After seven years away from my mate, I finally came home to Blackthorn Pack. I had quit my job at the border for Adrian Blackthorne. I thought I was coming back to our future. Instead,I stood outside the main house and typed in the door code three times. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. On the fourth try, the door opened from the inside. But the person standing behind it was not Adrian. It was my best friend, Lila Hart. She was wearing Adrian’s white shirt, the hem barely covering her thighs. His scent was all over her, cold cedar and Alpha dominance clinging to her skin. It was too intimate. Too obvious. Too humiliating. "Selena, you're back?" She smiled like she belonged there. Like she was the woman of the house. "I had a fight with my roommate," she said lightly. "So I've been staying with your fiance for a while." For a while. As if my mate's house were a spare bedroom she could borrow. At the sound of her voice, Adrian came out of the bathroom. A pale pink towel hung low around his waist. His hair was wet, water trailing down his shoulders. "Don't block the doorway," he said. His brows drew together as he looked at me. "Lila's using the master bedroom. You can sleep in the guest room tonight." He said it like it was normal. Like I was the guest. Then, through what was left of our mate bond, his thoughts slipped into my head. Soft. Panicked. Cowardly. [Selena, after being apart this long, did you fall for another Alpha?] [Say this is our home. Tell her she has no right to stay.] [Get angry. Fight me. Show me you still care.] He had always been like this. If I replied to a text late, he took Lila to the pack bar. If I missed one month with him, he let Lila sleep over at the main house. Before, I would have asked questions. I would have cried. I would have broken down exactly the way his thoughts wanted me to. But this time, I looked at the women's underwear hanging on the balcony. The slippers outside the master bedroom that were not mine. The Alpha scent wrapped around Lila so thickly it nearly drowned out her own. And suddenly, I had nothing left to ask. I took one step back and grabbed my suitcase. A house that had room for three was never going to be my home. ... Lila reached out and caught the handle of my suitcase. "Selena, come on. It's just a changed password. Are you really mad?" She blinked at me, wearing innocence like a mask. "The old code was too complicated. I could never remember it, so Adrian changed it to my birthday." Adrian gave a cold laugh. "She's being dramatic. It's a password. Why can't I change it?" His face was full of impatience. But his thoughts grew more desperate by the second. [Say it. Say that date was the day we became mates.] [Tell me I wasn't allowed to change it.] [Selena Vale, why aren't you reacting?] I said nothing. Lila leaned against the doorframe and yawned. "Are you coming in or not? We're going to bed." I took the key with the Blackthorn wolf crest from my pocket and placed it by the door. Gently. Like I was putting down the last piece of us. "No." "You two sleep." Adrian went still. Then his face hardened. "If you're not coming in, then get lost." He slammed the door. The force of it made me stumble. My bag slipped off my shoulder, and a stack of old train tickets spilled across the floor. The one on top was from seven years ago. The day I was assigned to Silver Creek's border division, Adrian took me to the station. The boarding announcement played three times before he finally let go of my hand. "Go, Selena," he said. "Don't look back." He sounded so calm. But that was the first time I heard his thoughts. [Selena, I don't want to let you go.] [But I can't hold you back.] [I love you. Wait for me.] My hand froze over my ticket. My eyes burned. Then the tears came before I could stop them. For the next seven years, I took that five-hour train again and again. Even after patrols that ended past midnight, I would rush back to Blackthorn Pack just to see him. Until the time I handled two nights of border riots in a row, collapsed at the division office, and missed the train back. The moment I woke up in the infirmary, I called him. He answered on the seventh try. "I'm having dinner with Lila." His voice was so cold he barely sounded like my mate. "Why are you crying? You were busy. Am I not allowed to have someone else keep me company?" "She's your best friend, isn't she? If she's watching me for you, what are you worried about?" That night, Lila posted three updates. Pack bar. Shots. A street at three in the morning. And I spent the night alone in the infirmary, an IV in my arm and my phone silent beside me. My tears fell onto the train ticket. I tried to wipe them away. But the stains would not come off. The door opened again. Adrian stood inside. When he saw my tears, his expression softened a little. "If you can't bear to leave, then get in here." "How many days are you staying this time?" I did not tell him I had already resigned. There was no point. I had given up everything at the border because I wanted to end the distance between us and finally be with him. But he and Lila had already been living together. Lila came out of the bathroom with a towel and started drying his hair like it was the most natural thing in the world. Adrian did not move away. He even lowered his head for her. His