Chapter 2

Evelyn pov

I don't remember the walk back to my room. One moment I was on my knees in the dirt beneath that oak tree, and the next I was fumbling with my own door handle, my hands shaking so badly it took three tries to get it open.

I made it to the bathroom just in time.

My stomach turned itself inside out, and I gripped the edges of the toilet like it was the only solid thing left in the world. Somewhere between the retching and the tears, I couldn't tell anymore which was making me sicker—the image burned into my mind of Marissa's legs wrapped around him, or the phantom scent of jasmine and vanilla that seemed to have followed me home, clinging to the inside of my nose no matter how many times I gagged.

*You had to see this coming.*

His voice looped in my head like something feral, gnawing at the edges of whatever composure I had left. I heaved again, even though there was nothing left to bring up, my body simply refusing to let go of the horror it had witnessed.

My wolf whimpered low in my chest, a sound I felt more than heard, curling in on herself somewhere deep inside me. She had trusted him too. She'd surged forward eagerly the night before when he bit down over my pulse point, had preened under the mark like it was something sacred, something permanent. Now she just whined, small and confused, unable to understand how the same man who'd claimed us with such reverence could look at us hours later like an inconvenience.

*How could he.*

I said it out loud this time, my voice cracking against the bathroom tile, echoing back at me in the empty room. How could he mark me—bind my very soul to his—and still find his way into another woman's bed within a day? How could Marissa, who'd braided my hair before my mother's funeral, who'd sworn on everything she loved that she'd never do to me what her own mother had done to hers, climb into that bed like it cost her nothing at all?

I sat back against the cool porcelain of the tub, drawing my knees to my chest, and let myself shake.

The mark on my neck throbbed faintly, a low pulse that should have felt like comfort and now felt like a brand. Proof of my own foolishness, permanently inked into my skin. I pressed my fingers against it, half expecting it to hurt worse, to somehow physically manifest the betrayal coursing through the bond. It didn't. It just sat there, warm and steady, mocking me with its permanence.

*I can't stay here.*

The thought arrived so clearly, so suddenly, that it felt less like a decision and more like an instinct—the same kind of instinct that told my wolf to run when danger was close. And danger was close. Not in the way of claws or teeth, but in the quieter, more insidious way of a pack that would expect me to smile through this. To accept my place beside him and Marissa both, because that was simply how things were done when an alpha decided he wanted more than one woman. I'd seen it before, in other pairings, other pack politics dressed up as tradition. I'd never imagined it would be my own life.

I don't know how long I sat there on the bathroom floor before I finally found the strength to stand, gripping the sink edge to pull myself up. My reflection in the mirror looked like a stranger—eyes swollen, cheeks streaked, hair still mussed from running through the trees. I turned on the tap with hands that hadn't fully stopped trembling and reached for my toothbrush, desperate to scrub the taste of bile and heartbreak out of my mouth, desperate for one small thing to feel normal again.

I'd barely gotten the toothbrush to my lips when the door swung open behind me.

I didn't need to turn around. I could smell him—cedar and rain, a scent that used to make my chest go warm and now made my stomach lurch all over again. Damon stood in the doorway of my room like he owned it, like walking into my private space uninvited after everything wasn't a violation on top of a violation.

"You ran," he said, arms crossing over his bare chest. He'd pulled on sweatpants at least, though I noted bitterly that he hadn't bothered showering. He still smelled like her. "In front of half the pack."

I set the toothbrush down slowly, my knuckles white against the edge of the sink. "You cheated on me the night after you marked me, and you're upset that people *saw* me run?"

"I'm upset you made a spectacle of something that could have been handled privately." His voice was infuriatingly calm, like he was explaining a simple miscalculation on my part rather than the wreckage of everything I'd believed about him. "Do you understand what you've done? Half the pack is already whispering. Do you know what that does to my position, to have my mate sobbing and sprinting through the compound the day after our mating ceremony?"

I turned to face him fully then, and something in my expression must have surprised him, because his easy irritation flickered, just briefly, into something more wary.

"Your position," I repeated. "That's what you're worried about. Not that you broke something in me tonight that I don't think can be fixed. Not that you humiliated me in front of the one person I trusted most in this world besides you. Your *position*."

"Evelyn." He stepped further into the bathroom, and I had to fight the urge to shrink back against the sink. "You're an omega. I'm going to be Alpha. This is how it works for wolves like me—you know this, you grew up in this pack same as I did. Having a companion alongside my mate doesn't diminish what you and I have. It never had to."

"It's not what we agreed to," I said, my voice shaking now with something that wasn't just grief anymore—it was fury, hot and sudden, rising up through the wreckage of my sadness like a flame finding oxygen. "You told me I was it for you. You told me you didn't want anyone else. I believed you, Damon. I let you mark me because I believed you."

For just a moment, something like guilt passed over his face. It was there and gone so fast I almost thought I'd imagined it.

"I do want you," he said, quieter now, and he reached for my arm. I flinched back before his fingers made contact, and something in his eyes hardened at the rejection, alpha pride bruised by the small movement. "I want you both. Is that so impossible for you to understand?"

"Get out of my room."

"Evelyn—"

"*Get out.*" The words tore out of me louder than I intended, and I felt my own small trace of dominance rise with them, some instinctive assertion my wolf pushed forward even in her wounded state. It wasn't much, not against an alpha, but it was enough to make him pause.

He studied me for a long moment, something calculating behind his eyes, like he was recalibrating his approach. Then, finally, he stepped back toward the door.

"You need to sleep," he said, like he was granting me some kind of mercy. "We'll talk properly in the morning, once you're thinking clearly. This doesn't have to be the end of anything, Evelyn. I don't want it to be."

He left without waiting for a response, the door clicking shut behind him, and I stood frozen in my bathroom for a long time afterward, staring at the space where he'd been.

*This doesn't have to be the end of anything.*

But it was. Some quiet, resolved part of me knew it with total certainty, even through the fog of heartbreak and nausea and the low, sick churn still working through my stomach. Whatever I'd believed Damon and I were building together had died in that bedroom tonight, and no amount of alpha reassurance was going to resurrect it.

I looked at my own reflection one more time—hollow-eyed, mark still dark against my throat—and made a decision that felt less like choosing and more like simple, unavoidable truth.

I couldn't stay here. Not tomorrow. Not ever again.