His Fated Mate Came Back While He Was Still Pressing Me Beneath Him

Chapter 2 The Brother Ethan Loved Most

Scarlett Morrath's flight was due in at midnight. She was coming back so Ethan could mark her in front of the pack.

Ethan's car had already rounded the end of the driveway, its taillights disappearing into the dark.

I stood at the window with one hand fisted in the curtain. The words I had said countless times lodged in my throat again, but in the end, I did not say them. He was already gone. He could not hear me. Even if he could, he would not care.

So I turned away from the window and went back into the bedroom. I opened the hidden compartment in my nightstand and took out a music box no bigger than my palm. My audiologist at Silver Spring Treatment Center had given it to me as a simple way to test my hearing. If I wound it gently, it would play a melody so faint that only someone with normal hearing could catch it.

I wound it once.

The melody flowed out, as clear as water running over stone. Every note reached my ears perfectly.

The therapist had said my hearing had recovered to the level of a normal werewolf, and my wolf had fully awakened.

I closed my hand around the music box until the metal edges bit into my palm.

This was supposed to be the surprise I gave him on his birthday night. For the first time, I was going to let him hear me play the cello.

Now none of it mattered.

My vision blurred. Tears slid down my face and struck the lid of the music box in small, cold drops.

For five years, I had waited for a miracle, and against all reason, it had happened.

But I felt no joy at all. After my hearing came back, the first thing I heard clearly was what he had said on the phone tonight. "I've given her five years. I'm done. Let her go."

Memories surged up before I could stop them.

It was freshman fall at Crescent Moon Academy, on club recruitment night.

There was a piano room next to the pack orchestra's rehearsal hall, its door left half open. I was walking past with my cello in my arms when my feet suddenly stopped.

Ethan was inside, sitting at the piano.

The moment his hands hit the keys, I felt it before I even recognized what it was. The vibration surged through the floor, straight into the soles of my feet, then shot up my spine in a bright, fiery rush. Something deep inside my chest ignited. I had no idea then that it was the mate bond, flaring to life.

I froze in the doorway. The strap of my cello case dug into my shoulder, and I forgot how to breathe.

By the end of that night, I had signed up for the orchestra club.

At first, we had almost nothing to do with each other. He was the Alpha heir, and I was just a girl who played the cello. Our eyes rarely even met.

That changed in the second semester of freshman year.

The pack orchestra went to a remote pack camp for a charity performance. A temporary stage had been set up on the grassland. By the time the last performance ended, night had already fallen. Everyone was taking down the stage and packing up the instruments.

That was when the rogues came out of the trees. There was no warning.

Without warning, silver flashed, and shattered pieces of silver sprayed through the air. Several girls were forced into the corner of a tent. Guitars and drumheads were crushed underfoot, and howls and screams tangled into chaos.

In the chaos, I saw Ethan's little brother, Liam. He was only six, shoved by the crowd to the edge of the tent, and a rogue was lunging straight at him.

No one else saw.

My body moved before my mind could catch up.

I ran. I reached Liam first, snatched him into my arms, and turned just in time to throw my body over his.

Shards of silver buried themselves in the side of my neck. A burning pain exploded from the wound, and silver poison flooded deep into my ear canal. I fell to the ground. Ethan's mouth was moving, and so were the mouths of everyone around me, but it was as if every sound had been drained out of my world.

When I woke the next day, I was lying inside a temporary medical tent.

The doctor was speaking. I could see that much. His mouth was moving, and so was the nurse's, but neither of them made a sound. In the end, the nurse wrote the diagnosis on a whiteboard and held it in front of me. Silver poisoning had damaged the nerves in my inner ear. I had lost roughly ninety-five percent of my hearing, and the poison had suppressed Lyric so severely that I could no longer shift.

And I would never play the cello again, because I would never hear a single note I made.

I lay on the bed, staring at the waterproof canvas above me, my mind completely blank.

Then the flap lifted, and Ethan walked inside.

He walked to the bed, took my hand, lowered his head, and pressed his lips to my fingertips.

Then he took out his phone and typed the words into Notes one by one for me to read.

"You saved Liam. The entire pack owes you. Be my mate. I'll take care of you. I promise."

I thought it was a confession.

So I said yes.

For the next five years, I built my life around that promise.

He was good to me in all the ways people could see. He refused the Alpha marriage alliance his parents arranged for him and insisted on keeping me in the Pack House. But he never marked me. He never claimed me as his Luna. He never claimed me in public as his fated mate.

To everyone in the pack, I was never anything more than the nearly deaf Beta girl who stayed too close to the Alpha.

Tonight, at last, I knew why.

Scarlett had always been in his heart. What he had done for me was only his way of repaying a family debt. I had saved Liam, the brother Ethan loved most, and the son his family had already marked for power. Liam had been too valuable to lose.

I wiped my face and drew in a long, unsteady breath. Inside me, my wolf stirred. Lyric made a soft, wounded sound, and this time I did not silence her.

I was done.

If the debt was paid, then it was time for me to leave.

I picked up my phone and called my mother, Helen Ashford.

"Mom, contact the overseas packs and start the paperwork. I'm leaving Crescent Moon Pack."