Cain.
I hesitated, just for a moment, just a tiny breath but it felt like an eternity.
Her words still hung in the air, trembling between us like something fragile and ugly at the same time:
“Then…reject me.”
Hearing it spoken aloud was different.
It lodged in my chest like a splinter.
Wasn’t that what we should have done from the very beginning?
Wasn’t that what we had talked about?
What we wanted?
Yet the moment those words spilled from her lips, a sharp ache cut through my chest, unexpected, stabbing, wrong.
My wolf recoiled, restless and uneasy.
I stared at my brothers, and for a heartbeat, I caught the same flicker of discomfort across their faces, the tightening of Cypril’s jaw, the sudden tension in Caleb’s shoulders, the slight widening of their eyes.They felt it too. Th
