He Wants To Bury My Girl?

POV: Tristan

Mate...

The word exploded inside my head the instant I touched her.

Seven years...

Seven fucking years...

And the moment our skin met, my wolf still recognized her immediately.

Mine!

Every instinct inside me snapped awake so violently that for one dangerous second, I nearly lost control in front of Ethan. I stared at Chloe’s face, barely recognizing the cold, composed version of myself reflected in her trembling eyes.

She came back...

After disappearing without a word, after destroying me, shattering my heart. She came back into my territory wearing another man’s scent. Not just any man, my brother’s scent. My wolf went insane.

“Rip him apart!

Take her back!

Mine!” Zain growled within me. The possessiveness slammed into me so hard my chest physically hurt. Yet outwardly, I remained perfectly calm. Years of Alpha training were the only thing stopping me from losing control completely. Ethan was still talking excitedly beside us, unaware that the atmosphere around me had already turned murderous.

“I told you she’s beautiful, didn’t I?” he laughed proudly.

“Brother, you have no idea how lucky I am.” He said excited.

‘Lucky.’ the word nearly made me snap, but my eyes remained fixed on Chloe. She looked pale, shocked. Her lips parted slightly as if she still couldn’t believe I was standing here.

Good...

Because I couldn’t believe it either. Seven years ago, she vanished from my life without explanation. No goodbye, no reason, nothing. I searched for her until I nearly lost my mind. And now she suddenly reappeared inside my home, as Ethan’s girlfriend, as the woman my brother wanted to marry. A dark, violent rage spread slowly through my chest. My wolf snarled viciously beneath my skin.

“She is your mate, not his.

Mine!” I Keeps growling in my head. I looked down at our joined hands, the same fingers that once traced across my chest while promising she would never leave me. The same lips Ethan had clearly been kissing before entering my house. The realization made something ugly twist inside me.

Jealousy...

Pure animalistic jealousy...

I wanted Ethan to let go of her immediately, wanted to erase his scent from her skin with my own. I want to lock every door in this manor and keep her where she belonged. And that is beside me, under me... Mine.

“Tris... Tristan... Brother?” Ethan’s voice pulled me back slightly. I realized he was watching me curiously now. Probably because I still hadn’t released Chloe’s hand. Slowly, I loosened my grip, but my eyes never left her face.

Chloe still wore the same expression she did seven years ago whenever she got overwhelmed. Wide eyes, shallow breathing, with her hands trembling slightly. My chest tightened painfully, I hated her for leaving me.

But worse...

I still wanted her anyway, and that was the humiliating part. It’s been seven years, and my body still recognized her before my mind did. My body still craved her instantly, still belonged to her like some pathetic curse. Ethan threw an arm casually around Chloe’s waist, smiling completely unaware of the violence building inside me.

“We’re getting married after graduation,” he said proudly. Something inside me snapped, for the first time in years, my wolf surged so violently that my vision darkened for a second.

Married?

He wanted to mark her?

Claim her?

My mate?

The urge to kill flooded my bloodstream so quickly it genuinely frightened me. I had fought Alphas stronger than me without blinking. I had walked through blood and war without losing control.

But this?

Watching another man touch Chloe, watching my own brother love her?

It shattered every ounce of restraint I possessed. And still, I smiled faintly, coldly, beautifully controlled. Only Chloe noticed the danger hidden underneath. I saw it in the way her breathing hitched, the way fear flickered in her eyes.

Good...

She should be afraid. Because if she thought she could walk back into my life wearing another man’s ring, then she had forgotten exactly what kind of monster I became after she left me behind.

“Come on, Tris, stop being an asshole, you’re scaring my girl,” Ethan lets out in a sarcastic tone, turning to her to stare into her eyes, acting all lovey dovey.

“Don’t worry. My brother dotes on me the most.” He told her.

Ethan lowered his head and helped her straighten her messy collar, his fingertips deliberately brushing over the skin that was still faintly red from kissing obviously.

“As long as it’s someone I like, he never objects. And since you’re so good, he’ll definitely like you too.”

Chloes heart gave a sudden jolt of unease, I felt her discomfort, but he doesn’t feel it. How can she be with him when I’m here one true mate?

She turned her head away from Ethan’s overly direct gaze, and this made Ethan suspect that I’m being cold to his woman.

