Chapter 5: The Return of the Ex

By the next morning the story had mutated into something larger than what actually happened..

In one version Jaxon had lifted the girl off the ground with one hand while his eyes went fully gold and a growl shook the lockers. In another he had half-shifted in the hallway before his teammates pulled him back. Neither was true. The real version was strange enough that people needed to make it bigger just to make sense of it.

What nobody could explain was the last thing he'd said. Nobody touches what's mine.

I'd been awake half the night with those words. Turning them over. Looking for the angle that made them mean something other than what they sounded like. He'd given me the angle himself at breakfast, when he said I was a reflection of his family name and nothing more.

I wanted to believe that explanation.

I mostly didn't.

He was already at the counter when I came down, coffee in hand, reading something on his phone. He didn't look up when I walked in, which was normal. What wasn't normal was the way his shoulders shifted slightly when I got close, that barely-there tension that came and went so fast I could almost convince myself I'd imagined it.

"Yesterday," I started.

"Don't," he said.

"You called me yours."

He set the mug down and turned to look at me with the controlled patience of someone who had decided this conversation had a limit and was already aware of how close we were to it. "I said nobody touches you. That's not the same thing."

"It sounded the same."

"You live in my house. Anything that happens to you reflects on the Blackwood name. It was about that and nothing else." He picked up his mug again. "Don't make it something it isn't."

He left before I finished my coffee.

At school, the open mocking had gone quiet. Nobody called me Omega to my face. Whether that was fear of what they'd seen in the hallway or uncertainty about what Jaxon's reaction meant, the result was the same. The contempt was still there in the looks I got, but it was keeping its distance.

Jaxon spent the day not acknowledging my existence, which was what I expected.

What I didn't expect was how many times he happened to be nearby when things started going sideways.

Second period, a boy three rows over made a pointed comment about wolfless girls and pack bloodlines. Jaxon was sitting two seats away and the boy seemed to lose his nerve for the follow-through before it left his mouth. Lunch, a girl knocked into me hard enough to spill half my drink. Jaxon materialized at the end of the line and she moved away fast without being asked to. Hallway between fifth and sixth period, two girls started something with their eyes that looked like it was building toward words. Jaxon came around the corner and the building stopped.

He never looked at me when it happened. Never acknowledged it. He wasn't protecting me. He was just there.

That was almost worse, somehow. The almost.

I stayed late after school to sort out a scheduling conflict. The hallways emptied quickly. By the time I headed for the exit the corridor was quiet and my own footsteps were the only sound.

Then a voice stopped me.

"Selene."

I recognized it before I turned. That particular warmth, that easy confidence, the voice of someone who had never once in his life approached another person and worried about the reception.

Damien Knight was leaning against the wall by the side exit, arms crossed, looking at me like he'd been waiting a while and hadn't minded. He was wearing the jacket I'd seen a hundred times. He looked exactly like he always had.

My stomach didn't do what it would have done two weeks ago. It tightened for a different reason entirely.

"What are you doing here," I said. Not a question.

"I transferred." He said it simply. "Thought a fresh start would do me good."

"You transferred to my school."

"Our school." He pushed off the wall and walked toward me, stopping close. Closer than was necessary. "I've been calling you. You haven't answered."

"No," I said. "I haven't."

"Because you're angry. That's fair." He said it in the patient tone he used when he'd already decided the conversation was going to go his way. "Selene, what happened with Bianca was a mistake. It was stupid and it meant nothing and I need you to hear that."

"You told her you were embarrassed by me," I said.

Something moved behind his eyes. "She twisted that. She's always twisted things. You know how she is."

"Did she twist the part where you didn't deny it to my face?"

He went quiet for just a second. Just one. But it was enough.

"I love you," he said. "Two years, Selene. That's real. I'm standing here telling you I made the worst mistake of my life and I'm asking for another chance."

I looked at him. The face I had memorized over two years. The jaw, the eyes, the way he held himself like the world was arranged around him as a courtesy to everyone else. I had loved him. I had baked him a cake on the day he was in bed with my best friend.

Something about being near him now made the back of my neck prickle. The same instinct that had been going off in strange moments all week. I didn't know what it meant. I pushed it aside.

"Go home, Damien," I said.

The patience left his face.

"You're doing this because of Blackwood." His voice dropped. Sharp now, the warmth completely gone. "You moved into that house and you've got something in your head about being someone now. That's what this is."

"This is me telling you we're done."

"We are not….." He stopped. Started again. Students were slowing nearby, the way they always did when tension reached a certain volume. "I drove forty minutes to transfer to this school. For you. You understand that?"

"I didn't ask you to do that," I said quietly.

Something tore loose in him. I watched the control crack all the way through.

"You don't just get to walk away from me," he said. "Not after two years. Not for a wolf who called you Omega on your first day. Not because you moved into his house and started thinking.."

His hand closed around my arm.

Hard fingers digging in, the kind of grip that was meant to tell me how this was going to go.

"Let go of me," I said.

"Not until you listen."

I pulled. He tightened.

The hallway had gathered without me noticing. Students stopped, watching. Someone had a phone out.

"You belong with me," Damien said. "Stop being stubborn about this."

Four days of it broke open at once. Bianca laughing from his bed. The cake on the floor. Omega echoing through hallways. Every moment of the last week cracked open all at once and I pulled back my free hand and slapped him.

The sound cut through the hallway like something snapping. The watching crowd went completely still.

Damien's head turned with the impact. He stood there for a moment with his face to the side, chest rising and falling. When he turned back, the mask was gone entirely. What was underneath it was something I had never seen from him before and never wanted to see again.

His hand came across my face.

I stumbled, my shoulder hit the locker and I stayed there with one hand braced against the metal, ears ringing, cheek burning, the hallway silent in the specific way it went silent when something had just happened that couldn't be taken back.

Nobody moved.

Then a voice came from the far end of the corridor. Quiet and absolute.. The kind of voice that didn't need volume because it already owned the space it moved through.

"Take your hand off her."

Damien turned slowly.

Jaxon was at the end of the hallway. Bag dropped at his feet. His hockey team spread out behind him without being asked, the way wolves arranged themselves around their Alpha without thinking about it. His hands were at his sides. His fists were closed. His eyes were glowing that steady, furious green, and they hadn't moved off Damien since he'd come around the corner.

He started walking slowly ,the most dangerous kind. Damien was an Alpha. Real wolf, real rank, real power. I watched him hold his ground for exactly two steps before something in him, something below conscious decision, made him take one step back.

Jaxon stopped close enough that Damien had to look up. He looked at him the way you look at something you have already decided the outcome for, and you're just waiting for it to catch up.

Then his voice came out low and certain and carved from something that didn't bend.

"You just made the biggest mistake of your life."