Chapter 3: The First Encounter (Damon's POV)

The pack house was too loud.

It was always too loud these days. Someone's kid was shrieking in the corner. A group of young wolves were arguing about patrol rotations. The ancient floorboards creaked under the weight of too many bodies, too much history, too many expectations I'd never asked for.

I sat on the worn leather couch, a beer bottle sweating in my hand, and tried to remember the last time I'd felt quiet inside my own head.

Valerie pressed herself against my side, her perfume thick enough to choke on. She was laughing at something Lydia had said, her sharp nails tracing lazy patterns on my forearm. To anyone watching, we probably looked like a picture. The strong soon to be Alpha and his beautiful mate. The envy of the pack.

They didn't know that her touch felt like sandpaper on my skin.

“…and then he said he'd never seen a wolf shift that fast, can you believe it?" Valerie's voice cut through my thoughts. She tilted her chin up, waiting for my reaction.

I grunted. Noncommittal. It was the best I could do.

Her smile flickered, just for a second, before she smoothed it back into place. She was good at that. Good at hiding the cracks, good at pretending that the distance between us didn't exist.

Eighteen months of this. Eighteen months of waking up next to someone who smelled wrong. Eighteen months of telling myself that this was what I wanted. That I'd made a choice. That I was happy.

The lie tasted like ash.

I took a long swallow of my beer and stared at the fireplace. The flames danced and twisted, and for just a moment, I let myself remember. The way her laugh sounded like wind chimes. The way she'd looked at me like I was something worth looking at. The way I'd stood at the airport and watched her walk away, and I'd told myself it was the right thing to do.

*Go be great, little wolf*.

She'd been eighteen. Barely more than a pup. And I'd been twenty-one, already broken, already too old and too damaged and too much for someone so bright. She deserved the world. I was just the guy who fixed cars and carried ghosts.

So I'd let her go and then I'd spent five years pretending I didn't regret it.

"Babe." Valerie's voice was sharper now. "Are you even listening to me?"

I turned my head. Looked at her. She was beautiful, in the way a storm was beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes, sharp cheekbones. She'd been a consolation prize I'd convinced myself was a first choice.

"Sorry," I said. "Tired."

Her eyes narrowed. She didn't believe me. She never believed me anymore but before she could respond, it hit me. A wave of something electric, something primal, crashed into my chest and stole the air from my lungs.

The beer bottle slipped from my fingers. It hit the floor and rolled, spilling amber liquid across the wood, but I didn't care. I couldn't care. Because my wolf had just woken from a five-year coma, and he was screaming.

Mate.

No. No, it couldn't be. She wasn't supposed to be here for another week. I'd checked. I'd marked my calendar. Friday. She was coming back Friday, and I'd spent the last month preparing myself for that day, building walls around my heart, rehearsing the indifference I'd need to survive seeing her again.

But this…this was now. This was today and she was here.

My wolf lunged against my ribs, desperate and wild. The bond, the bond I'd tried to sever, tried to ignore, tried to drown in whiskey and bad decisions snapped taut like a wire pulled to its breaking point.

She's back.

Valerie's nails dug into my arm. Hard.

"Damon." Her voice was ice. "What's wrong with you?"

I couldn't answer. I could barely breathe. The pack house blurred around me, the noise fading to a dull roar, because every instinct I had was focused on the front door.

On her.

The door swung open and there she was.

Time stopped.

I'd spent five years telling myself that I'd romanticized her. That memory had painted her in colors she'd never actually worn. That the girl I'd let walk away was just a girl, and I was just a man, and the bond was just biology, nothing more.

I was wrong.

She walked in between her parents, and she was stunning.

Not the way Valerie was stunning. Not sharp and polished. Amara was stunning the way a forest fire was stunning. The way the ocean at midnight was stunning. She was real in a way that made my chest ache.

She'd filled out. The gangly teenager was gone, replaced by a woman who knew exactly who she was. Her dark hair fell in soft waves past her shoulders. Her scrubs were gone, she was wearing a simple grey sweater and jeans, like she'd just stepped off the plane and hadn't bothered to change and somehow that made it worse because she wasn't trying. She'd never had to try.

Her face was the same. Those warm brown eyes. That small, serious mouth. But there was something new in the way she held herself. Something steady. Something unbreakable.

She'd done it. She'd become everything she'd dreamed of becoming and I'd spent the last two years proving I was nothing at all.

"Damon."

Valerie's voice was a razor blade. I felt her claws, actual claws dig into the thin skin of my inner arm. Four sharp points of pain. A warning.

I looked down. Her eyes were blazing, her wolf close to the surface. She'd noticed. Of course she'd noticed. My whole body had gone rigid, my scent had shifted, my heart was pounding so loud that every wolf in the room could probably hear it.

