One Mate Was Never Enough

Leave Him

POV: Chloe

The knock at the door hit like a thunderclap.

"Chloe? Baby, are you still awake?" he ask. His voice sounded warm, worried, completely unaware of the world ending on the other side of this door.

Tristan stood exactly where he was, expression unreadable, amber eyes steady in the low lamplight as if he had all the time in the world. As if his younger brother wasn't three steps away from discovering everything.

"Please." I grabbed his arm, fingers finding solid muscle beneath his sleeve.

"Get in the wardrobe, Tris, Please," I begged him. Something moved behind his eyes. Not fear. A cold calculation, as if he were weighing the cost of letting Ethan knock the door down against the particular cruelty of watching what came next from a few feet away.

"Chloe?" Another knock. Louder.

"I heard something. Are you okay?" Ethan asks, knocking even harder.

“Tristan...” I called his name, my voice sounding like a scared cat. He gave me one last warning glare, and he turned, unhurried, walking to the wardrobe, pulling it open.

He looked back at me once over his shoulder, that unbearable look, like he was memorizing something, and stepped inside. He left the door open, just a sliver, just enough to see everything

He was going to watch...

I pressed my palms flat against my stomach, drew one breath, and opened the door. Ethan stood in the hallway holding a ceramic mug, steam curling from the surface. Sleep pants, disheveled hair, eyes sweeping over my face the moment I appeared.

"I made warm milk." He said, holding it toward me, a warm smile plastered on his face.

"Your shoulder was tense at dinner. I thought maybe you couldn't sleep." he said, worrying about me. My chest ached. This was the Ethan I knew. The one who noticed, who showed up at eleven at night because he'd clocked my tension across a dinner table and quietly decided to do something about it.

"You didn't have to do that. I was just about to sleep, actually."

"Can I come in?" he asked, getting excited with the idea.

“No, of course." I said in a panic, hurting his feelings with my rejection. He stepped inside anyways, his nostrils flared, just slightly, just once, and his jaw tightened for a fraction of a second before smoothing out again.

He was scenting the room, and I know without being told that he would pick up Tristans scent. I kept my expression perfectly still, acting oblivious to the scent that’s flooding my room. Ethan set the mug on the nightstand and turned to face me. His gaze snagged on my hand.

The ring...

Tristan's ring, still on my finger where he'd forced it some minutes ago. Plain, worn, twenty dollars from a street stall and absolutely unmistakable to anyone who knew what it was.

"That ring." His voice was carefully light.

"Where did you get it?"

"I found it on the vanity just now. I picked it up without thinking." I laughed, the sound thin in my own ears.

"Habit. I always try on jewelry I find." I chuckled nervously. Ethan looked at the ring for a long moment, his eyes moving from the ring to my face, as if trying to figure something out.

"Take it off," he said finally.

"Ethan..."

"Please." He closed his hand gently around mine, thumb pressing against the band.

"That's Tristan's."

"Is it important to him?

I didn't realize this old cheap ring would be important to him." I lied.

"It's not that." He released my hand and stepped back, rubbing the neck.

"Tristan has been alone for seven years. Not dated anyone, not allowed anyone close. In our world, pureblood wolves usually only accept their fated mate, and whatever happened back then broke something in him." He looked at me with clear, earnest eyes.

"His things, his scent, it bothers him when other people touch them. You should probably just throw the ring away. If he notices it's gone, he won't say anything. But if he sees it on your hand..."

"Fine, I'll take it off," I said. But I didn't do it, I couldn't make my fingers move. Ethan watched me for a moment, then stepped toward me, hands coming to my waist, head dipping toward my neck.

"Ethan." I put my hand flat against his chest.

"I just want to hold you. I missed you tonight." he says, pulling me into his arms. I knew what this was, it’s pure beastly instincts. Underneath his genuine affection, I could feel the edge of something instinctive driving him to press his scent into my skin.

His brothers scent is making him jealous and he doesn’t even know why. He is tempted to layer himself over whatever his wolf had already detected in this room. He didn't know what he was doing, and that almost made it worse.

"Not tonight," I said gently.

