My wolf stirred beneath my skin, restless.
She didn’t feel fear, or the need to respect the distance Dimitri had kept between us for years. This was something else. Since that almost-kiss in his office, it was like something had snapped in her. She wanted me to move closer. To close the distance. To touch him.
I clenched my hands at my sides, trying to hold herback. This was Dimitri—the boy who barely looked at me, who had spent years keeping his distance. And yet my wolf didn’t care. She recognized something in him that I didn’t. Something that made her stir with excitement.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I moved closer despite every warning bell in my head.
He shook his head. “Talking won’t change anything. Nothing will change anything.”
I rounded the desk until I stood beside him, close enough to see the red rims around his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way his hands gripped the empty glass like it was the only thing keeping him grounded.
He looked…lost.
“Dimitri.” His name left my lips softly. It was the first time I’d ever called him by his first name to his face.
Something flickered in his eyes.
“What happened?” I asked.
For a long moment, he didn’t answer. Just stared at me.
Then, quietly, he said, “I’m getting engaged.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. The room tilted. My knees went weak, my chest suddenly too tight to breathe.
“Oh.” The sound came out broken. I blinked once, twice, too many times, trying to process. “When?”
“The announcement will be at my Alpha ceremony. One month from now.”
“Who…who is she?” I didn’t know why I needed to know, but the words came out anyway.
“Selene Ashworth.” His voice was flat, emotionless. “It’s a political alliance. Good for the pack.”
“I see.” I didn’t. I couldn’t think of anything other than the ringing in my ears and the way my heart was cracking down the middle.
In one month, he’d be engaged. And I would still be here, working for him, living under the same roof, watching him with her, pretending I didn’t feel like I was dying inside.
“It’s the right thing to do.” He sounded like he was trying toconvince himself. “Duty over everything else. That’s what being Alpha means.” His voice turned bitter. “That’s what my father never understood. He abandoned his Fated Mate. He rejected the woman chosen for him by the Moon Goddess, destroyed his family, his pack, everything—for what?” He shook his head. “I won’t make that mistake.”
Guilt crashed over me in waves. My mother was the reason he’d grown up like this. The reason Uncle Asher had left him.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered through the tightness of my throat. “I’m so sorry that my mother—”
“Don’t.” He cut me off sharply. “Don’t apologize for her. For him. For any of it. It’s not your fault, Isabella.”
“Then whose fault is it?” Tears burned behind my eyes. “Because everyone acts like it’s mine. Like I’m the living reminder of your father’s betrayal.” My voice broke.
The rational part of my mind had always known the truth. My mother’s relationship with Uncle Asher wasn’t what had brought me into the world. It was the one night she’d spent with the man she’d always called a deadbeat, while working late at the bar. She had simply loved the wrong man at the wrong time—and I was the consequence, the child everyone else assumed belonged to someone else.
But Dimitri knew.
We shared no blood. His father wasn’t mine. We were connected only by the tangled knots of adult choices made long before either of us existed.
But guilt didn’t care about timelines or biology. It clung to me anyway, like a second skin I couldn’t shed. Because even though my mother had done nothing wrong, I still felt like I represented something broken in this family. Something that shouldn’t exist. And wanting Dimitri—wanting him the way I did, with this consuming, desperate need—felt like another sin to add to a list I’d been born carrying.
Dimitri stood abruptly, the chair scraping back. In two strides, he was in front of me, towering over me with his height. His hands came up to cup my face, tilting my head back to force me tomeet his eyes.
“It is not your fault,” he said fiercely. “Do you hear me? None of this is your fault.”