Chapter 96

“What the hell? You can’t be serious right now!”
What I said wasn’t such a shock for my parents or my sister. Look at what I’d done to break the curse.
But Little Dove is shocked. “You can’t kill him, Ethan!” 
“Just watch me.” 
She licks her dry lips. “Please. Don’t.” A tear drips down her cheek. “Logan has helped me a lot in the past, and he is Az’s father. Please don’t kill him. I… I’m not one hundred percent innocent in everything that’d happened... I’m trouble. I’m more trouble than I’m worth.” 
“That’s the very last time you’re going to say that,” I say sternly, tasting the truth oozing from her because she truly believes it. “You might have been taught to believe that, but it’s not true, Little Dove.” 
Her eyes widen. Her heartbeat quickens. 
“I need your verbal confirmation, please, Ethan. Or else I can’t stay here, knowing you’re going to kill him,” she says fearfully. 
Oh, Little Dove, you can’t even fathom what will happen next. If the problem is her *knowing*, then she doesn’t need to know about what I’m sure as shit I am going to do. “I’m not going to kill him,” I lie, and her shoulders loosen a bit.
Logan is going to wish he’d never laid a finger on her, never met her, never even been born after I found him.
“Okay, that’s it. No more talking. You’re hurt and exhausted,” I say, stepping forward to her. “It’s time I got you in bed.” 
“What?” she says, moving further back on the sofa and wincing. 
My heart thumps into a staccato rhythm. Horror crashes into my body, and it tenses. 
I take a firm step back, rigid. For long seconds, neither one of us breathes or says anything. 
Is my Little Dove so traumatized by all that happened that she can’t stand being around me? I close my eyes. 
“I’m sorry,” she says, and I look down at her. “It’s just... You caught me off guard, you moved so quickly...”
“That’s okay. I’ll be more careful next time,” I say, breathing a little relieved. At least she’s not afraid of me. 
“But I’m not going to sleep with you,” she says firmly. 
My parents look at each other, and Vi looks away. 
“What do you mean?” I ask, confused. “Aren’t you going to sleep in my bed? If you would like, I can sleep on the floor.” 
“Ethan, I’m not going to sleep in your bedroom!” she says, her face flushed. “Don’t get things mixed up! Just because I came here doesn’t mean we’re going back to where we left off. No. If you only allowed me to stay here just because of that, then I should probably leave!”
No. She can’t mean that. 
Vi growls at the same time my dad tells the tiny human, “Allie, you don’t have to worry about that. Your living here isn’t conditioned on whether or not you’re with Ethan.” He shoots daggers at me. ‘What the hell, son?’
‘She’s my mate, Dad!’
“You’re safe here, Allie,” Mom tells her.
‘Give the poor woman some time!’ Dad mindlinks me back.
“You’re not going anywhere, Allie!” Vi tells her, but also glaring at me. “You can stay in your old bedroom. What do you think?”
“That works for me, if that’s okay with you,” my sweet mate says, peering up at me.
I grunt. It seems I can’t speak in anything more than that right now. 
I drop my head down and take a deep breath. 
One. 
Two. 
Three. 
Hold. 
Out. 
One. 
Two. 
Three. 
Hold. 
It doesn’t help much. 
‘This is going to be good. This is to teach you to listen to me,’ Vi mindlinks me. ‘I hope she gives you a hard time.’
She can try, but it’s not going to end up very well for her.
I’ll claim my Little Dove in every way. I will have her in my bedroom again. And I’ll send her to sleep every night dripping with my come. 