"I'm tired, and it feels strange with your brother down the hall and all the family rules he warned about." I said, pushing him away gently.

His jaw worked, I can tell that he is not pleased with my actions. Just for a moment his eyes went slightly darker, his wolf looking out through the surface. Then he exhaled and nodded.

"Okay." He pressed a single kiss to my forehead, lingering and deliberate, then pressed the ceramic mug into my hands.

"Drink this before it gets cold." He said with a forced smile, and then he walked to the door, walking out shutting the door. I listened to his footsteps until they disappeared down the hall.

Three seconds of silence, then the wardrobe opened. Tristan stepped out, and the expression on his face stopped my breath. Its not rage, it was something older and worse. Something that had been sitting behind his eyes for seven years, feeding quietly on everything he'd refused to say, and it was done being patient.

He crossed the room and I had no time to move before my back met the wall and his forearm came down beside my head, caging me in. He wasn't touching me. Just close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off his skin, close enough to smell cedar and tobacco and underneath both, that particular scent that had lived in the deepest part of my memory for seven years without my permission.

"Tristan..."

"Seven years." His voice was quiet. Quieter than shouting would have been.

"I turned down every arrangement the elders made, every woman they brought forward, every pack alliance that required a marriage." his amber eyes held mine and didn't let go.

"I wore that ring every single day. And then tonight you walk through my front door holding my brother's hand."

"It isn't..."

"Don't." Low and warning.

"I watched him put his hands on you, I watched him lean into your neck. You wore his mark to my dinner table, Chloe." he said angrily. The air went out of me.

His wolf was surfacing, I could feel it the way you feel pressure change before a storm, something massive pressing against the inside of his skin. His eyes had shifted at the edges, amber bleeding toward gold.

"Do you know what it does to a wolf," he said carefully,

"To see another male's mark on his mate?"

"I'm not your mate." my voice shook.

"You don't get to call me that."

"The bond doesn't ask for your permission." His thumb pressed, gently and devastatingly, against the skin just below my jaw, exactly where Ethan's mouth had been.

"It doesn't care how many years have passed or who you chose to come home with."

"Tristan, stop..."

"When you went on the first date, the second... when you let him call you baby..." his eyes stayed on mine.

"Did you ever, once, think about what you left behind?" he asks, his eyes peering into my very soul. The question stripped me raw, because the honest answer, the one I had refused to say even to myself in the dark of my own apartment, was ‘yes’. Every single time. In every quiet moment, in every space where happiness almost took hold.

"It doesn't matter what I thought," I said.

"What matters is what I chose, what I'm still choosing." Si told him. Something broke, very slightly, in his expression, then it closed. His hand slid to cup the side of my neck, thumb resting in the hollow of my throat, and I felt the warmth of it travel all the way to my spine.

His head dipped, not a kiss, just unbearably close, his breath against the corner of my mouth, his lips finding the mark on my neck. He did not give me a love bite, just a press of warmth, deliberate and claiming, his wolf trying to layer itself over everything Ethan had left there.

My hands came up to push him away, but my fingers curled into the fabric instead. He went still suddenly, a shudder moving through him, the sharp tension of a man holding something enormous on an extremely short leash.

A sound came from low in his chest, rough and unsteady, and when he lifted his head his eyes were fully golden. Then he stepped back, his possessive gaze still pinned on me.

"Break up with him." his voice had gone rough at the edges.

"End it." he said firmly.

"He's your brother, he loves you. Do you understand what this would do to him?" I asked him, appealing.

"He can love me and still not have you." Tristan said sternly and turned toward the hidden door. He paused there with his hand against the frame, his back to me.

"They are not the same thing." He adds as he pushed the door open.

"And Chloe..." I looked up, but he didn't turn around.

"Take the ring off before morning..." he paused.

"Take it off, and watch me claim you before everyone tomorrow. wanna bet?” the door closed behind him. I stood in the silence for a long time, the ceramic mug warm between my hands, steam long since faded, Tristan's ring still on my finger.

Outside, the rain fell harder, a constant reminder that I’m trapped between two brothers.