Chapter 4

LILA'S POV 

The office door closed behind us with a soft click that felt too loud in the silence.

I stood in the center of Ethan's office, surrounded by four men who used to be my whole world but now they were strangers wearing familiar faces.

"Sit," Ethan said, gesturing to the leather couch.

"I'll stand," I said.

"Lila, please," Callum said softly.

"I said I'll stand."

The bond was worse in here. Confined space, no escape, all four of them too close. My skin felt like it was on fire, every nerve ending screaming at me to move closer, to touch them, to give in to what the bond wanted.

I dug my nails into my palms until I felt blood. The pain helped.

"You want to explain?" I asked, looking at Ethan. "Fine. Explain why you rejected your fated mate. Explain why you threw me away like I was nothing."

Ethan's jaw clenched. "It wasn't that simple."

"It seemed pretty simple to me," I said. "You looked me in the eyes and told me I was too weak. That I wasn't worthy of being your mate."

"I was wrong," Ethan said.

I laughed, and it came out bitter. "Was that so hard? Three years. You could have come looking for me any time in three years and said those words."

"We thought you were dead," Marcus said, his voice rough.

"Did you look?" I asked, turning to him. "Did you search? Or did you just assume the weak little omega you threw away died like she was supposed to?"

Marcus flinched.

"We looked," Callum said. "Lila, I swear we looked for months but the bond went quiet, and everyone said—"

"Everyone said what?" I demanded. "That I died? That bond severance killed me? Well, surprise. I survived. No thanks to any of you."

"How?" Davian asked quietly. "Bond severance kills most wolves. Especially omegas who don't accept the rejection. You should be dead."

I met his eyes, those calculating grey eyes that never missed anything.

"Maybe I did die," I said. "Maybe the girl you rejected did die that night and something else crawled out of the woods."

Silence fell over the room.

"What does that mean?" Ethan asked, his voice sharp.

I could tell them. Could explain about Thea finding me. About waking up changed, different, stronger than I should be.

But I didn't owe them explanations.

"It means I survived," I said. "That's all you need to know."

"No," Ethan said, moving closer. "It's not. You come back here after three years with power that shouldn't exist. With an army of rejected wolves and abilities that make you able to resist Alpha commands. We need to know what you are."

"I'm what you made me," I said, and I let just enough power leak out that they all felt it.

The air in the room thickened. I watched all four of them tense, their wolves responding to the threat.

"Lila," Callum said, his voice careful. "We're not your enemies."

"Aren't you?" I asked. "You rejected me. You threw me out and told me if I came back, you'd kill me. That sounds like enemies to me."

"That was before," Marcus said.

"Before what?" I asked. "Before you realized I might be useful? Before you found out I'm not the weak omega you thought I was?"

"Before we understood what we'd lost," Ethan said, and there was something raw in his voice I'd never heard before.

I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him so badly it hurt.

But I'd spent three years learning not to trust the bond or trust the desperate pull that made me want to forgive them.

"You lost me the second you spoke that rejection," I said. "You don't get to decide three years later that you want me back."

"We never stopped wanting you," Callum said, and when I looked at him, I saw tears in his eyes again. "Lila, the bond might have been broken, but we felt it every day. Every single day for three years, we felt that absence. That missing piece."

"Good," I said, and my voice came out cold. "I hope it hurt. I hope you felt a fraction of what you did to me."

"We did," Marcus said quietly. "We're still feeling it."

The bond pulsed between us, all four threads pulling taut.

I felt it in my chest, that broken, jagged thing trying to reconnect and heal and part of me wanted to let it. Wanted to give in to the bond and let it pull us back together.

But the other part, the part that had survived three years alone, the part that had become something new and dangerous, that part wanted to make them suffer more.

"Why did you do it?" I asked quietly. "The real reason. Not the bullshit about me being weak."

Ethan was quiet for a long moment.

Then he moved to his desk and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He poured a glass, drank it in one swallow, then looked at me.

"My mother left my father," Ethan said. "When we were ten. She said he was weak. Said loving him made her weak. She abandoned all of us, disappeared, and our father nearly destroyed himself trying to get her back."

I didn't say anything. Just waited.

"He became obsessed," Ethan continued. "Stopped leading the pack. Stopped taking care of us. All he cared about was finding her, making her come back. The pack almost fell apart. Our enemies almost took Blackwood while our father was too broken to defend it."

"We swore we'd never let that happen to us," Marcus said. "Never let a woman have that kind of power over us."

"So when the bond formed with you," Davian said, his voice analytical, "we saw history repeating. We saw ourselves becoming our father. Weak, distracted vulnerable."

"And you decided to reject me before I could reject you," I said, understanding finally clicking into place.

"Yes," Ethan said simply.

I looked at all four of them. At the men who'd destroyed me out of fear.

"That's the most fucked up thing I've ever heard," I said.

"I know," Callum said. "Lila, we know. We were wrong. We were scared and stupid and wrong."

"You were cowards," I said. "You were afraid I'd hurt you, so you hurt me first. You were afraid loving me would make you weak, so you threw away the one thing that could have made you stronger."

"Yes," Ethan said, and I saw something like shame cross his face. "We were cowards."

The admission should have felt like victory.

Instead, it just made my chest ache.

Because I'd spent three years imagining this moment. Imagining them admitting they were wrong, admitting they'd made a mistake.

And now that it was happening, I didn't know what to do with it.

"I can't forgive you," I said quietly.

"We're not asking for forgiveness," Ethan said. "We're asking for a chance. A chance to prove we're not the same men who rejected you."

"And if I say no?" I asked.

"Then we'll respect that," Callum said. "But Lila, the bond is still there. Broken, but there. And it's not going to go away just because you want it to."

He was right. I could feel it, that constant pull trying to drag me toward them.

Before I could answer, a sound cut through the night. Distant but wrong. A howl that didn't sound like any wolf I'd ever heard.

All four of them tensed, their heads snapping toward the window.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I don't know," Davian said, moving to look outside.

The bond was screaming at me now, but not the way it had been. This was different. This was warning.

"Something's wrong," Marcus said, his hand going to his phone.

Before he could dial, the office door burst open.

A warrior stood there, bleeding from a gash on his head. "Alphas, we're under attack. Eastern border. At least fifty rogues, maybe more."

My blood ran cold.

"This was planned," I said. "Someone knew exactly when to hit you. When your attention would be divided."

All four of them turned to look at me.

"When I came back," I said, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "Someone knew I was coming back tonight."

"How?" Marcus demanded. "We didn't even know you were alive."

"I don't know," I said. "But this isn't a coincidence."