Chapter 3

The pack house felt different when I returned from my encounter with Elara. The familiar warmth seemed muted, the shadows longer. I moved through our quarters like a ghost, replaying her words over and over. *I'm willing to let you keep it.* As if the Luna position were hers to bestow.

I tried to focus on mundane tasks—reviewing pack finances, responding to ceremony preparation emails—but my mind kept drifting to the way she'd spoken about Damien. Their shared history. Their "deep connection." The certainty in her voice when she'd said he might wonder what could have been.

The front door slammed with enough force to rattle the windows.

I looked up from my laptop to see Damien storm into our living room, his face thunderous. His tie was askew, his usually perfect hair disheveled as if he'd been running his hands through it. The scent of his anger hit me through our bond—sharp, volatile, tinged with something that made my stomach clench.

"We need to talk," he said, his voice low and dangerous.

I closed the laptop slowly, buying myself time. "About what?"

"About your little coffee date with Elara this morning." He crossed his arms, towering over me where I sat on the couch. "She called me in tears, Seraphina. Tears. She said you sought her out and made her feel unwelcome in her own territory."

The accusation hit like a physical blow. "I didn't seek her out. She—"

"She what? Forced you to be hostile? Forced you to make her feel like an outsider?" His eyes flashed with an anger I'd never seen directed at me before. "She was trying to be friendly, trying to smooth things over after last night, and you attacked her."

"I didn't attack anyone!" I stood up, my own temper flaring. "She sat down at my table uninvited and proceeded to tell me how generous she was being by 'letting me keep' the Luna position. She acted like it belonged to her!"

Damien's jaw tightened. "That's not what she said happened."

"Of course it's not." I laughed bitterly. "She's been manipulating you since the moment she walked back into our lives, and you're too blind to see it."

"Manipulating me?" His voice rose. "She's been nothing but gracious. She even said she understood why the pack chose you, that she didn't want to cause problems—"

"And you believed her." The words came out flat, defeated. "Just like you believed her tears last night instead of the testimony of our own pack members."

Something flickered across his face—guilt, maybe, or uncertainty. But it was gone so quickly I might have imagined it.

"Why would she lie?" he demanded.

"The same reason she lied about being forced to leave you." I watched his face carefully. "The same reason she's been feeding you a story about broken hearts and lost love when we both know she abandoned you the second your family fell from grace."

His hands clenched into fists. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't I?" I stepped closer, close enough to see the conflict warring in his eyes. "Then tell me, Damien. Tell me why you trust her word over mine. Tell me why you're defending a woman who threw you away like garbage when you needed her most."

"Because—" He stopped abruptly, his mouth snapping shut.

"Because what?" I pressed, my heart hammering against my ribs.

He stared at me for a long moment, and I saw something crumble in his expression. The righteous anger faded, replaced by something raw and vulnerable that he quickly tried to hide.

"Because I need to know," he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Know what?"

"If she really left because she was forced to. If things could have been different." The admission seemed to tear something out of him. "I need to know if what we had was real."

The words hung between us like a blade. I felt our mate bond pulse with his anguish, his confusion, his desperate need for answers that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with a past he couldn't let go of.

"And what about what we have?" I asked, my voice breaking. "Is that real to you?"

He looked at me then, really looked at me, and I saw the exact moment he realized what his words had done. Horror flooded his features.

"Seraphina, I didn't mean—"

"Yes, you did." I backed away from him, wrapping my arms around myself. "You meant every word. And now I know where I stand."

I turned to leave, but his hand shot out, grasping my wrist.

"Wait. Please." His voice was thick with regret. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me."

I looked down at his hand on my wrist, then back up at his face. "I do. You're still in love with her."

"No." The denial came swift and fierce. "No, that's not—I love you. You're my mate. You're the one who saved me, who stood by me when everyone else ran. I know that."

"But you don't feel it," I said quietly. "Not the way you should. Not the way I feel it."

He released my wrist, his hand falling to his side. The silence stretched between us, heavy with unspoken truths.

"I need some air," I said finally.

"Don't go." The words came out broken, desperate. "Please don't go. We can work through this."

"Can we?" I met his eyes, searching for something—anything—that would give me hope. "Because right now, I don't think you even know what you want."

I left him standing there in our living room, looking lost and broken. But for once, I didn't turn back to comfort him. I couldn't. Not when every instinct screamed that I was losing him to a ghost from his past.

***

I must have walked for hours, aimlessly wandering the pack territory until my feet ached and the sun began to set. When I finally returned to the pack house, I found Damien in his study, an empty whiskey bottle on the desk beside him and another one half-gone in his hand.

He looked up when I entered, his eyes unfocused and glassy. "Seraphina." My name came out slurred, heavy with alcohol and regret.

"You're drunk," I observed, closing the door behind me.

"Very." He struggled to his feet, swaying slightly. "Had to be. Only way to stop thinking."

"Thinking about what?"

"About how much of a fucking idiot I am." He moved toward me with the careful precision of someone trying not to fall over. "About how I'm ruining everything with the one person who actually matters."

I stayed where I was, watching him approach. Even drunk, he was beautiful—all sharp angles and predatory grace. But there was something broken in his eyes that made my chest ache.

"Seraphina." He stopped just in front of me, close enough that I could smell the whiskey on his breath. "I need you to know something."

"What?"

His hands came up to frame my face, his touch gentle despite his intoxication. "I would never betray you. Never. Not for her, not for anyone."

The words should have been comforting. But they felt hollow, desperate—like he was trying to convince himself as much as me.

"Damien—"

"No, listen." His thumbs brushed across my cheekbones. "You saved my life. Not just from the beating, not just from my uncle. You saved my soul. When everyone else saw a broken, worthless failure, you saw something worth fighting for."

Tears burned behind my eyes. "But that's not enough, is it? Gratitude isn't love."

"It's not gratitude." He pulled me closer, until our foreheads touched. "It's everything. You're everything. And I'm so fucking scared of losing you that I can't think straight."

"Then why—"

"Because I'm broken." The admission came out raw, painful. "Because part of me will always be that rejected, abandoned boy who wonders if he was ever worthy of love in the first place. And when she came back, acting like she cared, like she'd been forced to leave..."

He trailed off, his eyes closing. "I hate that I need to know. I hate that it matters. But I can't seem to let it go."

I reached up to cover his hands with mine. "And what happens when you get your answers?"

"I don't know." The honesty in his voice was brutal. "I just know that right now, in this moment, you're the only thing keeping me sane. You're the only thing that's real."

He kissed me then, desperate and clumsy with alcohol and emotion. I tasted whiskey and regret and something that might have been love—or might have been fear.

When we broke apart, he pressed his face into the curve of my neck.

"Don't leave me," he whispered against my skin. "Whatever happens, whatever I do wrong, don't leave me. I can't survive it again."

I held him as he swayed against me, this powerful Alpha reduced to a broken man clinging to the one person who'd never abandoned him. And despite everything—despite the doubts, the betrayals, the growing certainty that his heart was divided—I found myself whispering back:

"I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

But even as I said the words, I wondered if they were true. And somewhere in the back of my mind, a small voice whispered that maybe I should be preparing to break that promise.

For both our sakes.