🐺 🐺 🐺
***Alicent***

“Ethan. I’m twenty-seven years old. I’ve been putting my pajamas on for years by myself. Now shoo.” 
After a long, borderline excruciating shower, only made possible with Vi’s help, I step out of the bathroom to find Ethan casually perched on my bed. In my room.  
The white silk pajama top waiting for me is definitely not mine. I put on the bottom set and a tank top in the bathroom, but the top still hangs over the bed, untouched. Emma handed them to me before I went in, saying she hoped they’d be comfortable. And, well… she wasn’t wrong. They’re so soft against my sore skin that it’s like I’m wearing a cloud—or nothing at all. Honestly, they fit so well, and they’re so elegant that I look like I have millions of dollars in my bank account.
“Did you just shoo me?” Ethan growls. 
“Yes. I shooed you. Shoo! We’re not at a place where you can help me with this.” 
He sighs. “I’ve seen you naked,” he says bluntly. “Let me do it.”
I blush.
Instead of arguing with him, which I should do, I nod. “Okay. But don’t expect me to not fight you on other stuff because I will.” 
“Look at me, Little Dove. No, look me in the eye, not at my chest. Good girl.” Looking me directly in the eye, he speaks slowly, as though he wants me to really hear him. “You’re hurt, and you need help. You need someone to look after you, and until I know you’re healthy again, I *am* going to help you. When you’re better, if you don’t want my help anymore, we’ll revisit the topic. But for now, you are under my care.” 
I blush as I lift my good arm, silently accepting his help. 
For a moment, I recall what Az said to Ethan when he helped me get here. Like a mini general, my son ordered Ethan to not try anything funny as he carried me in his arms. Everyone holds their laughter. Now, Az’s taking a shower, too; my poor son must be exhausted.
As soon as he finishes buttoning my pajama top, I say, “Okay, you can go now.” 
However, he looks reluctant to leave the room. “Little Dove... Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in my room? That’s where you belong, baby.” 
“It’s funny you say that now since most of the time you didn’t sleep with me there,” I throw in his face as I sit on the bed. 
“It won’t happen again,” he says through gritted teeth.
“I know it won’t because I’m not going to sleep there anymore.” I spy a peek of sadness glinting in his dark eyes before he hides it behind a stoic mask. “Did you miss the part where I said I wanted nothing to do with you?” 
“No. I’ve been *replaying* it in my head for the past forty five minutes.” A wounded small smile overcomes him. “It still hurts. Every time.” 
My lips purse and I glance away, putting the duvet over my legs. “I don’t know why you’re acting like this, Ethan. I was just a second option, wasn’t I? You said it yourself.”
His hands ball into a tight fist. He says nothing.
I go on, perhaps feeling too hurt to keep quiet. “I told you everything about my life, Ethan, and you wouldn’t even share the smallest details of yours with me.”
“I had my reasons—”
“And now you’ve missed the opportunity to say them.” The growl in my voice surprises us both, and I place my hand on my neck, soothing it. “I don’t want to hear your excuses right now.”  
Pain clouds Ethan’s dark eyes. His throat bobs as he swallows then drops his chin. 
What has he expected?
Me to open my arms and welcome him back into my life after everything he did? 
The sadness in Ethan’s eyes is so intense that he looks like he is heartbreakingly close to tears at any second now. 
Honestly, I kind of hope he does cry. It wouldn’t hurt for it to be his turn instead of just mine for once. 
But that is just me being petty.  
Then, the hurt in his eyes vanishes just as quickly as it has appeared. And all that remains is sheer determination, which makes me confused.
“I promise you that you will not be my second choice anymore.”
“And you think I’d believe you or your stupid promises? You promised to marry me, and what happened? Oh, yes, you broke your word. You let go of my hand, Ethan!” I vomit the words that have been stuck in me for months. “You treated me like I was your dirty secret. No one could know about us.” I blink hard. “I want nothing to do with you!”
“I don’t believe in you. Didn’t you just tell me you loved me before you left?” he demands, turning my words back on me. “Well, you can’t take it back.” He crosses his big arms.
The nerve!
“Believe what you want, but this time *I’m choosing me*! I’m choosing myself. I told you I really loved you, and you didn’t even care. Imagine if it were the other way around, Ethan? You would have freaked out! You have no idea how I’d felt all those days as your second option, not even being able to call you by a silly pet name.” 
His lips part. As if the weight of understanding settles in all at once.
I take a deep breath before saying, “No. No! You don’t get to be surprised about that. Not when I’ve been nothing but honest about my feelings to you, and you know what?” My good hand is starting to shake, and I fist it against the duvet. “Now *I’m choosing me and what I deserve*!” 
I’m not mean. I don’t like being mean. But I have enough.
When I was still a girl, safe in the shelter of childhood, my parents and brothers told me I was strong, brave, and worth just as much as any man. And I believed them. 
I carried those words like armor, never once thinking they could be anything but true. 
But then came the slow, brutal years of becoming a woman after their death—the years that stripped the shine from their promises and showed me the truth they never dared to say out loud.  
I learned it the first time I talked back to my ex-husband.  
He grabbed my hair—the same hair he ran his fingers through early that day, the same hair he used to call beautiful—and yanked me still with a fistful of it. 
That was the first time he used a piece of me as a weapon against me, but it wouldn’t be the last. 
He’d crowd me into corners. He’d push himself into my space until I felt small. 
He was a ‘good man’ for not beating the daylights out of me every day. And I was the ungrateful bitch who deserved everything and should’ve been grateful for his restraint.  
That was the moment I learned to bite my tongue. 
That scared me enough to keep my real thoughts to myself. 
But now *I am free*. 
Even though my body still doesn’t feel free from that abusive relationship. There are marks on my body that may heal in the next months, but I will never forget everything my ex-husband had done to me.
*My name is Alicent Dove.* 
*I feel free now, and yet I still feel Logan’s hands wrapped around my neck.*
I’ve had enough.
Ethan didn’t cause me any physical harm like Logan did, but hearing from him that I would always be his second choice and that he couldn’t love me wasn’t an easy thing to hear.
I deserve to be happy. 
And I deserve more.
“Ethan.”
“Yes, Little Dove?” he asks, his low, deep tone excruciatingly loving. 
I ignore it. 
“Can you leave, please?” 
“Will you still be here in the morning?” 
“What do you mean?”
“You already left me once. Without saying goodbye.” Ethan looks like he’s trying to keep the growl out of his voice, but he isn’t terribly successful. 
“I had to leave. But clearly, I made a mistake.” 
I look away from his black gaze, I can’t even hold account of him being a murderer anymore because I almost killed Logan too. Who am I to judge him?
When he doesn’t leave the room, I realize he’s still waiting for confirmation, so I say, without looking at him, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Do you need anything else, Little Dove?”
“No! I said I’m *fine*!” I say sharply, looking back at him and trying really hard not to flinch from the pain in my throat.
His eyes blaze like black flames. “Don’t *lie* to me, Little Dove. Never. That.” He walks to the door. “I’ll go get you some painkillers and a heat towel. I’d appreciate it if you would take things easy and ask for help if you need anything. Please.” 
Ethan opens the door and leaves the room, leaving me lying there gaping after him. 
What the hell has just happened? He didn’t complain about anything I said!
And does he just say *please*?