Cordelia couldn’t stop shaking.
She had told him. At least part of it. The words still rang in her ears like broken glass—Reid is my brother. She half-expected Ash to rise, storm out, and never look at her again. She had braced herself for that cold finality.
But he hadn’t.
Instead, he stayed. He leaned closer. He looked at her with storm-cloud eyes, fury and protection battling inside him. He didn’t walk away.
That should have been enough to soothe her. It should have been enough to let her sink into the relief of finally not being alone with this secret anymore.
But it wasn’t.
Because beneath that relief was the gnawing truth, the one she hadn’t spoken, the one that curdled every beat of her heart: she had betrayed him. She had betrayed all of them.
Ash’s words replayed in her min
