CHAPTER THREE

Sage’s POV

I didn’t go home.

Home meant my mother asking questions I didn’t have answers for and I didn’t have it in me to explain what had just happened in that clearing. So instead I walked, with no real direction in mind, until I found myself standing at the edge of the old training grounds where the pack used to run drills when I was a kid.

Nobody came here anymore. Not since they built the new grounds closer to the pack house. This place had gone quiet, overgrown at the edges, forgotten in the way certain things get forgotten when better options come along. It felt right. It felt like somewhere I belonged.

I sat down on the same fallen log I used to sit on as a teenager, back when Vanessa would drag me here to watch her train, back when I still believed the two of us were close instead of just related. My chest still ached from that pull, the one connecting me to Ethan whether I wanted it or not. I pressed a hand against my ribs like that could somehow make it stop.

It didn’t.

I don’t know how long I sat there before I heard footsteps behind me. I already knew who it was before I turned around. I could feel him the same way you feel a storm coming before the first drop of rain falls.

“How did you find me?” I asked, not bothering to look at him.

“The bond,” Ethan said. His voice was rough, like he had been running. “I can feel you. I don’t know how to explain it better than that.”

“Convenient,” I said, “that you can feel me now, but back there you looked like you wanted to feel anything else.”

He didn’t answer right away. I finally turned to look at him, and he looked wrecked, hair pushed back like he had been running his hands through it, eyes red-rimmed in a way that told me he had been fighting something long before he found me here.

“I panicked,” he said. “That’s not an excuse. I know it’s not. But I need you to understand…”

“I understand plenty.” My voice came out sharper than I meant it to, but I didn’t try to soften it. “You spent five years thinking you would get her back. And instead you got stuck with me.”

“That’s not…”

“Isn’t it?” I stood up, needing the height, needing to not be sitting below him while he tried to explain away the worst moment of my life. “You looked at me like I was a disease, Ethan. In front of the entire pack. On my sister’s memorial night, of all nights.”

He flinched at that and for a second I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

“I loved her,” he said quietly. “You know that. Everyone knows that. I built my whole future around the idea of Vanessa being my mate, my Luna, the mother of my pups someday. And then she died, and I told myself that part of my life was over. I never let myself hope for anything else. And then tonight…”

“Tonight the universe handed you her little sister instead,” I finished for him. “Yeah. I got that part.”

“That’s not how I meant it.”

“It doesn’t matter how you meant it.” I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warm night air. “It matters how it feels. And it felt like standing in front of you and realizing I will never be enough. Not for this pack. Not for my own parents. And apparently not even for my own mate.”

Ethan took a step closer and something in his expression shifted, softened, like he was seeing me really seeing me, for the first time since that pull hit us both in the clearing.

“Give me a chance,” he said. “Please. I know I hurt you tonight. I know I don’t deserve it. But the bond is real, Sage. Whatever I felt back there, it doesn’t erase that you’re my mate.”

I wanted to believe him. God help me, some small, stupid part of me wanted so badly to believe him, to let myself hope that maybe this could still turn into something good, something that finally made me feel chosen instead of tolerated.

But I thought about the look on his face in that clearing. The horror. The way he hadn’t moved toward me, hadn’t fought his own hesitation the way a real mate bond was supposed to make him fight. I thought about five years of being second best, of watching my parents mourn a daughter while barely looking at the one who lived, of hearing my name whispered in the same breath as blame.

I was not going to spend the rest of my life as someone’s consolation prize. I would rather be alone forever than live in a shadow I could never outrun.

“No,” I said and my voice didn’t shake, even though everything inside me was breaking apart. “I reject you, Ethan Cross, as my mate.”

The words hit the air between us like a slap. I watched something crack across his face, pain and shock tangled together but I didn’t let myself soften. I couldn’t. If I softened now, I would never get another chance to protect what was left of myself.

For a long moment, he just stared at me, like he was waiting for me to take it back.

I didn’t.

“Fine,” he finally said, his voice flat, hollow in a way I didn’t expect. “If that’s what you want.”

He turned and walked away without another word, disappearing into the dark past the old training grounds and he didn’t look back once.

I told myself I felt relieved.

I was lying to myself and some part of me already knew it, because two days later, I would learn a truth about that night five years ago that would make everything I thought I understood about my sister’s death fall apart completely.