thoughts said he loved me. But his body had already learned to lean toward another woman. There was no space left for me in that house. Not in the bedroom. Not in his habits. Not in his life. I did not pick up the tickets. I turned and walked toward the elevator. Behind me, Adrian laughed coldly. "Selena, if you walk out today,we're over." I pressed the elevator button without looking back. His thoughts broke into panic. [Selena, don't go.] [I only wanted to make you jealous.] [If you turn around, I'll comfort you.] The elevator doors opened. I stepped inside. [Please. Don't go.] I heard him. This time, I let him beg. And I did not stop. The doors closed inch by inch, cutting off his face and his voice inside my head. At that moment, my phone rang. On the other end was Cassian Wolfe, a high-ranking Alpha from the Northern Council. "Selena Vale," he said. "The position at Council headquarters is still open for you." "Have you made up your mind?" I wiped my tears and cleared my throat. "Cassian." "I'll report tomorrow."
I spent the night at a small inn near the pack border. Early the next morning, the main house manager called and dragged me out of sleep. "Miss Vale, the large packages you sent are piled up at the entrance. Pack members have already complained. Please come handle them as soon as possible." When I came back this time, I had never planned to leave again. I had packed seven years of my life and shipped it all back to Blackthorn Pack. Clothes. Documents. Old letters. And all the memories I thought I would carry into my future home. Now the boxes had arrived. Now they had arrived. And just like me, they had nowhere to go. I rushed back to the Blackthorne estate in the rain. There was nothing at the entrance. Lila was in slippers, about to head upstairs. "Selena, what took you so long?" She pointed toward the trash area behind the house. "Those boxes were blocking the door." "Adrian said you two had already broken the mate bond. Your stuff was trash, so I threw it out for you." My ears rang. I turned and ran to the back. Rain poured down hard. The cardboard boxes had gone soft. My clothes and documents were scattered everywhere, soaked in muddy water. I dropped to my knees and finally found the little wolf plush. It was swollen with rainwater. One eye had fallen off. It was the first gift Adrian had ever given me. The first proof I once had that he thought of me when I was not there. For seven years, whenever he could not come to the border to see me, that plush stayed with me. Last year, I was injured on border patrol and fractured my leg. Adrian had promised to come. Then Lila sprained her ankle during training. On the phone, he only said one rushed sentence. "I'll come see you after she's better." I was in too much pain to sleep, so I held that little wolf until dawn. I hugged it to my chest and saw a broken high heel nearby. I had bought those shoes half a year ago. That day, someone deliberately deleted my supply proposal. I hid in the garden behind the division office and cried so hard I could barely breathe. Adrian's phone would not connect. He called me back at dawn. "What's wrong on your side now?" "Lila fought with her roommate. I just brought her back to the main house." The next day, I went into the city and bought those heels. I told myself, Selena Vale, stand steady. If no one comes to take you home, walk home yourself. For seven years, I traveled between the border and Blackthorn Pack. I lived alone. I survived every breakdown alone. Those things had kept me going until today. Now they were all in the trash. "Lila Hart." I held the soaked wolf plush tighter and looked up at her. "Who gave you the right to throw away my things?" Adrian's voice came from behind me. "Selena, why are you yelling at her?" He stood in front of Lila with an umbrella, shielding her from the rain. "It's a few boxes of junk," he said. "So what if she threw them out?" Lila's eyes reddened as she looked at me. "I thought you didn't want them anymore." Adrian looked at the mess on the ground, and his face darkened. His thoughts slammed into my head. [Why are there so many boxes?] [Wasn't Selena only coming back for a few days?] [That little wolf... she still kept it?] His gaze landed on the plush in my arms. But the words that came out of his mouth were still full of disgust. "You broke the bond and still sent your stuff to my house." "If your things aren't trash, what are they?" Rain streamed down my face as I looked at him. "Adrian, my things are not trash." "You are." Pack members began gathering around us. Their whispers rose through the rain. "Isn't that Alpha Adrian and Lila?" "Haven't they been living together for half a year? I always see them patrolling together and going to the market." Someone looked at me with open contempt. "Then who is she?" "An ex who got dumped?" "Or some outsider trying to come between the Alpha and his future Luna?" The part of my heart I thought had gone numb twisted hard. So they had been living together for six months. For six months, they bought groceries together, returned to the main house together, shared umbrellas, and stood under the pack's gaze together. In everyone's eyes, Lila looked more like his Luna than I ever had. And I, the woman who had waited seven years for him, had become the shameless outsider in their story.
