Chapter 3

Damon pov

The moment the door shut behind me, my wolf turned on me like I was the enemy.

He'd been quiet through the whole exchange with Evelyn—too quiet, coiled tight in my chest in a way I recognized but had chosen to ignore. The second I stepped into the hallway, he let loose a low, furious growl that rattled through my ribs, a sound of pure disgust aimed entirely at myself.

*You marked her.* The thought came in his voice, if a wolf's instinct could be called a voice. *You marked her and then you let another woman touch what belongs to her mate.*

"It's not that simple," I muttered under my breath, aware of how insane I must have looked, arguing with the empty hallway. A pack member rounded the corner ahead—Silas, one of the younger warriors—and caught sight of me before quickly averting his eyes and picking up his pace. Word had already spread, then. Of course it had. Evelyn's tears and her bare feet slapping against the compound dirt hadn't exactly been subtle.

I made my way back to my own room and sat heavily on the edge of the bed, the same bed where an hour ago Marissa had been curled against my side, and where twenty-four hours before that, Evelyn's mark had bloomed fresh and raw beneath my teeth.

My wolf growled again, lower this time, more accusation than warning.

*This is what alphas do,* I told him, told myself, the same justification I'd been repeating on some kind of loop since Marissa first climbed into my lap three weeks ago and I hadn't pushed her away. *Every alpha before me has done this. My father did it. His father did it. It's tradition. It's what keeps power in the pack strong—more heirs, more loyalty, more—*

*You felt her hate you.* My wolf's voice cut through my own excuses, sharp as a blade. *You felt it through the bond. Felt her heart break. And you called it dramatic.*

I dropped my head into my hands.

The truth was, I had felt it. That was the part I couldn't explain away no matter how many times I recited the old justifications about alpha privilege and pack tradition. The mark bond wasn't some abstract concept for me—it was a living thing, threading between Evelyn and me now, and when she'd stood in my doorway and looked at me with that expression, something in my own chest had cracked right alongside her.

I'd felt her disbelief first. Then the horror. Then, worst of all, the moment it curdled into hatred—raw and absolute, aimed squarely at me. I'd never felt anything like it before. Even now, an hour later, faint echoes of her anguish still pulsed through the bond like an old bruise being pressed.

And I'd stood there and told her she was being dramatic.

I groaned and scrubbed both hands down my face. What was wrong with me? I'd watched my own father parade a rotation of companions through the pack house for years while my mother sat silently at his side, her spirit dimming a little more with each new woman he brought home, until by the time I was sixteen she barely spoke above a whisper. I'd sworn to myself as a boy that I would never do that to a mate of my own. I remembered the exact moment—I'd been maybe twelve, watching my mother cry alone in the garden after another one of my father's companions moved into the west wing, and I'd promised myself, fiercely, the way only children can promise things: *I will never make someone feel this small.*

And yet here I was.

I told myself it was different with Marissa. That it wasn't really about her at all—that Marissa was just convenient, familiar, a childhood friend who'd made her interest so plainly known that eventually resisting it felt more like effort than restraint deserved. I told myself Evelyn wouldn't even need to know, not really, not if I was careful, and that when she inevitably did find out—because these things always came out eventually in a pack this size—she would understand, the way every Luna before her had understood, that this was simply what it meant to be mated to an alpha.

But I hadn't accounted for how it would feel to see her face when she found out. I hadn't accounted for the particular, specific agony of watching someone I'd claimed as my mate—someone I had marked with my own teeth less than a day earlier, tasting her blood and feeling the bond snap into place with a rightness I still didn't fully understand—look at me like I was something she needed to scrape off the bottom of her shoe.

*You had to see this coming,* I'd told her. As if that made it better. As if throwing my father's old excuses at her in that exact clinical, detached tone would somehow soften the blow instead of making it worse.

I hadn't meant to say it like that. I'd meant to explain, to reason with her, but the words had come out cold and final, alpha authority creeping into my voice out of some defensive instinct I didn't fully control, some part of me that resented being made to feel guilty for doing what I'd been raised to believe was simply my right.

My wolf huffed, disgusted, and turned away from the thought entirely, curling into some dark corner of my mind where he apparently intended to sulk until I fixed this.

*If I even can fix this.*

I thought of the way she'd stood in that bathroom, toothbrush still in hand, her whole body trembling with something far past simple anger. I thought of her voice cracking on the word *mated*, like the memory of our bonding ceremony was now something painful to even speak aloud. I thought of the mark on her neck, the one I was so proud of less than two days ago, and wondered if she was staring at it right now in her own mirror, hating the sight of it. Hating me.

A knock sounded at my door before I could spiral further into it. I knew the knock, the particular rhythm of it, and my stomach twisted with something that wasn't quite dread and wasn't quite anticipation either.

"Come in," I called, and Marissa slipped inside, wrapped now in one of my old shirts, her hair still mussed from earlier. She looked entirely too comfortable, too at ease in a room that felt, suddenly, wrong for her to occupy.

"Is she going to be a problem?" Marissa asked, crossing the room to sit beside me on the bed, close enough that her shoulder brushed mine.

Something in me recoiled at the question, at the casual way she asked it, like Evelyn's shattered heart was an inconvenient logistical hurdle rather than a person I'd sworn myself to less than two days ago.

"Don't," I said, sharper than I intended.

Marissa blinked, clearly startled by my tone. "Don't what? I'm just asking if—"

"She's not a *problem*, Marissa. She's my mate. I marked her." I stood abruptly, putting distance between us, needing the space to think clearly, away from her familiar scent still clinging faintly to my skin. "I need you to leave."

"Damon—"

"Please." My voice came out rougher than I meant it to, and something in my expression must have convinced her, because she rose slowly from the bed, studying me with an expression I couldn't quite place. Hurt, maybe. Confusion. As if she genuinely hadn't expected this, hadn't expected that seeing Evelyn's pain might actually mean something to me.

"I thought this was what you wanted," she said quietly, pausing at the door.

I didn't have an answer for her. Or rather, I had one, but I wasn't ready to admit it out loud yet—that somewhere between the moment Evelyn had stood in my doorway and now, some part of me had started to understand exactly what I'd done, and exactly how badly I'd done it.

After Marissa left, I sat alone in the dark for a long time, the bond between Evelyn and me humming faintly in the background, quieter now, more distant than it had been an hour ago. Like she was pulling away from it. Like she was building walls inside herself that the mark alone wouldn't be able to break through.

My wolf stirred again, restless.

*Fix it,* he urged. *Go to her. Explain. Beg if you have to.*

But some instinct, some quiet certainty settling cold in my gut, told me it wouldn't be that simple. Told me that whatever I'd broken tonight wasn't going to mend with a few well-placed apologies come morning.

I just didn't yet understand how right that instinct was—or how far Evelyn would already be by the time I worked up the courage to try.