The Exiled Alpha's Human Male Mate.[BL]

Dave positioned himself in front of the door, deliberately occupying the only path Bryce had toward the exit.

The sight of him standing there made the room feel smaller, the walls seemingly closing in around Bryce.

After everything Dave had confessed, after realizing just how deeply he had been manipulated, being prevented from leaving only intensified the suffocating sense that he had never truly been in control of his own life.

He didn’t even realize he had moved until his fist connected with Dave’s jaw.

The blow landed with all the fury that had been building inside him, the impact snapping Dave’s head to the side.

Before Dave could recover, Bryce seized the front of his shirt and hurled him across the room.

Dave crashed against the wall with enough force to make the impact reverberate through the room before he dropped heavily to the floor.

Only then did Bryce stop.

His entire body trembled.

The strange strength he had experienced earlier surged through his muscles again, leaving him almost unnerved by his own physical power. His chest heaved violently as he stared at Dave, anger still burning through every nerve.

He turned toward the door.

His fingers moved over the unfamiliar mechanism, searching for a handle, a lock, anything that would allow him to open it.

But nothing made sense to him. The door was far more sophisticated than anything he had ever dealt with, and the more he struggled with it, the more frantic he became.

Behind him, Dave shifted.

He rubbed the back of his head with a grimace and pushed himself upright, a pained groan escaping him as he steadied himself against the wall.

"What the hell are you using?" he asked, still trying to understand what had just happened. "Have you always been this strong, and I somehow never noticed?"

Bryce ignored him.

He continued examining the door, trying one mechanism after another, his frustration mounting when none of them worked. A darker possibility entered his mind.

Had Dave locked it intentionally?

"Don’t bother trying to leave," Dave said.

His footsteps approached from behind.

"They’ll drag you back the moment I snap my fingers. Don’t you think that would only humiliate you?"

Bryce’s hand fell from the door.

He finally understood that fighting with it was pointless. If the door required something he didn’t know how to operate, there was no way he was getting through it by force.

He turned slowly.

"Unlock the door."

His voice was low and strained, but the fury underneath it remained unmistakable.

Dave studied him for several seconds.

"Trust me, Bryce. You don’t want to let my family know that you don’t actually want to be with me while I still want you. They won’t simply stand aside and watch you walk away."

Bryce’s expression hardened.

"They know you make me happy. They know that without you, I’m not completely myself anymore. I never actually told them that. They figured it out on their own."

He took another step toward Bryce.

"I never told you about them because I was trying to protect you from them. I didn’t want them dragging you into this life or taking you away from me the way everything else was taken from me before.

That was another reason I kept you away from them. But they found out about you on their own. And when they did, I could tell they were genuinely happy. They saw what you did to me. They saw that, for the first time in years, I’d found someone who made me feel whole again.

I actually expected my father to be furious. He’d spent time trying to push me toward Kara. But he wasn’t angry. He was happy because I’d finally found someone I genuinely wan..."

"Someone you don’t actually want." The words erupted from Bryce before Dave could continue.

"Someone you only wanted because he looked like the person you actually loved. Someone who doesn’t even exist anymore. Don’t keep feeding me lies about how much you want me, Dave. You can tell me that until we’re both old and I’ll never believe it again. Because now I know what was happening inside your head when you looked at me."

Bryce’s voice shook, his breathing growing heavier again.

"Because from now on, all I’ll ever think about is that I was never truly the person you wanted. Everything you’ve said to me, everything you’ve done, every time you looked at me like I mattered... none of it will ever erase what I know now."

His voice dropped, but the words became even more cutting.

"I’ll always know that he was the person you loved. He was the person you wanted. And he always will be."

As Bruce spoke, he felt a humiliating sense of inferiority he could neither dismiss nor escape.

"Maybe you’re right." Dave’s voice was quieter now, stripped of the defensiveness that had colored his earlier words. "I haven’t completely let go of Eli, but you can’t honestly expect me to erase someone like that from my life that easily, can you? Maybe one day I will be able to, maybe I won’t. I don’t know.

He was my first love. We had to steal whatever moments we could get, and every time we parted, I found myself counting down to the next time I’d see him. I kept believing there would always be another moment, another conversation, another chance to do the things we’d talked about. Then he died, and suddenly there was no next time."

His jaw tightened.

"I never got to see him again. So many things between us were left unfinished. Then there’s the fact that my own father was the one who killed him. How am I supposed to simply wake up one morning and have none of that matter anymore?"

Dave swallowed, his gaze dropping briefly.

"There are too many memories attached to him, too many things I never got to resolve. That loss is still part of me, but that doesn’t mean I’m still in love with him. What remains of him in me isn’t the same thing as what I feel for you."

He looked directly at Bryce.

"If Eli walked through that door right now, I would choose you without a second thought. I know what I feel for you now, and I have fallen in love with you more deeply than I ever loved him."

Dave stepped closer, undeterred by the force with which Bryce had thrown him across the room moments earlier.

Bryce gave a bitter laugh.

"You’re only saying that because you know for certain he’ll never come back."

Dave’s expression tightened, but he didn’t argue.

"It’s okay if you don’t believe me. I understand. If I were standing where you are right now, I probably wouldn’t believe me either. You have every right to be angry. Take as long as you need. Hate me if that’s what you feel. Maybe you already do."

He paused, his gaze fixed on Bryce.

"But don’t insist on leaving."

Bryce stiffened.

"I believe what we had was real, even if I handled it terribly. I made choices that were wrong, and I let things from my past bleed into something that should have belonged entirely to you and me. I’m not asking you to forget that. I’m telling you that I’m willing to do whatever it takes to repair what I destroyed."

His voice lowered.

"And there’s something else you need to understand now. I’m never going to willingly lose you. I’m never going to simply stand aside and watch you walk out of my life."

Bryce stared at him.

"You loved me genuinely, and I love you genuinely. Whatever I’ve done to damage that love, I believe there’s still something between us worth fighting for."

Bryce’s mind went completely blank.

For once, he forced himself to slow his breathing, reminding himself that anger would accomplish nothing here.

"Am I going to be a prisoner here?"

The question came quietly, stripped of the fury that had filled his voice moments earlier.

Dave was silent for a moment.

"It doesn’t have to come to that."

He finally answered.

"If you promise me you’ll stay with me, you can leave this room. You can go wherever you want and come back to me. I won’t lock you away simply because you’re angry with me."

His expression grew more serious.

"But if you try to run, even once, because I know that’s going to be your first instinct after everything that has happened between us, then I’ll have no other choice."

Bryce stared at him, a chill settling through him as the implication finally became clear.

Dave was giving him a choice between staying willingly and being prevented from leaving.

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