Chapter 4

Gavriel’s POV

I watched my brother’s lips touch what was mine. 

Bastard.

My eyes stayed on her and I lost track of my environment. The new color of her hair, loud makeup, red lipstick, and the black dress that contoured her body and left her shoulders uncovered did something crazy to my body.

My eyes moved to the red heels that made her stand taller than I remembered. She looked nothing like the woman who had been dragged from my packhouse bleeding and broken weeks ago. She was different,  looking like she had come here to be seen.

Felix’s hand rested on her waist as if it belonged there, and I grind my teeth.

I moved through the guests without answering anyone who tried to speak to me. Suvi said my name once from somewhere behind me, but I didn't look at her either, my gaze stayed on Sparrow as I walked toward them.

Stopping in front of them, I looked at my brother. “What do you think you are doing?”

Felix met my eyes without any hurry. “Kissing my wife.”

Wife? I almost lost my balance at the sound of that. My hands closed into fists at my sides. I forced them open again before anyone could notice.

“She is my banished wife,” I said. “She is forbidden from setting foot on this land.”

Felix’s mouth tugged slightly at the corner. “Ex-wife. And as long as she is bonded to me, pack law allows her return. She is under my protection now.”

He lifted her hand so I could see the ring on her finger, the metal catching the light. I took one step toward her. Felix moved forward at the same time, fixing himself between us. He stood so close that I could see the tattoos rising from his collar. 

My idiot brother was daring me.

Around us, people watched, causing me to hold back every rage. I returned to my place beside Suvi because an Alpha does not create a scene in the middle of his own engagement gathering. 

Taking a seat at the groom's throne, I collected the glass someone gave to me. Responded to the few guests who approached, but my attention never stayed on any of them for long.

My eyes kept finding her.

She stood beside Felix with her shoulders straight, holding a wine glass without drinking much from it. She did not look in my direction often, but each time she did I felt it. 

Every time my brother’s hand touched her back or leaned in to speak near her ear, the piercing pain in my chest increased. I had ordered her gone. Stood in front of the elders and stripped her of everything, believing she would never walk through these doors again. Now she was here on his arm, wearing his ring, looking like she had never been broken.

Suvi spoke to me more than once, but I gave her replies that meant nothing. The engagement celebration that was meant to show the pack a new beginning felt already damaged. I could not keep my focus on the woman sitting beside me when the woman I had rejected stood across the room with my brother.

When the last of the guests finally left, I did not stay to oversee the clearing of the hall. I left the packhouse and drove to the hospital.

My mother has remained in the same private room since the incident four weeks ago. Machines tracked her breathing and heart. Her legs and waist were secured in casts. 

The doctor spoke to me about how critical her condition was getting. Her bones were terribly broken. Even after she woke from the coma, he could not promise she would walk again. Recovery, if it came at all, would take a long time, but he never said how long.

I stood at the side of the bed and looked at my mother’s still face. The memory of how I saw her lying on the ground beneath the balcony in a pool of her own blood, her trembling voice before the thud, flashed in my head. I remembered the moment I looked up and saw Sparrow standing there with her hands still raised. The rage that had taken hold of me that night rose again in my chest, and my body shook.

I had asked Sparrow for years to treat my mother with care. I had asked her to try. My mother was blind and had already lost her husband. She had nothing left but the family she remained with. If Sparrow had listened, if she had shown even a little patience instead of allowing her dislike to grow into something that ended with my mother broken on the ground, none of this would have happened. Our marriage would still have been whole. Our children would still have had both parents under the same roof.

I told myself I had done the right thing by cutting her off. A woman who could push a blind, aging mother over a balcony had no place beside an Alpha or near his children. I repeated it once more while I stood there, as if the repetition would make the image of her in that black dress standing beside my brother lose its hold.

But it fucking didn't.

I returned to the packhouse late, and headed straight to my private room which was dark. I poured the first drink before I had removed my jacket and finished it without hesitation. Then poured another. The picture of Felix’s hand on her waist, his mouth on her cheek, and the ring on her finger remained evident.

My door opened, and Suvi stepped inside. She had changed out of the engagement clothes and left her hair down. She crossed the room and wrapped her hands around me from behind.

“You barely looked at me all night,” she said, her voice holding the intimacy of someone who had once known me well. “We used to handle nights like this better.”

I paid her no attention.

She continued in a softer voice. “I know how it ended between us back then. You chose the pack and the marriage you wanted. I left without making a scene and stayed away for years. When you called me after the banishment, I came because you asked. I thought it meant something more than filling a role.”

“It does not,” I said.

She moved around to face me and rested her hands on my chest. “Gavriel, we have history. You cannot pretend I am only a convenient name to place beside yours in public.”

I removed her hands and set them back at her sides.

“This arrangement is business. You will stand as Luna in front of the pack and attend what needs to be attended. That is the extent of it. You will not share my bed, or involve yourself with my children. Do you understand me?”

Her expression changed. She held my gaze, a sly smile playing on her mouth before she stepped back. “And you think I will just fold my hands and watch you play at my face?” Her smile turned into a smirk. “I let us part ways the first time for a reason, but this time…I’m all in. And everything you own, including your body, is now mine.”