Adrian's face looked awful. But he did not explain. Lila tugged softly at his sleeve. "Adrian, let's go upstairs." After a few seconds of silence, he held the umbrella over her and led her into the house. I stood in the rain and watched them walk away. His thoughts grew fainter. [Selena isn't an outsider.] [She's the one I love most.] I stopped listening. The rain came down harder. I crouched beside the trash and dug through the ruined boxes, searching for the old pocket watch my grandmother had left me. It was the only thing she gave me before she died. She told me that even if no pack protected me, I had to remember where I came from. But I searched every box. I never found it. I had been in the rain too long. My vision suddenly went black. When I woke up, I was lying in the guest room of the main house. Lila sat beside the bed, her eyes red from crying, as if she were the one who had been humiliated in the rain. "Selena, you fainted." "I asked Adrian to carry you up." She tucked the blanket around me, her voice soft. "Don't take what the pack members said to heart. I already explained it for you." "I told them you weren't an outsider or a homewrecker." "We're friends. You only came here because you wanted to move in with me." "It's just that the house belongs to Adrian, and he's my mate now, so everyone misunderstood." She sounded so sincere. Like she was really helping me. But I remembered our college days. Someone had stolen my need-based scholarship, and Lila came with me to confront the advisor. Back then, she had been angrier than I was. "I hate people who take what belongs to others and then act innocent." Now she wore that same innocent face while calling my Adrian her mate. Lila used to look down on Adrian. Every time she mentioned him, she said his full name like an insult. At some point, she started calling him Adrian. Started wearing his coats. Started eating alone with him, patrolling with him, traveling with him. I had noticed her crossing lines. But she was my best friend. And Adrian always said I was overthinking. His thoughts told me again and again: [Selena, I only love you.] So I swallowed my discomfort. Again and again, I forced myself to believe him. But now, I did not want to pretend I was blind anymore. "Lila, stop acting." I pushed myself up against the bed frame. "Where is my Council certificate?" I had to report to the Northern Council today. But the copies of my documents had been ruined in the rain. I had once treated this place like home, so I had left the originals here. Lila froze for half a second. "I don't know. Look for it yourself." I ignored her and got out of bed. The master bedroom was her room now. Several of Adrian's shirts hung in the closet. My clothes were shoved into the farthest corner, wrinkled beyond recognition. Lila followed me and explained in a small voice. "Sometimes he gets drunk and sleeps in my room. That's all." I did not want to know what they had done here. I only wanted my certificate. But when I opened the nightstand drawer, there was no file folder. Only several opened boxes of condoms. One fewer than the last time I had come home. My fingers went stiff. I forced myself to look away. There were takeout containers on the small table by the bed. Lila seemed to remember something at last and gasped. "Selena, is this what you're looking for?" She lifted the takeout box. My Council certificate was underneath it. The cover was smeared with oil. The silver Council seal had been stained dark with chili oil. Lila bit her lip. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I was eating in here last night. It was stiff, so I used it under the container." I snatched it from her hands. When I opened the cover, the pages inside were soaked through too. Even the embossed seal smelled sharp and greasy. Heavy footsteps sounded at the door. Adrian strode in and stepped in front of Lila. "Selena, don't be so ungrateful." "Lila was kind enough to bring you back. It's just a few pieces of paper. Did you really have to scare her?"
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