THE REJECTED FOURFOLD LUNA: FATED TO TWO ALPHA TWINS

Chapter 23—Looming Proximity

Celeste's POV

The car stayed quiet for a long moment after I asked.

Then Mason exhaled slowly and Jason did the same a beat after, the kind of exhale that said they were deciding how to say something neither of them was particularly eager to say.

"Calista was mine," Jason said. He said it plainly, which I appreciated. "Before we knew you were our mate. It was not serious between us but it existed for a while."

"And Khalan?" I asked.

"Mason," Jason said, glancing across to his brother.

"Casual," Mason said. No inflection, no apology. "Nothing that carried any real weight. But yes, it happened for a time."

I sat with that for a moment without saying anything.

It was not jealousy exactly.

More like the specific feeling of learning something you did not know and needing a moment to find somewhere to put it before you could say anything intelligent in response.

"They are angry," Jason said. "That is what tonight was. They saw you, they saw who you are to us and what you mean to this pack, and they could not handle it. That is entirely their problem and not yours."

"I know that," I said.

"Do you?"

"I do." I meant every word of it completely. I was not going to spend the rest of tonight letting two women I never met before today dictate how I felt about myself or my evening. "I just needed a moment to sit with it and now I have."

"That is fair," Mason said quietly.

The rest of the drive home was quiet in a better way. The kind that settles after something is said that needed saying and does not need to be revisited.

When we pulled through the estate gates and the house came into view across the dark grounds I felt the last of the evening's tension release from my shoulders properly.

Home. Whatever the evening threw at all of us, this was still completely and undeniably home and honestly that was not a small thing at all.

Mason opened the passenger door for me before I could reach the handle.

Jason appeared on my other side a beat later. The two of them flanked me the way they always did in public, easy and automatic, without making it feel staged or deliberate.

"You are too perfect to give those girls space in your head," Mason said, looking at me steadily. "Hold onto that."

"They are genuinely not worth a single piece of your energy," Jason said. "Not even a fraction."

I looked at both of them standing in the quiet of the entrance with all of the evening still on them and something in my chest tightened with warmth. "Thank you. For tonight. For every part of it."

Jason kissed me first, warm and brief, his hand curved around my jaw for just a moment. "Get some rest." He pulled back and looked at me. "You did well tonight."

Mason kissed me after, slower, and when he pulled back he pressed his lips to my forehead. "We need to shower and sort everything out for tomorrow. Go to bed, Celeste."

"I will," I said.

"Celeste," Mason said, with the specific tone of a man who already knew what I was about to do and intended to preempt it.

"I will," I said again, putting considerably more conviction behind it.

He smiled at me. "Goodnight, Celeste."

I went upstairs and the house settled around me, warm and quiet the way it always was at this hour.

***

My room was exactly as Neris left it every evening, soft and quiet, a lamp on in the corner casting everything warm. I sat on the edge of the bed and let the silence settle around me for a few minutes without reaching for anything, without doing anything at all. Just letting the day decompress.

It was exactly what I needed before I could think clearly.

Then, out of habit more than intention, I reached for my phone.

The work group chat was sitting open when I unlocked the screen, a notification from earlier I never got the chance to check. I scrolled up to find it.

Amaris posted a roster update for the coming week. Client visits, confirmed appointments, account reviews. The list was formatted the way Amaris formatted everything, clear and precise with absolutely no room for ambiguity.

I scanned it the way I always did with Amaris's updates, quickly, looking for anything that needed attention before morning.

My eyes stopped about halfway down the list.

"Carter, A. and Carter, J. Ashen Hollow Pack. Account Review. Personal visit confirmed. No representative."

I read it again. Slower the second time.

No representative.

Meaning Torren would not be in that meeting. Meaning Aiden and Jayden Carter were coming to Mercer and Vale themselves, personally, and they were on my roster. I was the one who would be sitting across the desk from them.

I set the phone down on the duvet and sat there for a moment looking at the ceiling.

I spent an entire evening navigating Calista and Khalan and the weight of discovering my mates carried histories with the very same women who stood in front of me tonight and called me pathetic to my face. I handled all of it. I came home. Everything felt fine.

And now this.

The timing was so unreasonable that I genuinely almost laughed.

Almost.

I picked the phone back up and read the update again, as though reading it a third time would somehow change what it said.

It did not change.

Aiden and Jayden Carter were coming to my firm. To my office. To sit across a desk from me and go through their accounts like none of the rest of it ever happened.

I turned the phone face down on the nightstand.

I came home from one thing and another was already rising on the other side of it, and I lay back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling.

I tried to decide whether I was going to let it keep me up all night or whether I was going to choose to be smarter than that.

I was still working out that particular answer when I finally closed my eyes.