Bonded To The Dysfunctional Alpha

Chapter 8: Mistake

Sophie’s POV

The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was the empty space beside me.

The sheets were cold. He’d been gone long enough that no warmth was left, nothing to hold onto, just the flat evidence of absence. I stared at the ceiling for a moment and let that settle.

Then the memories came back all at once.

His hands on my waist. His mouth. The way he’d looked at me in the dark like I was something he hadn’t expected and didn’t know what to do with. The warmth of him, solid and real, and the sounds he’d made that I was fairly certain he hadn’t planned on making. His c**k inside me, how he f****d me and stared at me like I was the only one who matters in his life.

The thought of his lips on my n****e made my pants damp and heat rushed straight to my face.

I pressed both hands over my cheeks and lay there smiling at the ceiling like an i***t and told myself to stop and couldn’t quite manage it.

The door suddenly opened and Ava walked in.

“Good morning,” I said, pushing myself upright, warmth still sitting in my chest.

She just stared at me without answering.

She walked in looking straight ahead, her face completely blank in a way that had nothing to do with tiredness. She crossed to the dresser, picked up whatever she’d come in for, and walked back out without once looking at me.

The door clicked shut behind her.

I sat there still confused.

I took a long shower, letting the warmth of it drag out, replaying things I probably shouldn’t keep replaying. By the time I changed and made it downstairs I had managed to compose my face into something resembling a normal human expression.

The dining table had people around it. Tyler at one end. Ava closer to the middle.

I slid into a seat and reached for the juice and tried for casual.

“Morning Ava.” I smiled but still got nothing from her.

She didn’t even look up from her plate. Just moved her fork slowly through her food like I hadn’t spoken.

I tried again, quieter. “Are you still upset about yesterday? What we talked about? Because I didn’t mean to…”

“I’m fine,” she said flatly, there was a pause. Then she looked up, not at me but past me, and said, “When are you going back to your pack?”

Before I could answer she pushed her chair back and left the table.

I sat very still, what the f**k is that?

I felt eyes on me and looked up. Tyler was watching from his end of the table, those blue eyes moving between where Ava had gone and back to me, reading the whole thing.

I pulled my mouth into something that was trying to be a smile. “Good morning.”

He looked at me for one flat second, then he stood up and left also.

I stared at the space where he’d been sitting.

Both of them. In the same morning, within ten minutes of each other, like the universe had coordinated it specifically.

I put my juice down and went after Tyler.

He was almost through his bedroom door when I caught up, pushing my hand against it before he could shut it completely, and he looked back at me with an expression that said he had been expecting this and was not pleased about it.

“Two minutes,” I said, “that’s all.”

He stepped back and let me in, and I turned to face him before he could find another exit.

“What are we,” I said, “because I need you to tell me Tyler, I need you to say it out loud so I can understand what last night was, what any of this has been, because I am standing here genuinely confused and you owe me at least that much.”

He looked at me and said nothing, his jaw set, his eyes doing that thing where they went flat and distant and gave me absolutely nothing to hold onto.

“After everything,” I said, and I hated how my voice sounded, careful and tight, holding something fragile behind it, “after yesterday, after what we did, after you touched me the way you touched me and looked at me the way you looked at me, you’re going to stand here the next morning and act like I’m a stranger, you’re going to pretend that none of it happened?”

“It was a mistake,” he said, “it won’t happen again, I promise.” His voice was flat and cold.

I stared at him, the words sitting in my chest like something swallowed wrong, sharp and lodged and refusing to move, and I waited for something else to follow them, an explanation, a softening, anything that would make that sentence mean something other than exactly what it sounded like, but he just stood there, calm and closed off and completely unreachable.

“A mistake,” I repeated quietly.

“Sophie….”

“We had s*x Tyler,” the words came out before I could stop them, raw and direct, cutting straight through whatever careful version of this conversation I had planned, “we were together last night, all of it, and you are standing here this morning calling it a mistake, you are looking me in the eye and telling me it meant nothing, after everything, I meant nothing?”

His jaw tightened, something moving behind his eyes that he locked away fast.

“I feel used,” I said, and my voice was steady even though nothing else inside me was, “that is exactly what I feel and I needed you to know that before I walked out of here.”

I turned and left before he could say anything else, because there was nothing he could say that I wanted to hear right now.

I spent the rest of the day avoiding Tyler and trying not to think about what he said, which worked about as well as it sounds, because no matter what corner of the house I found myself in, my mind kept sliding back to it, a mistake, just those two words sitting there refusing to move.

Dylan didn’t help either way.

The first call came mid-morning, and I rejected it without blinking, the second one came twenty minutes after and I rejected that one too, and by the time I had lost count of how many times his name had lit up my screen, I was sitting outside with my phone face down on the table beside me pretending I couldn’t feel it buzzing against the wood every few minutes.

Eventually, I picked up.

“Stop calling me Dylan.”

“Come home.”

“I’m not coming home, I’ve told you that already, stop calling me and stop….”

“Last warning Sophie.” his voice was flat and controlled, “you come back before the end of tomorrow or I go to dad, that’s it, that’s where we are.”

“Dylan….”

He hung up before I could continue.

I sat there staring at the dead screen and tried to figure out if he meant it, tried to read him from memory the way I had been doing my whole life, because Dylan threatened a lot of things but going to our father was different, that was a line he had always been careful about crossing, and the fact that he was putting it on the table now either meant he was more serious than I had ever seen him or more desperate, and I didn’t know which one scared me more.

I was still sitting with that when I heard footsteps behind me.

I turned around to see Ava.

I got up immediately and moved toward her, “Ava, I don’t even know what I said that hurt you but I need you to know I didn’t mean it badly, whatever came out wrong I’m sorry, genuinely, because you are my best friend and I don’t want something like this to come between us, I don’t want to lose you over this.”

She looked at me for a moment, her face still carrying that blankness from this morning, and then she said quietly, “I’m not in the mood to talk to you right now.”

“Ava….”

“And if the only reason you’re still here is because of my brother,” she said, her voice dropping lower, something underneath it with an edge I had never heard from her before, “then you should leave, because I will make sure you don’t have a brother to stay for, you rejected me, fine, but I will not sit here and watch you go after him, I won’t allow it.”

She turned and walked away before I could say a single word.

I stood there watching her go and trying to recognise the person who had just spoken to me because that was not Ava, not the Ava I had known for years, not the one who laughed too loud and dragged me into things and made every room feel like a party, something had shifted in her and I didn’t know what to do with it or how to reach her or whether reaching her right now was even possible.