I was on the ground. I didn’t remember falling.
The yacht rolled beneath me, a long, sick tilt to port that sent seawater sluicing across the deck. Orion lay six feet from me, crumpled against the base of the foremast. His shirt was torn open at the chest where my hands had been. The skin beneath was mottled with black veins that branched outward from his sternum. His lips were moving softly in nearly soundless words.
I crawled to him. My arms shook with the effort, but I got close enough to hear what he was saying.
“She chose,” he murmured. “Penelope’s daughter chose.”
His gaze drifted past me, toward the open water. A faint, bewildered crease formed between his brows. Then his eyes closed, and his body went slack against the mast.
He was breathing. The rhythm was shallow but steady. I pressed two fingers against the pulse point beneath his jaw. The beat there was slow and threadlike but present. I hadn’t killed him. Thank the gods. I’d never intended to, but for a few moments there, it had been too close.
I sat back on my heels. My hands were trembling. The light was gone from my palms, but the power was still in my blood. It was quieter than I’d expected, humming softly.
“Andromeda.”
I turned.
Alexander was pulling himself upright against the port rail, one arm braced across his ribs. His shirt was soaked through and plastered to his chest. A cut above his left eyebrow had bled freely down the side of his face. Blood mixed with seawater into a pinkish wash that dripped from his jaw.
His hair was matted flat, and his breathing was labored. The ocean had beaten him half to death, and whatever was left had been dragged through the wreckage.
He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Not because he was golden, or powerful, or any of the things that House Zeus prized. Because he was here. He had knowingly walked into a trap, on water where his power meant nothing. He’d gone against an Alpha who outmatched him in every way that mattered. He had come for me, just like I’d known he would.
He took a step toward me and swayed. He shot his hand back to the rail, catching himself. His knuckles were scraped raw.
“Are you hurt?” His gaze raked over me, cataloguing damage. A month ago, that possessive inventory would have infuriated me.
“No.” I got to my feet. The deck lurched, and I braced my stance wider. “Are you?”
“Nothing that matters.” He pushed off the rail and crossed the distance between us, each step careful and deliberate on the wet deck. He stopped a foot away. His eyes searched my face. I waited for the paranoia to appear, to claw up through my stomach. Any moment now, the curse would twist his presence into something suffocating and repulsive.
It didn’t come.
Alexander lifted one hand toward my face and stopped himself. His fingers hovered at my cheekbone, trembling with the effort of restraint. He was waiting for permission. This man had been raised to take what he wanted and justify it later. He was bleeding from the head, standing on a wrecked yacht, and he was asking me if he could touch me.
“I’m sorry.” His injured hand reached for me and fell back to his side, fingers curling into a fist against his thigh. “For everything. For the yacht, for the curse, for every moment I made your life worse by existing in it. If I could take it all back—”
I leaned forward, closing the space between us, and turned my cheek into his palm. His skin was cold from the seawater, but beneath that was his familiar heat and the scent that I’d missed so much.
My whole body recognized him the way it recognized shelter after a storm.
“Don’t be sorry.” I covered his hand with mine, holding it against my cheek. “You were only an Alpha, trying to protect your Omega. I understand now.”
Something broke in his face. His mask of control slipped. Underneath it was a man who had been terrified for months. He was only now letting himself feel the full weight of it.
“Andie.” His thumb traced the line of my cheekbone. His other hand found my waist, tentatively, as though I might shatter orchange my mind. “What did you do to him? Was that… House Hera’s power?”
“Penelope taught me,” I explained. “My ancestor. She taught me how to sever a bond. The incipient bond Orion had been building since I arrived… I cut it. I made a choice. The only one I could.”
For a few moments, he just stared at me, something akin to awe on his face. “You… You chose me? But… the curse…”
Of course I’d chosen him. I’d chosen him from the very beginning, that first night we’d met. I just hadn’t realized it. He was my Alpha, and I was his Omega.
I kissed him, and there was nothing gentle about it. I grabbed the front of his ruined shirt and pulled him down to me. His mouth met mine, and his arms locked around me, crushing me against his chest. His heart hammered against my ribs, and the storm in his blood answered the power in mine.
He kissed me back with everything he had. His hand cradled the back of my skull, fingers threading through my tangled hair. His other arm tightened around my waist until there was no space left between us. The yacht rocked beneath our feet. The Strait churned. None of it mattered.