Chapter 22 22
Denzel’s POV
She said it through tears, and the world seemed to tilt beneath my feet. It felt as though I had run headfirst into a brick wall hard, sudden, unforgiving. Shock rooted me in place, confusion and pain crashing over each other inside my chest. How was this even possible? How had my life unraveled so completely?
Jalisa stepped closer and pressed a paper into my hands.
“This is from the clinic,” she said softly. “But if you don’t trust it, we can go somewhere else. I’m four weeks pregnant, Denzel. We’re going to be parents.” Her voice trembled, hopeful and desperate all at once. “We may not love each other, but we can love our child. We can make this work.”
I blinked rapidly, fighting the burn in my eyes.
A trap. Permanent and unescapable.
I could never leave Jalisa now. And I could never be with Venessa again.
My legs gave way, and I sank to the edge of the bed, tears spilling freely as the paper shook in my hands. I stared at it without really seeing it. My thoughts were already elsewhere spiraling, frantic. What was I going to tell Venessa? After giving her hope… after making her end things with Rayon… what words could possibly undo that damage?
I felt like absolute garbage.
“Say something, darling,” Jalisa pleaded, sitting beside me.
But I couldn’t. My mouth refused to cooperate. My mind was blank, roaring and hollow at the same time. I felt doomed.
I stood abruptly and handed the paper back to her. “I have things to attend to, Jalisa. We’ll talk about this later.”
She caught my hand. “Talk… or celebrate?”
I forced a smile that felt like it split my face open. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She was my wife. She was meant to bear my child someday.
She had done nothing wrong.
“Celebrate,” I said hoarsely. “We’ll celebrate.”
Even as the words left my mouth, tears streamed down my face. My voice shook. My heart shattered into pieces too small to count. How was I supposed to tell Venessa to move on after I had raised her hopes, after the bond refused to break, after I had fallen helplessly in love with her?
I shouldn’t have continued sleeping with Jalisa once I realized the bond hadn’t fully broken. This was my fault. I had done this to all of us.
I left the room and wandered toward the woods like a ghost, knowing Venessa would be waiting there.
Nyla would be eager to play with Nigel.
How was I supposed to face them?
“We’ve fucked up, Denzel,” Nigel said inside my head, raw with pain.
I couldn’t argue.
The woods swallowed me whole, and there she was sitting against a tree, waiting. Venessa. Beautiful beyond reason. Her raven hair framed her face, her dark eyes pulled at something deep and aching inside me. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to grab her hand and run. To be a coward. To flee from Jalisa, from the werewolf king, from duty and consequence and start a new life with her.
A life that only existed in dreams now.
She looked up and smiled.
Her hair was loose today, cascading down her back, and the sight of her stole the breath from my lungs. I wiped my tears, but it was too late her smile faded instantly. She stood and walked toward me, small and delicate against my height, already knowing something was terribly wrong.
“What’s the matter, Denzel?” she asked.
I pulled her into my arms, pressing my forehead to her shoulder, kissing the sensitive spot on her neck as I breathed her in.
“I’ve fallen in love with you, Venessa,” I confessed, my voice breaking. “So deeply that I lost myself in it.”
Her soft moan only twisted the knife deeper. I held her tighter as her scent wrapped around me and then I broke.
“I have to let you go.”
She pulled back, studying my face with a calmness that terrified me.
“What happened?” she asked.
I wiped my eyes. “Jalisa is pregnant.”
She didn’t look shocked. She tried to pretend, but I saw through it.
“You knew?” I asked quietly.
She shook her head. “No. But I expected it. You were with her before. I felt it every time. It isn’t a surprise.”
Her composure gutted me.
“I suppose you’ll stay with her now,” she said, already gathering her things, preparing to leave.
“Hey where are you going?” I asked, panic rising.
“Choosing myself,” she replied calmly. “Your wife is pregnant. I can’t ask you to leave her. I’ll have to move on. We tried rejecting each other, and it failed. Now the bond is repaired, and I don’t know what to do but I know we can’t be together.”
I bowed my head, shame burning through me.
“Venessa, please”
She met my gaze. “This isn’t your fault, Alpha Denzel. You’re married. This was inevitable. I’m the one who was wrong for hoping.” Her voice trembled. “I truly wish you well. You’ll be an exceptional father. I’ll be rooting for you both.”
Then she walked past me, tears threatening to spill, and disappeared into the trees.
I stood there, frozen, stunned by how cleanly she cut me out of her life.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. I moved through my duties like a hollow shell. That night, when I trained, I found myself watching her window, hoping the light would be on.
It wasn’t.
She slept peacefully, and somehow that hurt more than anything else. I realized then that the light had probably always been meant for me. And now it never would be again.
I returned to my room. Jalisa was waiting, glowing with excitement, already planning to announce the pregnancy at breakfast. I didn’t stop her. I pretended exhaustion and lay beside her, but sleep never came. I spent the entire night breaking apart in silence.
At breakfast, Rayon sat beside Venessa.
After Jalisa’s announcement, he came to congratulate me. I could smell Venessa on him not sex, I would have felt that but closeness. Intimacy. I forced myself to remain calm and decided to confront him during training.
“So you chose to sleep with her?” I linked him sharply.
“She was distraught this morning,” he replied. “Talking about failure, damnation, redemption. She was a mess. I let her share my bed but I didn’t touch her. If I had, you would’ve felt it.”
Shame washed over me, thick and suffocating.
This was chaos. And I was standing right at the center of it.