessly across the mattress, his body refusing to settle, his mind refusing to quiet. He knew exactly why. The truth was crude and frustrating he was painfully, relentlessly sexually frustrated. Never in his entire life had he felt this way, and it gnawed at him with a ferocity he could barely contain.
The beast inside him offered no help. If anything, it only fanned the flames, urging his temper and darker urges closer to the surface. With her around, every instinct he possessed felt sharpened, raw and dangerous. She had become a living, breathing trigger to his animal nature. Each day he fought to dull those instincts, forcing them down with sheer will.
He had tried convincing himself it was nothing more than a passing attraction something temporary that would fade with time.
But damn him, because it wasn’t fading.
It was growing.
Deeper. Stronger. More impossible to ignore with every passing day.
Frankly, it had been a miracle that he’d managed to tear himself away from her the previous night. When she’d walked away, all he had wanted every savage instinct roaring inside him was to drag her back, rip the clothes from her body, and take what he wanted right then and there.
But he hadn’t.
She was too naïve. Too untouched by the reality of the world he lived in. She wandered through life wrapped in her own hopeful fantasies. He had warned her more than once, tried to push her away with blunt words and cold distance, yet she still had no idea what she was stepping toward.
She didn’t understand what it meant to get involved with a man like him.
A broken man.
A man who had never truly moved beyond the moment he lost his mate.
For Damien, time had frozen there.
His dreams had died in that moment.
His life had stopped.
His entire damn existence had shattered.
The man he had been before that day no longer existed.
Attachment was no longer something he was capable of. A man like him only destroyed whatever dared come too close, and that was exactly what terrified him. The girl was already fragile in her own way.
He couldn’t ruin her life simply because he lacked the control to silence his growing desire for her.
Fuck.
She had no idea she was infatuated with a walking disaster.
Yet she kept placing herself in his path, hovering close, her body softening beneath even the briefest brush of his hand. She melted under his touch like she belonged there. If she ever saw the truth of what he was, the darkness he carried, she would run for the hills without looking back.
He needed to get her out of his damn head.
And the way she instinctively leaned into him so willing, so quietly submissive only made that task harder.
Whenever he looked at her, those wide brown eyes lit up with a sparkle that made something twist painfully inside his chest.
She wanted him.
And, damn it all, he wanted her too.
The difference was that she deserved more than a purely physical hunger. She deserved something real.
But Damien’s heart had been shattered once before, and it had never healed. He doubted it ever could.
Which meant all he had left was the hunger of his body and right now, that hunger was doing all the thinking.
“Pair up!”
His roar cut across the training grounds, snapping the trainees into motion. They hurried to find partners, and within minutes the field filled with the sounds of bodies colliding and fists striking.
Damien’s gaze locked with Alexandre, who was already stalking toward him.
“You defend,” Damien muttered.
Alexandre lowered himself slightly into a defensive stance just as Damien lunged forward, launching the first attack.
Ten minutes later, both men were breathing heavily, sweat dripping from their bodies after the brutal exchange.
Alexandre had taken a nasty scrape across his left arm and shoulder. Blood seeped from a split along his eyebrow, though the wound was already knitting itself back together.
Damien hadn’t escaped untouched either. His lower lip was split, and another cut ran through his eyebrow, blood trailing down the side of his face.
They had both done serious damage to each other before their healing abilities began to repair the worst of it.
“That was fucking intense,” Alexandre said with a breathless chuckle.
Damien answered only with a grunt.
As the Alpha, Damien held the advantage in strength, but Alexandre was far from weak. All three of them had grown up enduring the same brutal training. The only difference now lay in their bloodlines.
“So… feeling better?”
Dominique’s voice came from behind as he clapped a heavy hand onto Damien’s back.
Damien shot him a glare but said nothing.
The trainees had scattered for their break, leaving the three men alone in the clearing.
Damien pulled his shirt over his head and balled the fabric in his fist, using it to wipe sweat and blood from his skin.
“Worse,” he muttered.
Dominique snorted. “We’re not your personal punching bags for stress relief. What you really need is to get laid.”
“Fuck off,” Damien snapped, jerking his shoulder out of Dominique’s grip.
Dominique’s eyes flashed dangerously.
In an instant they stood chest to chest, glaring at one another as the wolves inside them stirred, their presence flickering through their eyes.
Dominique hated seeing his brother like this. Damien had been suffering for years, and nothing he had tried seemed to help. Dominique had begged him countless times to return to the pack, but Damien had always refused, choosing instead to stay away while handling the pack’s external affairs.
It had taken Jacqueline’s presence to finally draw him back.
Whatever the reason, at least he had returned.
“You need to stop living in the past,” Dominique hissed.
Damien’s jaw tightened. “I suggest you leave me the fuck alone before I decide to break your bones.”
Alexandre stood nearby, watching the two of them carefully, his body tense.
“You’re not the only one who lost her,” Dominique shot back. “She mattered to all of us.”
“She was my fucking mate!” Damien’s voice exploded across the clearing.
“She was like a sister to us too,” Alexandre said calmly.
“Don’t.” Damien’s eyes burned as he turned on him. “Don’t you dare pretend you understand my pain. Your mate wasn’t murdered the moment you discovered her.”
His heart thundered violently in his chest as anger flooded his veins.
“Do you really think she’d be happy seeing you like this?” Dominique snarled.
The confrontation had been inevitable.
When Gabrielle had been ripped from their lives by the cruel hand of fate, Damien had fled instead of facing the grief alongside them.
All three of them had loved her in different ways. They had needed each other then—but instead of healing together, they had shattered apart.
Damien’s teeth ground together as his wolf surged forward in a violent rush of fury.
Without warning, he charged Dominique.
The two of them crashed to the ground, rolling across the rough dirt as they swung fists at each other.
Alexandre lunged forward, grabbing both men and forcing them apart.
They stood breathing hard, glaring at one another.
“You don’t know what the fuck it feels like,” Damien growled. “Even thinking about someone else makes me feel like a goddamn sinner.”
Jacqueline’s face flashed through his mind.
The thought alone sent another surge of rage through him.
She was twisting his mind, stirring emotions he had buried long ago.
Fuck.
Dominique’s expression softened slightly a rare sight and Alexandre turned his gaze away.
If Gabrielle had still been alive, she would have stepped between them with that gentle firmness of hers. She would have spoken to each of them until the truth became clear. She would have forced apologies out of them with nothing more than her quiet presence.
But Gabrielle was gone.
She had been an angel, and heaven had taken her back.
“Give your heart another chance,” Dominique said quietly.
Damien looked at his brother, and a sad, hollow smile slowly touched his lips.
“There is no heart left, Dominique,” he said softly, his voice thick with emotion.
“Only ashes remain.”