“My brother Tris…” Ethan thought for a moment, every word filled with admiration.

“He’s a bit cold, doesn’t talk much. But he’s the best person in the world.” He said, giving me a look that says, ‘Please be nice to her,’ I watched his fingers linger on Chloe’s collar, straightening it with an intimacy that made my blood turn to ice. The red mark on her neck, I saw it clearly now.

The evidence of him, of his mouth on her skin, on my skin, on flesh that belonged to me long before my brother ever laid eyes on her. My wolf snarled so savagely inside my chest that I had to lock my jaw to keep from making a sound.

“Kill him!

Take her!

Mine!” he urged me.

“Tris.” Ethan’s voice carried that familiar warmth, that brotherly plea wrapped inside a single syllable. He was giving me the look he’d been giving me since we were children whenever he wanted something. Wide eyes, slight tilt of the head, the expression that said ‘please don’t ruin this for me.’

He had no idea he was asking me to hand over my own soul. I exhaled slowly through my nose and finally shifted my gaze away from Chloe’s neck. Away from that mark. Away from the proof of everything I couldn’t undo.

“You’re right,” I said quietly.

“Forgive me. Long day.” I lied. Ethan’s entire body visibly relaxed. He grinned, that brilliant, easy grin that had always come so naturally to him, the kind of smile I’d forgotten how to produce somewhere around the night Chloe disappeared.

“See?” He squeezed her waist and glanced down at her.

“Told you, worst case scenario, he goes silent for a few minutes. He’s harmless.”

“Harmless.” My jaw tightened. Chloe still hadn’t looked at me again, she was staring somewhere past Ethan’s shoulder at the far wall of the entrance hall, her expression carefully blank in the way I remembered. The way she used to look when she was fighting very hard not to feel something. My chest ached with a recognition so deep it felt like grief.

She knew exactly what I was feeling, she could feel it too. The mate bond doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t care that she’d run. It doesn’t care about seven years or the distance she’d placed between us or the fact that my brother’s scent was woven through her hair. The bond hummed between us like a live wire, and I knew with absolute certainty that she felt every tremor of it, and that was why she wouldn’t look at me.

“Coward,” Zain whispered bitterly inside me. I said nothing to correct him.

“Come on,” Ethan said brightly, already steering her toward the corridor that led to the sitting room.

“Mrs. Hale said dinner would be ready by eight. Tris, you’ll eat with us?” It wasn’t really a question.

“Of course,” I said. My voice came out even. Measured. The voice of an Alpha who had spent a decade learning to bury everything that mattered beneath a layer of perfect composure. Ethan flashed me another grateful look over his shoulder, and I followed them at exactly the right distance. Close enough to be cordial. Far enough that I didn’t have to smell her quite so clearly.

It didn’t help...

Nothing helped...

Chloe’s presence filled the entire house the moment she walked through the door, the way it always had, as though she took up more space than her body occupied. I had spent years scrubbing every trace of her from my memory, and she undid all of it in thirty seconds simply by existing in the same space as me.

I hated her for that...

I hated her the way you only hate someone who was once everything. As Ethan guided her around the corner, Chloe finally glanced back.

Just once...

Our eyes met for the span of a single breath, and I saw it all in that fraction of a second. The guilt, the fear, the desperate apology she couldn’t say out loud. But underneath all of it, buried so deep she probably prayed I couldn’t see it, was something else entirely.

Recognition... She still feels it...

The bond, me, us, whatever wreckage of a future we’d been building before she burned it to the ground and vanished into the smoke. She felt all of it the same as I did, and the knowledge didn’t comfort me the way it should have.

It only made the rage sharper, because she felt it, and she came here anyway. She walked into my home on my brother’s arm, knowing full well what it would do to me, knowing what the bond would demand the instant we touched. She chose this.

“Why?”

The question pierced through every wall I’d built and lodged itself somewhere I couldn’t reach, Chloe looked away first. I watched her disappear around the corner with my brother’s hand warm and trusting at the small of her back. I stood alone in the entrance hall for three seconds longer than I should have, breathing carefully, relearning how to be calm. Then I straightened my cuffs, rolled my neck once, and followed them to dinner, wearing the face of a man who felt absolutely nothing. It was the most dangerous lie I had ever told.