Chapter 322 Being weaker doesn’t make you right

Chapter 322: Chapter 322 Being weaker doesn’t make you right

Aria’s POV

It wasn’t until the next morning, long after the sun had cut a seam through the curtains, that I finally woke—and reached over to thumb open my phone.

Damian was still asleep on my shoulder, one heavy arm slung across my waist like he’d claimed the territory in his dreams and had no intention of giving it back.

He’d always been a light sleeper. Every remedy his grandmother’s people ever tried, and still he woke before me. Every time, without fail.

So this felt like something I didn’t want to disturb. I couldn’t bring myself to shift my hip. I just lifted the phone above my face.

And the message slid into view.

*...Rose Holt passed away.*

Unknown number. I knew exactly who’d sent it from the tone of it.

Her heart had been bad for years. The doctors had told her over and over—rest, no stress, no scenes. Whatever softer words anyone dressed it in, her death had come from seeing me yesterday.

I stared at the screen until the letters stopped meaning anything, and somewhere in that hollow drifting, Damian woke.

He pulled me tighter and leaned over my shoulder. "What are you reading?"

Then he reached to take the phone from my hand.

"Ethan’s grandmother died."

He didn’t answer. He just gathered me deeper against him, wrapping his warmth around skin gone chilled.

I know what people see when they look at me now. Strong. Decisive. The woman who walked out of Silver Creek and never looked back. That’s all true. But underneath it there’s a soft spot I hate admitting to, and he knows exactly where it lives.

Even when someone’s hurt me down to the bone, hearing that a life ended because of me doesn’t sit light. It sits like a stone.

"Aria. Don’t do that to yourself." He set the phone face-down, traced the spot behind my ear, and kissed my forehead with a small frown. "This isn’t on you."

"I really didn’t think she’d—" I stopped.

I’d worried a little, yesterday. But I’d let myself believe she’d be fine. The war between me and the Holts was over. Rose Holt could still make my blood boil, and I’d still never once wished her dead.

The truth is she didn’t deserve my pity any more than the rest of them did. But woman to woman, some part of me mourned the waste of her. Good bloodline, sharp, capable in her own right—and she handed every ounce of it over to stand one step behind her husband. The perfect wife, keeping to her place, until she was just a tool those men used and set aside. Everything vicious in her she’d done for old Gerald, for Ethan, for the name. Never once for herself.

And here’s the part I hate remembering: when I first came to Silver Creek, she admired me. Wanted to back me. Protect me, even. That thin thread of kindness might not have been calculation at all—just instinct, because I was born different from the Holt women. And that exact difference sealed how it had to end between us.

"...I know," Damian murmured. "It was an accident."

His thumb pressed gently into the space between my brows, working at it like he could smooth the unease out of my skull.

I looked up at him, then sank back against his shoulder. He never says much. But the sound of his voice alone could sweep the whole tangled mess out of my head.

So this was what it felt like. Having someone at your back instead of empty air.

He stroked my hair like I was breakable, kissing along my cheek, and after a long quiet he spoke again, low and even.

"Yesterday she came looking for a fight. She used that filthy mouth on you, on me. What we did was answer it." His arm tightened. "Are we supposed to carry what happened to her just because we didn’t roll over? The world doesn’t work like that. Being weaker doesn’t make you right."

I lifted my eyes to his, and something shifted—my throat went tight and warm, heat climbing into my face.

He caught it and frowned, all that composure flickering into something almost wounded. "Was I wrong?"

"No." A slow smile tugged at my mouth. "It’s just that you’re so completely right, Alpha Blackwood, that you cleared it right out of me. Every last worry."

I felt the shine come up in my eyes, my lips curving sweet enough that I watched his gaze rock. And though he’d never admit it, the tips of his ears went red where he thought I couldn’t see.

He took my face in both hands, eyes darkening. "From now on, whatever you do is right. And when it’s wrong, it’s still right. I won’t have you carrying an ounce of trouble for anyone." A pause. "Not even for me. I don’t get to be the reason either."

Every word landed soft, and every word landed straight in my chest. I’d gone looking for a little comfort, and here he was, eyes rimmed like he might actually lose it.

I butted my head into him like some clumsy cat and kissed him before he’d finished—caught his lower lip, sucked, tugged slow—and a blade of morning light fell across the pillow, lighting the thin silver thread stretched between our mouths.

He watched me through half-lowered lashes, clumsy and wanting. Then he peeled my hand off his jaw, pressed it flat to the hard ridge below his navel, lifted me back against the pillows—and I felt the exact moment his patience snapped.

The sound that came out of me was a low, breathless whimper.

He loves my collarbone. My throat. He always starts there, dragging his mouth up and down like it’ll never be enough, like he means to eat me down to the bone, until my thoughts go loose and stupid.

"Damian..." I got out. "Are you sure you’re not some kind of insatiable animal?"

I don’t remember where I heard it—that men who go for the collarbone are the greedy ones, the ones who never get full.

But every time he kisses me half to death, that line floats up out of nowhere.

My whisper didn’t get an answer.

His body went taut, and he just took it—my cool fingertips wandering over the old scar on his shoulder—and gave it all back to me in the slow, ruinous drag of his mouth.