Chapter 120
Dominic POV
The moment her voice cuts through the ballroom, my body goes still.
I whip around.
There’s no way she–
She’s…on the damn stage.
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath. “You little-”
“I reject the bond,” Ellie says, and it hits like a blade sliding straight between my ribs. “I always have.”
My finge pinched the bridge of my nose.
Fuck.
She heard. She had to have.
I glance at my parents. My mother looks appalled. My father looks like he might explode. For a heartbeat, the entire room freezes, like everyone’s collectively deciding whether a girl is even allowed to say something like that out loud, in front of packs, in front of Alphas, in front of me.
Then the whispers start. Chairs shift. Someone gasps.
Ellie tosses the microphone aside like it’s nothing and walks off the stage.
And I’m moving before I think.
“Dominic!” my father snarls, but I’m already shoving through curtains and bodies, the music and murmurs fading behind me.
The night air hits hard as I follow her out our the gala. Cold, damp stone and expensive flowers as Lanterns cast everything in warm gold, like the scene might have bene nice if a disaster wasn’t unfolding in real time.
Ellie’s already halfway down the path, walking fast, shoulders rigid.
“Ellie,” I call.
Nothing.
My throat feels raw. “Ellie-stop.”
She keeps going. I lengthen my stride and cut her off near the hedges. I don’t touch her, just step into her path.
She stops so abruptly her skirt brushes my leg. For a split second, she’s too close, and my chest tightens with a memory I shouldn’t let surface, her fingers clutching my shirt in the pit, her breath against my throat.
Her eyes snap up.
“What?” she spits.
Every memory shatters.
“Get out my face,” she says before I can speak, jabbing a finger into my chest. “I’m not explaining anything! Not when your parents just tried to marry me off like the moon goddess herself signed the paperwork. Did it occur to them to ask me?”
“Woah, okay. Yeah, I know. Alphas don’t ask,” I scoff.
She folds her arms. “Ah. That explains a lot with you then.”
Chapter 120
+30 Bonus
My jaw tightens. “I’m here to try and fix this, mind killing the atitude.”
“Fix it how?” she asks. “I turned the offer down. Didn’t you just get what you wanted? I heard you, Dominic. I heard you back
there.”
I roll my eyes. “I know, you wouldn’t have act so childish if you didn’t.”
Her eyes flash. “Childish? Me?”
“Yes,” I snap, gesturing back toward the ballroom. “You embarrassed my family over tradition. A dumb one, but you don’t like it? Fine. Handle it privately.”
She laughs. “So Alphas get to drag ‘simple folk’ into their traditions publicly, but I’m not allowed to say no just as loudly?”
“No,” I snap. “You’re lucky you weren’t hauled out to a jail cell for it.”
“You’d like that,” she fires back, stepping closer. “Pick anyone else.’ You said it like I was something you were trying not to catch.” Her voice tightens. “Threatening cages isn’t any different from how you treat me now.”
I go quiet.
I should tell her the truth, that I was trying to protect her. But if I start apologizing, I don’t know where it ends.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say, defensive.
“Then how did you mean it?” she demands.
“I meant I was trying to help, so they wouldn’t force you.”
“Oh,” she laughs, smaller now. “By talking crap about me? Can’t just say no to mom and dad?”
“I was on your side!”
“My side?” she repeats, voice cold. “You don’t get to claim that after what you did.”
“I didn’t do anything–”
“Exactly! You just humiliated me,” she cuts in. “In front of every pack leader alive! Then acted like it was for my own good.”
“Like you didn’t just do the same to me?”
“You deserved it!”
“For trying to protect you?!”
“From what?” she shoots back. “You could’ve corrected them privately instead of announcing to the world I wasn’t your choice!”
“We’re just going in circles! We have the same goal!”
“Then move.” She snarls.
But that’s not the truth. I don’t know if we do. The truth is she is worthy, and I care for her, I know that, I just don’t know what
to do with it.
She tries to step around me. I block her without thinking.
“Move,” she says.
“No.”
Her voice drops. “Dominic.”
Chapte pr
“Stop walking away from me.”
She lets out a breath. “Why? So we can reject each other here over and over again?”
“I didn’t reject you,” I say–and immediately hate how stupid that sounds. Because I did.
Her gaze drops for a second, not to me, but to the space between us.
“You asked them to pick anyone else,” she says quietly. “So leave me alone. We both wanted this.”
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