Alpha Xander's Undoing Chasing my Unknown Mate Back novel Chapter 52

Chapter 52

Chapter 52

*Rory*

The dorm was too quiet.

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Not the kind of quiet that brought peace, but the kind that settled heavy in your chest and made every thought feel louder than it should be. I sat curled on the edge of Xander’s bed, knees drawn to my chest, staring down at my wrist where the faint ghost of a rune had once burned.

It wasn’t there anymore-not physically-but I could still feel it. Like it had marked more than my skin. Like it had carved something deep inside me that I couldn’t scrape away.

Chaos.

That’s what they called me.

What I was.

The word turned over and over in my mind, a jagged thing I couldn’t stop cutting myself on. I had spent years denying I was gifted. Convincing myself my father’s medicine was just medicine, not chains.

I wanted to believe I was normal-sick maybe, broken in ways I couldn’t explain-but not… this. Not some ancient monster whispered about in old scrolls.

But if I was Chaos, then what had Eden been? Did she know? Had she been like me, or did she die because of me? I thought about my mom-how my father never spoke about her death except in clipped, clinical words. Did she die because she was this too? Was that why my father had been drugging me since the moment Zerina woke up, terrified of what I would become?

My chest tightened painfully. For the first time in a long time, I wished I could ask him. Wished I could hear my mom’s voice. Wished Eden were still alive to tell me if she’d known the truth, if she’d tried to warn me. But there was nothing but silence and scars where their answers should have been.

The door clicked softly behind me. I didn’t turn. I didn’t need to. I could feel him the second he stepped in- the pull between us, the low hum of a bond that had been waiting, starving, for far too long. Xander’s presence filled the room like a storm rolling in, heavy and electric.

“You haven’t moved,” he said, voice low, rough around the edges.

“I didn’t want to,” I murmured, tracing the inside of my wrist with my thumb. “Feels like the floor might disappear if I do.”

The bed dipped as he sat beside me, close enough that the warmth of him curled against my skin but not touching me, like he was holding himself back. Again. Always.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said after a moment, his tone soft but taut with something he wasn’t saying. “What you agreed to last night… if it was fear talking, you can take it back.”

I turned to look at him then, at the hard line of his jaw, the tension bracketing his mouth, and the raw honesty in his eyes that he rarely let me see. He looked nervous. Xander-the unshakable, unmovable Alpha-looked

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Chapter 52

nervous.

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“It wasn’t fear,” I whispered. “At least… not of you.”

His brows furrowed, and I exhaled, pressing my palms against my knees. “I’m scared of what this means. Of what I am. Of how long you’ll keep holding parts of yourself back from me because you’re too afraid to look at me and see Chaos instead of… Rory.”

He flinched, like the word itself burned. His hand moved before he could stop it, reaching for mine, hesitating only a second before lacing our fingers together.

“I’m terrified,” he admitted, voice low and fierce. “But not of you. Never of you. I’m terrified of losing you. Of the goddess-or fate-or this cursed bond taking you from me the same way I’ve lost everyone else. Every time I’ve let myself love someone, it ends in blood. And when I look at you, I see something the whole damn world wants to kill. How the hell am I supposed to live with that?”

I stared at him, my heart a riot in my chest. “Then why push me away? Why make me believe you didn’t want me at all?”

His grip on my hand tightened. “Because wanting you felt like signing your death sentence. Because every time I thought about giving in, I saw you burned to ash. I thought distance would keep you safe.”

I swallowed hard, fighting the knot in my throat. “And you think marking me changes that?”

“No,” he said, eyes burning into mine. “But it means I’m not running anymore. It means no matter what the world says you are, no matter what fire they try to burn you in, I’ll burn with you if I have to. It’s not about control, Rory. It’s about choice. My choice to stand with you. Always.”

“There was something else,” I whispered. “Something you didn’t want to tell me. Before you had so many feelings for me, you pushed me away.”

He sighed. “There are things about me Rory… Things that will make you hate me when you find out. I was protecting you and myself from heartbreak.”

“So tell me,” I pleaded. “We’re about to share a head space, Xander. I want to know all of you. The pretty and the ugly.”

“I promise I’ll tell you everything, Rory.”

“Xander-”

“Rory, please… The difference then and now is that I didn’t want to tell you before. I want to show you every part of me. Whether you’ll still love me or not.”

“Who says I love you?”

He closed the gap between us, cupping my cheek. “Because I love you, Rory. With my entire soul. And if this that I’m feeling isn’t the same for you, then I’m a fool for you.”

Something in me cracked wide open at those words. I didn’t realize how badly I’d needed to hear them until now, how much weight I’d been carrying believing this was just about fear, about protection, about the mess

13:09 Wed, Sep 17

Chapter 52

inside me.

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