just because

Alpha Easton’s Runaway Mate

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Chapter 24: just because

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“Was it the shadows?” he asks.

Regina shakes her head.

Mattel glances at her with a sharp eye, as if to ascertain whether Regina is telling the truth, or simply shielding Mattel from the guilt he wears like an ever-present crown.

“The bandits,” Regina murmurs simply, eyes fixed on the sheets in front of her.

She feels childish for being so consumed still by a fear of something so trivial.

Ashamed to even voice her trifling fear aloud, to a man who’s spent most of his nights haunted by unspeakable terrors.

It reminds her, acutely, of how little use she’d ever been to her step father, as feeble and powerless as she is. Of all the things that he must have seen in her, missing and lacking in every way.

She bites her lip hard enough to taste blood.

Mattel, without a word, reaches over to flick on the lamp beside the bed.

Regina curls her fingers into the sheets, shame curling in her stomach with that familiar pang. “I know it is foo