Chapter 21: *

Emery's POV

Her face hadn't moved, but something behind it had. Something that knew exactly what I was describing, and what it would look like in print, and what it would do to the narrative she'd been building so carefully for years.

I took one step toward her.

"You have a son. You have a career that's just getting started. You have a man you spent three years scheming to get." I looked at her eyes, the way I used to look at opponents across the mat. "That's a lot to hold onto. I'd suggest both hands, both eyes, all your attention." My voice went flat. "Because the next time you walk up to me with that I only want what's best for you voice, I'm going to remember that I haven't trained properly in three years and I could really use the warm-up."

I stepped back.

"Go back to your dinner," I said. "You waited this long for him. Don't waste the evening."

The smile stayed on her face. But her lips had gone white at the edges.

Keaton stepped in before she could answer. "You need to stop. She's done nothing to you tonight. We were just—"

"Being concerned?" I said. "That what we're calling it?"

"Emery." His jaw tightened. "You walked out of that house with nothing. I want you to know that wasn't what I — I was going to take care of you. A real settlement. Clean. You would have been fine."

Something cold moved through me from the top of my chest to my feet.

"You gave me a title," I said. "You gave me a house. You've been telling yourself for three years that I should be grateful — I can hear it in the way you talk to me, Keaton, like I'm someone you did a favor for and I never quite thanked you right." I took one step toward him. "You picked me because I was safe. You know that, right? I didn't have a family. I didn't have a pack at my back. I didn't have anyone who was going to call you on your bullshit. I was an omega from an orphanage in your own territory. I was the most convenient fated mate you could have asked for."

"That's not—"

"I watched you run a pack for three years," I spat. "I know exactly how you do the math. I was the low-risk play. That was the whole point." The heat in my chest flared. "You call it a good life I gave you, but what you actually gave me was three years of keeping your house running while you sat there with her photograph and your hand down your pants. And you have the fucking nerve to stand here and tell me you were going to take care of me?"

"Watch your fucking—" he growled.

"Or what?" I cut him off. "You going to do what you almost did in your living room? In front of your shiny new Luna and the motel parking lot?" His face went stone-still.

"Because Jack stepped back from that one," I said. "Your own wolf. The only honest part of you." I watched his jaw work. "Do you know what everyone in Easthaven is going to remember about that ceremony? Not the rejection. Not Alora becoming Luna. They're going to remember that Jack said goodbye to me. Jack did what you couldn't."

"Don't you dare—"

"He had more dignity in thirty seconds than you've had in three years." My voice dropped so low it could have cut him. "Do you know what that does to an Alpha? His own wolf shows the room that the man couldn't manage what the animal did." I shook my head slowly. "That's what's going to follow you. Not me. You."

He didn't say anything. His hands were shaking.

Good, Yara said, fierce and sharp as a blade.

"I hope she's worth it," I said, each word cold and deliberate. "I mean it. I hope she's exactly the fantasy you've been building for three years, and I hope every single goddamn day of it is everything you dreamed. Because you burned your fated mate bond to the ground for her, Keaton. That isn't something you get back. And underneath all that Alpha control, Jack knows that too. That's why he said goodbye."

I turned toward the road.

Behind me, I heard Alora say something to him, her hand probably already on his arm.

My legs were moving and that was the only thing that mattered.

The adrenaline that had carried me through that whole conversation was burning off now, and what it left behind was nothing glamorous. Just the hollow, scraped-out feeling of a body that had been running on empty.

I went down into a crouch, one hand braced on my thigh, and I stayed there for a second with my head dropped.

Get up, Yara said. Not in front of them.

I know. I pressed my palm harder into my knee. Give me one second.

I heard a car door. Then footsteps.

I looked up.

A black SUV was parked at the curb, hazard lights blinking amber in the dark. The headlights were still on, cutting two clean columns through the night, and the man walking out of them walked like he owned the light itself — unhurried, hands in his pockets, the kind of presence that made the air rearrange itself before he arrived.

Logan came to a stop in front of me, close enough that the glow from the headlights threw his shadow long behind him, and I had to tilt my chin up to see his face properly. Strong jaw, amber eyes catching the streetlight in that particular way that made it impossible to look somewhere else.

I straightened up. My legs cooperated, barely.

"Let me guess," he said. "Keaton."

I stared at him.

"That the specific kind of terrible you're wearing right now." He tilted his head slightly. "The parking lot, the tissues, the whole situation." One eyebrow went up, faint. "He was here?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

How. He hadn't been there. He hadn't seen any of it. I'd walked out of a conversation thirty seconds ago and somehow this man had taken one look at me crouched on the asphalt and landed directly on the right answer.

"Don't look at me like that," Logan said. "You have a very specific face for Keaton-related problems."

"I have a—" I stopped. "I do not have a face—"

"You do."

"That's not—" I pressed my fingers to my temple. "Yes, fine. He was here. Him and Alora. They just — appeared." I gestured vaguely at the road. "Out of nowhere. Date night."

Logan looked at me for a moment.

Then he said, with complete calm: "Next time, hit him."

I blinked.

"You spent three years not hitting him." He said. "You've got the training. You've got the ground game. Next time he walks up to you in a parking lot, you have my full professional endorsement to put him on the concrete."