"Who is that?" Valerie hissed.

I couldn't answer. I couldn't form words. Because Amara had just looked up, and her gaze was sweeping across the room, and she hadn't seen me yet.

Don't see me, I begged silently. Turn around. Walk away. Spare us both but the bond had other plans.

Her eyes found mine and the room fell away. For one perfect, terrible second, it was just us. Just her and me and the bond that had never stopped screaming, not for a single day of the last five years. I saw recognition flood her face. I saw the way her lips parted slightly, the way her breath caught in her throat.

And then I saw her gaze shift, to my left, to the woman draped over my arm. I watched it happen in slow motion. The hope draining from her eyes. The dawning understanding. The crack spreading across her carefully composed face.

Pain.

Raw, unfiltered pain.

She tried to hide it. I saw her shoulders square, her chin lift, her doctor's mask slide into place. But I'd known her since she was sixteen years old. I'd watched her fall asleep in my garage, her head on my chest, her trust in me so complete that it had terrified me.

I knew what her pain looked like and I knew I had caused it.

Mate, my wolf howled. Mate, mate, MATE.

He didn't care about Valerie. He didn't care about the promises I'd made or the life I'd built. All he cared about was the woman across the room, the one who smelled like home, the one I'd spent five years trying to forget.

I couldn't breathe.

The pack house came rushing back in a wave of noise and heat. Someone was talking to Amara, her mother, maybe, or Maya but she wasn't listening. She was staring at me. At us.

Valerie's claws dug deeper. I felt blood well up beneath her fingertips.

"I said," Valerie repeated, her voice low and venomous, "who is that?"

My throat was sandpaper. "No one."

The lie tasted like poison.

Amara heard it. I saw it in the way her eyes flickered, in the almost imperceptible flinch that she tried to hide. She turned away first. She looked at her mother, said something I couldn't hear, and let herself be guided toward the kitchen.

Away from me.

My wolf lunged again. He wanted to follow. He wanted to cross the room, take her face in my hands, and explain. Explain that Valerie was a mistake. Explain that I'd been weak and lonely and stupid. Explain that every night for five years, I'd fallen asleep dreaming of her face.

But I couldn't move.

Because Valerie was watching me. And Valerie was not a wolf who forgave.

"Damon." Her voice was soft now. That was worse than the hissing. Soft meant she was calculating. Soft meant she was dangerous. "That girl just looked at you like she knows you. And you looked at her like" She stopped. Her jaw tightened. "Like I've never seen you look at anything."

I forced myself to look at Valerie. Forced myself to see her. To remember that she was my woman.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

The words scraped my throat on the way out.

Valerie smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "Liar."

She released my arm. Four small crescent moons of blood welled up on my skin. I didn't feel them. I couldn't feel anything except the bond, still pulling, still screaming, still begging me to follow the woman who'd just walked out of the room.

“She's gone, I told my wolf. She's gone, and she's not ours, and you need to let go”.

My wolf howled.

He would not let go.

Never had.

I stood up. I didn't remember deciding to stand. My legs just moved, carrying me away from the couch, away from Valerie, toward the hallway that led to the kitchen.

"Damon." Valerie's voice followed me. "Don't you dare."

I didn't stop.

The hallway was too long. Every step felt like wading through water. The pack house blurred around me, familiar faces, familiar voices, all of them fading into static. There was only one thing I needed to see. One thing I needed to know.

Was she okay?

Stupid question. She'd just found out that the man she'd probably been dreaming about the man I had dreamed about, had someone else, someone notorious, someone who had never deserved the title of mate.

She wasn't okay and it was my fault. I reached the kitchen doorway and stopped. She was standing by the window, her back to me. Her parents had drifted away, pulled into conversations with other pack members. Maya was hovering nearby, shooting daggers at anyone who came too close.

Amara's shoulders were trembling. Just slightly and enough for me to see she's crying, I realized. She's crying, and it's because of me.

My hands clenched into fists as I took a step forward. Maya saw me first. Her eyes went wide, then hard. She moved to block the doorway, her body a wall of protective fury.

"Don't," she said, her voice low. "Don't you dare come near her."

"Maya"

"You made your choice, Damon. You don't get to come sniffing around now that she's back." Maya's lip curled. "Go back to your mate."

The word was a slap. I looked past Maya, toward the window, toward Amara.

She turned.

Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she wasn't crying anymore. She was looking at me with an expression I couldn't read. Something caught between grief and anger and something else. Something that looked terrifyingly like hope.

And then she spoke.

"Damon."

Just my name. That was all but the way she said it, soft and broken and aching shattered something inside me. My wolf stopped howling. He started to weep.

"Amara," I said.

And I had no idea what came next.