Bonded To The Dysfunctional Alpha

Chapter 16: Visit

Sophie’s POV

I knocked on Ava’s door and waited for her to answer.

It took a while before I heard movement inside, longer than it should have, and when the door finally opened it was only halfway, Ava standing in the gap with her hand still on the handle, looking at me with an expression that was tired and flat and not particularly interested in what I was about to say.

“I need your help,” I said, keeping my voice calm, “Dylan is in the cell and Tyler won’t listen to me, but maybe if we go together, maybe if you talk to him, he’ll….”

“No,” Ava said.

Just that, just the one word, clean and simple.

I blinked, “Ava, Tyler is your brother, maybe if you talk to him….”

“Whatever happens to Dylan is not my concern,” she said, and her voice carried nothing in it, no anger, no guilt, just a flatness that was somehow worse than either of those things, “he came here looking for trouble and he found it, that’s between him and my brother, it has nothing to do with me.”

I stood there and looked at her and tried to find the Ava I knew somewhere in that expression, the one who had grown up running in and out of our pack, calling Dylan her brother too, the one who had laughed at his jokes and argued with him like a sibling, and I couldn’t find her, she was just gone, replaced by this careful blankness that told me something I hadn’t fully accepted until right now.

Whatever was broken between us wasn’t just about what happened in that bedroom, it went deeper than that, deeper than I had understood, and standing in this doorway was not going to fix it today.

“Okay,” I said quietly.

I turned and walked away and she closed the door behind me without another word.

The pack cell was at the lower end of the building, one of Tyler’s guards walked me down without much conversation and unlocked the outer gate and stood back, and I could hear Dylan before I could fully see him, the sound of pacing.

He stopped when he saw me. For one second his face just carried the exhaustion of it, the hours in here sitting on him visibly, and then it closed off into something harder and he crossed to the front of the cell and gripped the bars and looked at me with eyes that were past frustrated, “this is all your fault, if you’ve not proven stubborn, none of this would’ve happened. You know that!”

“Dylan…”

“He has no right,” his voice was tight and controlled but only just, “this is kidnapping, what he has done to me is kidnapping, I am an Alpha and he has locked me in a cell on his land and when my father hears about this, when our father hears every single thing that has happened in this pack since you arrived, Tyler will wish he had never laid eyes on you, I promise you that.”

“Can you please just lower your voice and talk to me,” I said, keeping mine steady, “I came here because I want to help you, I have been trying to get Tyler to release you, I’m still trying, but you coming in here threatening everyone is not making any of this easier.”

“I don’t need easier,” he said, “I need to be out, and I need you walking beside me when I leave.”

“I’m not leaving with you.”

His jaw tightened, “Sophie….”

“I have told you that already, multiple times, in multiple rooms,” I said, and I was tired, genuinely tired, “I am not going home, I am not marrying Marcus, and I am not leaving Tyler, none of that has changed and it is not going to change just because you are angry about it.”

“He has a dysfunction Sophie,” Dylan said, lowering his voice slightly now, shifting into something that was trying to sound reasonable, “forget everything else for a moment, forget Marcus and the alliance and all of it, I am your brother and I am telling you that man cannot give you what a mate is supposed to give you, he cannot give you a future, he cannot….”

“Stop,” I said, and something in my voice made him stop, “I don’t want to hear that conversation again, I have already told the elders where I stand on that and my answer is not changing, Tyler’s condition is not your business and it is not a reason for me to walk away from my mate.”

Dylan looked at me for a long moment and I could see him searching for the angle that would work, the words that would finally reach me, trying one door and finding it locked and moving to the next one, and it made me sad in a way I hadn’t expected, watching my brother work that hard to control something that was never his to control.

“Dad will hear about this,” he said finally, quieter now, “everything, Tyler locking me up, you refusing to come home, the mate claims, all of it, and when he does Sophie this will not end well for anyone.”

“I know,” I said, because I did know, and the thought of it sat cold and heavy in my stomach, but I was not going to let him see that, “I know Dylan.”

He looked at me like he was waiting for that to land hard enough to change my mind, and when it didn’t his expression shifted into something exhausted and resigned and still proud, too proud to bend even from inside a cell, too proud to ask instead of demand, and that was Dylan, that had always been Dylan, and no amount of wanting it to be different was going to change that today.