Chapter 5: After Everything
1067 Words
ISLA
I don’t remember the drive home.
One moment I was running through gilded hallways. The next I was fumbling with my apartment keys, hands shaking so badly it took three tries to get the door open.
The apartment was exactly as I’d left it.
Small, modest, painfully ordinary. Books on the coffee table. A half-empty mug of tea from this morning. The life of a woman who’d been waiting.
Always waiting.
The sobs then came in waves; ugly, gasping, the kind you can’t perform and can’t stop. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, the champagne dress pooling around me like a mockery.
Eight years. Eight years of hiding, of patience, of believing love would be enough.
“When I become Alpha and part of the Seven, you’ll be my Luna.”
Fifteen years old. The ashes of the Beta house. His hands cupping my face like I was something worth holding onto.
“You and me. Always.”
I’d believed him.
Goddess, I’d been so stupid.
The memories drowned me.
Age nineteen, his voice against my hair: “Just a little longer.”
Age twenty-one, his mouth on mine after an argument, kissing the fight out of me before I could finish it.
Last week, the dress box arriving with that note: Wear this. Tonight changes everything.
He’d been right about that part.
I pushed myself off the floor, stripped the dress over my head, and held it at arm’s length.
Beautiful. Expensive. A lie wrapped in silk.
I walked to the kitchen and turned on the gas stove.
“You want to burn?” I whispered. “Fine.”
I held the fabric over the flame and watched it catch; the champagne color blackening, the embroidery curling into nothing.
I dropped it in the sink and watched it go. The smoke alarm shrieked. I waved it quiet with a dish towel and watched the ashes spiral down the drain.
Gone. All of it gone.
I changed into sweatpants and an oversized shirt and collapsed on the couch.
My phone buzzed and I ignored it. It was probably my only real friend, Lena, and I couldn’t explain any of this right now.
Couldn’t explain the betrayal or the terrace or the silver-eyed man who’d told me to run and somehow still hadn’t left my head.
My wolf stirred at the thought of him.
Stop it, I told her. One catastrophe at a time.
I turned to check the time.
12:47 AM.
I should sleep. Should try to salvage something from this wreckage of a night.
Instead I sat in the dark and replayed every moment with Jaxon, looking for the signs I’d missed.
They were everywhere. The way he’d pull back when I tried to hold his hand in public. The excuses for why I couldn’t attend Pack functions. The careful distance he maintained around other Alphas.
I’d told myself it was temporary. That once he had power, everything would change.
I’d been a convenient secret.
Nothing more.
My phone buzzed again. Then again.
Then came a knock at the door.
I froze. Nearly one in the morning. Lena wouldn’t show up without calling. No one else knew where I lived. I’d made sure of that, part of the whole secret lover arrangement.
The knock came again. Firmer.
Jaxon, I thought. Coming to explain, to apologize–
“Isla.”
Every nerve in my body went rigid.
Deep. Controlled. The voice of the most dangerous Alpha alive.
“I know you’re in there,” Gideon Crossbane said through the door. “Let me in.”
How does he know where I live? Dorian, my brain supplied immediately. Of course.
“Go away,” I called. My voice came out hoarse.
“No.”
Simple. Absolute. The word of someone who had never once been told no and accepted it.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I don’t care what you want right now.” Something in his tone; not cruelty, just urgency. “I care about what you need. And what you need is to not be alone.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you’re my mate.” Rough. Like the words cost him something. “I know you’re hurting. And I know that if you don’t open this door, I’m going to break it down.”
“That’s illegal.”
“I’m the Apex. I don’t particularly care.”
Despite everything – the heartbreak, the confusion, the absolute insanity of the last few hours – something in me almost laughed.
There was something absurd about the most powerful wolf in North America standing in my hallway at one in the morning, threatening property damage.
“I’m not dressed,” I said. Which was a stupid thing to say, but it was all I had.
“I’ve seen wolves in far less.”
I looked down at myself. Sweatpants. University shirt. No bra. Face blotchy from crying. Possibly the worst I’d ever looked in my life.
This is a terrible idea, my brain said.
My hand was already on the doorknob.
I opened the door.
He was still in his black suit from the ceremony; tie gone, collar open.
His silver eyes found mine immediately, and I felt it again. That pull. That impossible, infuriating recognition.
“Hi,” I said stupidly.
“You burned something.” His gaze flicked past me into the apartment. “I can smell it.”
“The dress. I burned the dress.”
Something moved across his face. Approval, or satisfaction, but it was gone before I could be sure.
“Good,” he said.
We stared at each other. The Apex was at my door. My mate was at my door. And I had absolutely no idea what to do about either of those things.
“Are you going to invite me in,” he said, voice quieter now, “or are we doing this in the hallway?”
I should say no. Should tell him to leave. Should do approximately a dozen things I wasn’t doing.
I stepped back and opened the door wider.
“Come in,” I whispered.
Gideon Crossbane walked into my tiny apartment.
And I knew, with the particular clarity of someone whose life has just changed irrevocably, that nothing was ever going to be the same again.
- Writer
