Chapter 4: The Mistake

Wren's POV

"Sit down, Wren."

Dante's voice was the first thing I heard once the door clicked shut behind us, low and controlled, nothing like the man who had begged me to stop him five weeks ago. I made it three steps into my room before the tears started, and by the time he shut that door, I could barely see him through the blur of them.

He had pulled me down that hallway like the words waiting in his chest could not stand to wait another second, and now that we were alone, he seemed to have lost all of them at once. I stood by my window with my arms wrapped around myself, waiting, the soft click of the latch behind me final in a way that made my stomach twist.

Downstairs, I had caught one last glimpse of Seraphina before Dante pulled me away. She had not looked upset at all. If anything, she looked pleased, waving a graceful hand toward the hallway as if granting us a gift, telling Alistair something about giving the siblings a moment to catch up.

I remembered thinking, even through my own panic, that her smile had looked a little too satisfied for a woman who'd just watched her mate disappear down a hall with another girl.

"What was that." My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated how weak it sounded. "A month ago you were begging me to tell you to stop. Now you're standing in our living room announcing a mate like none of it happened."

Dante would not look at me. He stood near the door with his hands shoved into his pockets, jaw working like he was chewing on something bitter before he let himself speak.

"None of that should have happened, Wren." His voice was low, controlled in a way that felt worse than if he'd shouted. "You're my sister. Not by blood, but you live in this house, you eat at that table every night, and what we did; it was wrong. It's always been wrong."

"Wrong didn't stop you from knocking on my door."

His eyes finally lifted to mine, and for one second I saw something crack behind them, some flicker of the boy who had pressed his forehead to mine and asked me to stop him before he went too far. Then it was gone, sealed back up so fast I almost thought I'd imagined it.

"I have a fated mate now," he said. "You know what that means. No werewolf walks away from a bond like that, not when the whole pack is counting on it holding. Seraphina's family and mine, our future, the stability of everything my father has built; none of that can survive if I let myself keep doing this with you."

"So I'm just supposed to forget it." The tears would not stop now, and I no longer had the strength to hide them. "Forget you asked me to stop you and I said I wanted you too? Forget what happened on that bed right there?"

"Yes." The word landed flat and final, and something in me went cold hearing it. "I need you to forget all of it, Wren. Treat it like it never happened, because it can't have happened, not with everything riding on this mating. I'm asking you to let it go."

"And if I can't?"

"Then you'll have to learn how." He said it quietly, but there was no give in it at all, the same certainty I imagined he used when he spoke to the pack as their future Alpha. "This is bigger than either of us now."

I had no answer that wouldn't have broken me completely to say out loud, so I said nothing at all, and after a moment Dante turned and walked out, closing the door with a quiet click that felt louder than any slammed door could have.

I sank onto the edge of the bed, right where he had held me five weeks ago like I was something worth wanting, and let the tears finally take over completely. I do not know how long I sat there before the door opened again, and some instinct told me before I even looked up that it would not be Dante walking back through it to take his words back.

"We should talk," Seraphina said, shutting the door softly behind her, "now that it's just the two of us."

The warm, generous smile she'd worn downstairs had vanished completely. What replaced it was something sharp and cold, the kind of look that made the hair rise on the back of my neck. I wiped my face and said nothing, waiting.

"Dante told me everything." She said it lightly, almost conversationally, like she was discussing weather instead of detonating my entire life. "About the two of you. What you did together in this very room, apparently, not that long ago."

My blood went cold, but I kept my spine straight and refused to give her the satisfaction of watching me crumble in front of her.

"You disgust me, you know that?" The pleasant mask slipped further, and something ugly showed through underneath. "Sleeping with your own stepbrother. Can you imagine what your mother would say if she knew her precious daughter was such a shameless little slut? It would destroy her, finding out you seduced her husband's son under this very roof."

"I didn't seduce anyone." My voice shook despite my best efforts.

"Doesn't matter what actually happened." She waved a hand like the truth was an inconvenience beneath her notice. "What matters is what people will believe once they hear it. And they will hear it, if you make me spell things out again."

She stepped closer, her voice dropping into something almost gentle, which somehow made it more frightening. "I am the daughter of an Alpha from Redmoor Pack. I am going to be Luna here. And you are an Omega who thought she could touch what belongs to me."

"If the pack finds out what you did, it will not just be your reputation that burns. Your mother married into this family. One word from me, and she gets thrown out right alongside you."

"You'd really do that? To a woman who's never done anything to you?"

"I'd do far worse to keep what's mine." She said it without hesitation, like the answer had been sitting ready on her tongue for days. "You should leave. Before this gets out. Before your mother has to watch her daughter be paraded through the pack as a cautionary tale."

"Disappear quietly, and maybe, maybe, I keep what I know to myself."

I sat there long after she left, staring at the closed door, feeling every wall I had built to survive the last five weeks crumble at once. She was right about one thing. If I stayed, I would destroy my mother along with myself, and I could not carry that on top of everything else growing inside me.

By morning, I had made my decision. I packed only what would fit into one bag, left no note for the mother who would spend weeks searching for me, and walked out of that house before the sun had fully risen, carrying a secret no one in that family would learn the truth of.