Chapter 162

ASHER

As I sat in my office, hunched over my desk, I stared at the paperwork scattered before me. Numbers, reports, and pack affairs—all things I normally handled with ease. But today, none of it held my attention. My thoughts kept circling back to Isabella, to the fight we'd had, and to the cold silence that had settled between us like a thick fog.

A knock at the door snapped me out of it, and I looked up to see Jax and Knox stride into the room. They didn't wait for an invitation; they just plopped themselves down in the chairs opposite me, arms crossed, clearly on a mission. I could already tell this wasn't a social visit.

"What?" I asked, leaning back in my chair, trying to keep my tone neutral, though I had a bad feeling about where this was going.

Jax didn't waste any time. "You need to fix this, Asher."

I scoffed, glancing back down at the papers as if they held some kind of escape. "I'm handling it."

Knox, quieter but just as intense, leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Are you? Because it doesn't look like you are."

I clenched my jaw, resisting the urge to snap back. "What do you two want me to do? She'll come around. She needs space. I'm giving her that."

Jax shook his head, his voice sharper than usual. "Space? What she needs is to feel like you give a damn. You’re acting like you’re above apologizing—like she should just get over it because you made the call. But that's not how it works."

I straightened in my chair, feeling my defenses rising. "I made the right call, Jax. Dominic was a threat. He could’ve—"

"Could’ve what?" Knox interrupted, his voice calm but pressing. "Could’ve talked to her? Could’ve maybe tried to get back into her life? And then what, Asher? You think she couldn’t have handled it?"

"That's not the point," I shot back. "If Dominic had stuck his nose where it didn’t belong, he would’ve found out about us. About the pack, the werewolves. I couldn’t risk that. I won’t."

Jax leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "We’re not arguing that, Asher. But you went behind her back. You didn’t even give her the chance to deal with it herself. You made the decision for her—just like you always do. And now she feels betrayed."

I stared at my brothers, heart pounding in my chest. They were pushing me, cornering me, but I wasn’t ready to back down. "I was protecting her. Protecting all of us."

"Maybe you were," Knox said quietly. "But she doesn’t see it that way. Right now, all she sees is that the man she loves went behind her back and killed someone who, despite everything, was a part of her past. You have to understand how that looks to her."

I ran a hand through my hair, frustration boiling up inside me. "So what? I should just apologize? Tell her I was wrong? I wasn’t wrong."

"No one’s asking you to lie," Jax said, his voice softer now, but still firm. "But you need to own up to the fact that you hurt her. You didn’t trust her enough to handle it. And now, if you don’t make this right, you're going to lose her."

My chest tightened. Lose her. I knew they were right, but it didn’t make it any easier to swallow. I'd been trying to give her time, space to come to terms with everything. But maybe… maybe Jax was right. Maybe what she needed wasn’t space but for me to acknowledge how badly I’d messed up.

"I did the right thing," I muttered, more to myself than to them. "If he’d found out about us, the pack…"

"Yeah, maybe you did," Knox said, his tone more understanding now. "But it’s not about whether you were right or wrong. It’s about how you handled it. She needs to feel like she's a part of the decisions that affect her life, not just some bystander in it."

The weight of their words hit me harder than I’d expected. For a long moment, the office was quiet. I could feel their eyes on me, waiting for me to push back again. But I didn’t.

I exhaled slowly and stood up, grabbing my jacket from the back of the chair. "I’ll talk to her."

Jax and Knox exchanged a glance, something like relief passing between them.

As I headed for the door, Jax called after me, "Make it count, Asher. Don’t go in there thinking you’re right. Go in there thinking about her."

I paused in the doorway, letting his words sink in. But deep down, I knew. No matter what I said to Isabella, no matter how much I wanted to apologize for how things had gone down, a part of me would always believe I’d made the right choice. Dominic had been dangerous. Not physically—he’d never laid a hand on Isabella—but emotionally. He’d manipulated and controlled her. And I couldn’t risk him coming back into her life, stirring things up, and putting all of us in danger.

I wasn’t sorry for that.

But I was sorry for how I’d hurt her in the process.

That, at least, I could fix.

Or try to.