"You Rejected Me, Now Beg"

The Door

I don't expect him to come.

That's the thought running through my head as I sit on the edge of a bed too large for one person, still in the underdress from the wedding, the rest of the finery shed somewhere on the floor because I couldn't stand the weight of it anymore.

So when the knock comes, quiet, almost hesitant, I nearly don't answer.

I open the door anyway.

Damian stands in the hallway, jacket gone, tie loosened, looking like a man who has spent the last hour arguing with himself and lost.

Neither of us says anything for a moment. The bond hums between us even now, even after everything, a low current neither of us asked for and neither of us can turn off.

"I'm not here because I want to be," he says finally.

"I'm aware."

"There are expectations." His jaw works like the words taste bad in his mouth. "Tradition. Both packs will assume the marriage was consummated whether it was or not, but if it wasn't, and it ever came out, it would be seen as a second insult. To your family. To mine."

"How considerate of you to worry about appearances."

His eyes flash, gold catching the hallway light, and for a second I see something underneath the careful control, something that looks almost like shame.

"That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean, Damian?"

He doesn't answer right away. He steps into the room instead, and the second the door closes behind him the air changes, thickens, the bond pulling tight between us like a rope drawn taut. I feel it in my chest, in my hands, in the traitorous way my body leans toward him even now, even furious, even humiliated in front of two hundred witnesses just hours ago.

He feels it too. I watch it hit him, watch his breath catch, watch his hand twitch like he wants to reach for me and is fighting himself not to.

"This is the part where you tell me it's real," I say quietly. "And I already know that. I felt it the second we touched. What I don't understand is how a man can feel something like that and still stand in front of everyone and call it nothing."

"Because feeling it doesn't change what I know." His voice is rougher now, cracking at the edges. "I've watched what happens to men who let the bond make their decisions for them. My father built his entire life around a mate bond and it cost him everything, the pack, his judgment, eventually his life. I am not going to be my father."

"So instead you'll be a man who humiliates his mate in public to prove a point to himself."

That lands. I see it land.

For a moment he looks like he might actually apologize, might actually say something true instead of something careful, and I find myself holding still, waiting, some foolish hopeful part of me leaning toward that possibility despite everything.

Then his expression closes again, shutters dropping back into place, and the moment is gone as fast as it arrived.

"I should go," he says.

"You should."

He doesn't move for a second longer than the words suggest he will. His eyes drop to my mouth, just briefly, just long enough that I know he noticed doing it, and something crackles in the space between us that has nothing to do with anger.

Then he turns and walks out, and the door closes behind him with a quiet, final click.

I stand there in the middle of a room that belongs to a marriage that isn't real in any way that matters, and I feel the bond ache in his absence like a bruise pressed too hard.

I press a hand flat against my stomach, an instinct I don't understand yet, a truth my body already knows before my mind catches up to it.

Whatever Damian Cross thinks he's protecting himself from, he has no idea what he just walked away from tonight.

I intend to make sure he finds out. On my terms. When I'm ready, and not one second before.