Irritation flashes before he gives me a honey-sweet simper. “I’m glad you have her back now. She never settled with the rest of us the way she did with you.”
“What do you want?” I ask for the third time, my patience fraying.
Auren sighs, a theatrical sound. “To talk.Alone.” His eyes flick to Jared and Grady before returning to me, and he runs a finger along his collar to drawmy attention to his bare throat, where he’d had my Mark removed. “About possibilities.”
The air turns suddenly thin, insufficient for my lungs. His pheromones intensify, the sweet scent designed to cloud judgment and trigger protective instincts in Alphas.
My mind remembers this manipulation, and I hate how effectively my body responds regardless, how my heart rate increases despite my rational mind’s objections.
“Whatever you have to say,” I manage, squeezing Jared’s hand tighter, “you can say it here.”
A crack forms in Auren’s perfect mask, and the sweet scent of his pheromones shifts, a subtle sour note threading through the honey and violets.
He recovers fast, though, a familiar, syrupy charm sliding back over his face that once filled me with hope but now twists my heart.
“Of course.” Auren leans back in a show of respecting my boundaries. “If that’s what makes you more comfortable. Though I remember a time when you would have begged to be alone with me.”
A threatening rumble comes from Jared, but when I squeeze his hand, he quiets.
“What we shared,” I say carefully, “was never equal.”
“Is that how you remember it? I recall giving you a home and a purpose.” Auren’s words drift across the table with the softness of flower petals, beautiful at a distance but carrying poison beneath the surface. “You blossomed while you were with me, Emily. Or have you rewritten our history?”
His pheromones reach out again, twining around me.
“You were always so dedicated,” Auren continues, fingers brushing the tabletop. “Remember those breakfasts you used to whip up for everyone? The pack still talks about your sourdough.”
The words pull me backward in time to preparing meals in our kitchen while Auren entertained the new Alpha he brought home the previous night.
I blink, pulling myself back to the present. My coffee sits cold in front of me, nausea roiling in my stomach. Quiet concern fills Grady’s eyes, his fingers tapping a gentle rhythm on the side of his coffee cup.
“The pack still talks about me?” I ask, hating how my voice wavers.
“Of course they do.” Auren reaches across thetable again, this time succeeding in brushing his fingers over my wrist, and the contact sends a familiar, unwanted shiver through me. “No one ever wanted you to leave, my love. It was a misunderstanding that spiraled out of control.”
The lie hangs between us, fragile as spun sugar and twice as toxic. No misunderstanding forced me out of the pack, stole my belongings, or held my cat hostage.
No misunderstanding left me with a house I struggled to afford alone after I bought Auren out of his half. “That’s not how I remember it.”
Auren sighs, his shoulders slumping in the perfect picture of regret. “Memory is such a subjective thing. We all carry our own versions of the past.” He casts Jared a meaningful glance. “Some of us have more trouble with perception than others.”
The targeted barb at Jared ignites anger within me, burning away the fog of doubt Auren always cultivates, and I snatch my wrist out from under his touch.
“Memory might be subjective,” Jared growls from beside me, “but security footage isn’t. Or text messages. Or witness statements.”
Auren’s eyebrows rise in delicate surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
Jared doesn’t back down. “Emily has evidence of how the pack voted. How you orchestrated it. How you kept her cat as leverage.”
My heart hammers. I never told Jared these details. He must have pieced it together from what he saw at Auren’s house and what Kyle or others have mentioned.
“Such imagination,” Auren murmurs, his eyes sliding from Jared back to me. “You’ve found yourself quite the champion. Though I wonder if he knows how broken you were when you left us. How lost without your pack. Without me.”
The words strike deep, finding the bruised places I’ve tried to heal. For a moment, I’m back there, bewildered at coming home to find his bags packed, my hands shaking as I begged for him not to leave me.
“She’s not yours,” Jared says, each word clear. “She never was, or you would have bonded.”
The challenge hangs in the air between them, Alpha to Omega in a reversal of traditional dynamics. Auren’s scent changes again, honey turning acrid with anger he can’t quite hide.