Chapter 4: Meeting The Impossible
880 Words
GIDEON
The terrace was empty.
Or so I thought.
I stood at the railing, looking out over the glittering city below, and allowed myself a rare moment of stillness.
This was my life. Had been since I was old enough to understand what the Crossbane name demanded.
Power. Control. Isolation.
My father had been thorough about that last part.
“Emotions are weapons others use against you,” he’d said a thousand times. “Love makes you vulnerable. To rule, you must be untouchable.”
I’d believed him. Still did.
Movement caught my eye; a couple in the corner of the terrace, wrapped in each other.
The male Alpha pressed his mate against the wall, kissing her like she was air and he was drowning. She melted into him completely. The total surrender of someone who trusted without reservation.
I watched them with clinical detachment.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.
Something in my chest, something I refused to name, twisted at the sight.
Not jealousy. Just awareness.
Of what I had sacrificed. Of what the Apex didn’t get to have.
I turned away.
Moved toward the far end of the terrace where the shadows pooled thick and–
I smelled her before I saw her.
Jasmine. Wild orchids. Salt. Tears.
She was collapsed against the railing, shoulders shaking with sobs she was trying desperately to muffle.
Her champagne dress was wrinkled, her hair coming loose, mascara tracking down her cheeks.
Ashford’s discarded secret.
I should have left. Should have turned around and walked back inside without a word. She was none of my concern, just another casualty of ambition and politics.
But I didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
Because she looked up.
Those storm-gray eyes locked onto mine, and the world stopped.
Every muscle in my body went rigid. My wolf, the beast I’d kept leashed and controlled for years, surged forward with a violence that stole the breath from my lungs.
MINE.
No.
OURS. MATE. CLAIM HER NOW.
No. This wasn’t– it couldn’t–
But I felt it.
The bond snapping into place like a chain wrapping around my heart and pulling tight. Recognition burning through every nerve ending.
My control – my perfect, unshakeable, three-decade-old control – fracturing into a thousand pieces in the space of a single breath.
My mate.
The Moon Goddess had given me a mate.
And she was broken. Crying over another man.
Shattered because of Jaxon Ashford.
The rage that swept through me cracked the marble railing under my grip.
“I didn’t know anyone was out here,” she whispered, her voice raw.
I couldn’t speak. Could only stare at her like I’d been struck by something I had no word for.
“I’ll go to the other side,” she said, starting to move past me.
“No.” The word came out as a growl. Barely human.
She froze.
I forced a breath. Then another.
Forced my wolf back through sheer willpower while every instinct I had screamed at me to close the distance, to mark her, to make certain she understood that she was mine.
That no one, especially not Ashford, would ever touch her again.
“You should go back inside,” I managed. My voice came out harder than I meant.
“Why?” She turned to face me fully.
Despite the tears, despite the wreckage of the evening on her face, there was steel in her spine that made something in me go very, very still. “So I can watch him celebrate? Watch him pretend I never existed?”
The Ashford boy.
My wolf snarled.
“You were his,” I said.
“I was nobody’s.” Her voice broke slightly on it. “I was just… stupid.”
Wrong. The bond thrummed between us, a living thing, insisting.
You are mine.
I moved closer without deciding to, drawn by something older than reason.
“Look at me,” I said quietly.
She should have run. Should have put every available inch between herself and the most dangerous Alpha in North America.
She looked up instead.
And the bond roared to life with such force I nearly staggered.
I watched her pupils blow wide. Watched confusion and something else, something unnameable, flicker across her face.
She felt it too.
My hand moved without permission, reaching for her face–
I stopped it.
Stepped back.
Because she was shattered right now. Broken by Ashford’s betrayal. And claiming her at this moment would make me no better than him.
She deserved better.
She deserved a choice.
Even if giving her one was the hardest thing I’d ever done.
“Run,” I heard myself say. Rough. Barely controlled. “Run, Isla. Now.”
Her eyes went wide. “What?”
“Before I do something we both regret.” My hands clenched into fists at my sides. “Go. Please.”
She stared at me for one more heartbeat; confused, afraid, and something else I didn’t have a name for yet.
Then she ran.
I stood in the darkness and watched my mate disappear and felt the bond stretch and scream in protest.
The Apex. The untouchable Alpha. The man who had never needed anyone…
Had just found his undoing.
And she was crying over someone else.
- Writer
