The wrong ending

"I do not know what you mean," I said.

It was the truth, and it sounded like the worst lie in the world.

Gideon's face did not change. That was the scariest part. I had expected anger, or the cold cruelty from the book. Instead he stood there, still as stone, and watched me like a man waiting for a wound to start bleeding.

"You do not know," he repeated.

"I am sorry. I really do not."

"You are sorry." He let out a short, dry breath that was not a laugh. "Five years, and that is what you have for me."

"Gideon..."

"Walk with me."

"I would rather not."

"That was not a request."

His hand closed around my elbow, careful of the bruises, but I knew I could not shake it loose. He turned me away from the arch and the lake and the only plan I had, and walked me back through the herb garden like a prisoner being escorted to court.

"Where are we going?"

"To finish what you started."

My stomach dropped. "The great hall?"

"Yes."

"Gideon, please. I do not want to do this in front of everyone."

That made him look at me. For one second, the gold in his eyes flickered, and I saw something raw underneath.

"You wanted an audience when you wrote that letter," he said quietly. "You wanted the whole pack watching you walk in. Now you can have it."

How do you argue with a letter you never wrote?

We passed the servants' door and a long wall hung with banners. The courtyard stood empty now, the pack already called inside. Ahead, two men in gray cloaks guarded a pair of tall oak doors. They straightened when they saw their Alpha. Then they saw me on his arm, and their faces turned to stone.

"She actually came back," one whispered.

"After what she did," the other muttered.

What she did.

In the book, Amelia's crime was leaving a powerful Alpha. These men sounded like she had burned a city down.

Gideon pushed the doors open.

The great hall was enormous.

Black stone floor. Pillars as thick as old trees. A long red carpet that ran straight to a raised platform where a carved throne waited under the wolf crest. And on both sides, rows and rows of people in dark gray cloaks, packed shoulder to shoulder.

Every head turned at once.

The murmur died. The silence felt like a hand pressed over my mouth.

I saw hatred in some faces. Curiosity in others. A few showed nothing at all, and those frightened me most.

I knew how this scene went. I had peeked ahead.

Amelia walks in. The pack whispers. She begs. Gideon looks down from the throne and says, in a voice so cold it freezes the room, "I have no use for a woman who leaves when it suits her." Then he turns his back, and the whole hall laughs.

I braced for it.

Gideon did not walk to the throne.

He stopped in the center of the carpet, still holding my arm, and turned to face his people.

"You were told Amelia Hartwell would return today," he said.

His voice rolled across the stone like thunder. Not loud. It did not need to be.

"You were told she would come begging. Some of you have waited years for it."

Somewhere in the crowd, a woman in a pale green dress smiled behind her hand.

"I will tell you what happens now." He paused. "Nothing."

A gasp went through the room.

"No rejection. No punishment. She has been inside these walls less than a day, and someone has already put their hands on her." He lifted my wrist so the dark bruises caught the light. "Whoever did this is in this room, or knows who is."

The silence went tight, like the air before lightning.

"I will find them," Gideon said. "Then Amelia Hartwell will answer for the night she disappeared. She will stay within these walls until she does."

A tall man with a sharp, sunburned face stepped forward. I knew him from the book. Silas Brandt, the Beta.

"Alpha, she is not a prisoner of this pack."

"No," Gideon said. "She is a guest."

He looked down at me, and his voice dropped to something only I could hear.

"A guest who will not be leaving."

The blood left my face. "You cannot do that."

"Watch me."

"I have a right to go."

"You gave up that right when you walked out five years ago." His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist, right over the bruises, so lightly I almost imagined it. "You will stay. And I will have my answers."

I should have been furious. A smart woman would have been.

But the thread behind my ribs pulled tight again, and for one stupid second I did not want to run.

That scared me more than any threat.

"Alpha Ashcroft."

The voice came from the back of the hall, soft and clear. The doors had opened again. A young woman stood in the gap in a pale blue dress and a simple silver necklace, her brown hair tied in a loose braid. She looked gentle and a little shy.

Tessa Whitmore. The destined mate. The sweet heroine. The woman Gideon was supposed to love.

My heart hammered. In the book, everything went wrong from here.

Tessa walked down the carpet, and the crowd parted for her like water. Gideon glanced at her, polite and distant, the way a man looks at a neighbor. Not like a man whose soul had been promised to her.

That was wrong, too.

Silas stepped close to Gideon's shoulder and murmured something low about the Council. Gideon turned his head to listen.

And Tessa did not look at either of them. She looked at me.

I braced for a glare, or a trembling lip, or a brave little speech about forgiveness.

Instead, she stopped an arm's length away and studied my face the way a doctor studies a patient she has waited a long time to see.

"You are back," she said gently.

"I..." My mouth felt like paper. "Yes."

"Good."

The crowd rustled in confusion. In their eyes, the sweet destined mate was welcoming the woman who wanted to take her place.

Tessa smiled, small and tired, and leaned in so close that her breath touched my ear.

"I was starting to think you would not make it in time."

My blood went cold.

She did not look surprised.

Not even a little.