Chapter 4

Damon pov

Morning came grey and heavy, the kind of light that made everything look worse than it probably was. I hadn't slept—not really. I'd spent most of the night pacing my room, replaying the look on Evelyn's face on some endless loop, my wolf pacing right alongside me in restless, silent judgment.

By the time the sun fully rose, I'd convinced myself that a clear head and calm explanation would fix what my temper had broken the night before. I told myself I just needed to make her understand—really understand, not the garbled, defensive version I'd thrown at her in the heat of the moment. If I could just get her to see reason, to see that this didn't have to be the end of what we'd built, surely some of that hatred I'd felt through the bond would ease.

I was wrong before I even opened her door.

She was lying on her bed when I walked in, curled on her side facing the window, still in the same clothes from the night before. She didn't move when the door opened. Didn't even flinch. If I hadn't felt the faint, resentful pulse of her still breathing on the other end of our bond, I might have thought she was asleep.

"Evelyn." I kept my voice gentle, aware of how badly I'd mishandled this already. "Can we talk?"

Nothing. Not a word, not a glance in my direction. Just the slow, deliberate rise and fall of her shoulders, her back to me like a wall she'd built out of her own spine.

"I know you're angry." I moved further into the room, stopping a few feet from the bed, unsure how close I was allowed to get anymore. "You have every right to be. I handled everything wrong last night. What I said to you—the way I said it—"

Silence. The kind that pressed against my chest harder than any shouting could have.

"Evelyn, please look at me."

She didn't.

I felt something in me start to fray at the edges, that same defensive instinct from the night before creeping back in, wrapping around the guilt like it was trying to smother it. I hated how easily it happened, how quickly the old excuses rose up in me the moment I felt cornered.

"You know how this works," I said, and even as the words left my mouth I recognized them, recognized the exact shape of my father's voice living inside my own. "Alphas have always had companions alongside their mates. It's not a reflection on you. It doesn't mean I don't—"

"Get out."

Her voice was flat. Hollow. The first words she'd spoken since I entered the room, and they landed like a physical blow, more devastating in their quiet finality than any amount of screaming could have been.

"Evelyn—"

"Get. Out." She still hadn't turned around. Still hadn't given me so much as a glimpse of her face. "I'm not doing this again, Damon. I'm not listening to you explain to me why what you did was normal. Why I should just accept it. I heard you the first time."

My wolf snarled at me from somewhere deep inside, disgusted that I'd walked in here and immediately reached for the same tired justifications instead of the apology I'd promised myself I'd lead with. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to gather myself, trying to find better words than the ones that kept betraying me.

"That's not what I meant to say," I tried again, softer. "I meant—Evelyn, I know I hurt you. I know what you saw last night is going to stay with you, and I hate that. I hate that I put that image in your head. I hate that I made you doubt what I feel for you."

"What you feel for me." Something in her voice cracked, finally, the first real emotion she'd let slip since I walked in, though she still didn't turn to face me. "You marked me, Damon. You told me I was it for you. And then you climbed into bed with Marissa less than a day later and told me I should have *expected* it."

"I was scared," I admitted, and it was the first true thing I'd said since entering the room. "I panicked when you caught us, and I said things to protect myself instead of things that were actually true."

"So what's actually true?" She finally turned then, just enough that I could see the side of her face, red-rimmed eyes fixed somewhere past me, refusing to meet mine directly. "Tell me what's actually true, Damon. Because last night you told me having a companion alongside your mate was completely normal. That it didn't take anything away from me. Was that a panic response too, or is that genuinely what you believe?"

I opened my mouth and found, horribly, that I didn't have a clean answer. Because some part of it *was* true—was what I'd been raised to believe, was the water I'd swum in my entire life without ever questioning if it was poisoned. And some part of it was absolutely, unforgivably false, because I'd felt exactly what it did to her the moment she found out, felt her whole world crack apart through our bond, and no rational, dignified explanation could survive standing next to that kind of pain.

"I don't know anymore," I said finally, and it was the most honest thing I'd offered her since she'd walked in on us the night before. "I grew up watching my father do this. I told myself it wouldn't be different with us because it never seemed different for anyone else. But then I saw your face, and I felt what it did to you through the bond, and I don't—" I stopped, dragging a hand through my hair, frustration and shame tangling together in my chest. "I don't think I actually believe what I told you last night. I think I was just repeating something because it was easier than admitting I made an enormous mistake."

For one brief moment, something in her expression flickered—not softness, not forgiveness, nothing that generous, but something that looked almost like she was considering my words instead of immediately shutting them out. It gave me a single, foolish thread of hope.

Then her jaw tightened again, and the wall went right back up.

"It doesn't matter," she said quietly. "Whether you believe it or not, you did it. You let Marissa into your bed the night after you marked me. That's not something I get to un-know, Damon, no matter how many times you change your explanation for it."

"I know." My voice came out rough. "I'm not asking you to forget it. I just need you to know that I understand now how badly I—"

"I need you to leave."

This time there was no anger in it, no sharp edge like before. Just exhaustion. A tired, bottomless kind of exhaustion that somehow hurt worse than her fury had.

I stood there a moment longer, searching for something else to say, some combination of words that might actually reach her instead of driving her further away. But nothing came. My wolf offered no guidance either, silent now, resigned in a way that felt like its own kind of verdict.

"Okay," I said finally. "I'll go."

I made it to the door before her voice stopped me, quiet and flat behind my back.

"Damon." I turned. She still hadn't fully faced me, but I could see enough of her profile to catch the hard set of her jaw, the finality in it. "Don't come back in here unless you're prepared to actually undo what you did. Not explain it. Not excuse it. Undo it. And we both know you can't."

I didn't have an answer for that either.

I left her room with my wolf curled tight and silent in my chest, and I didn't yet understand—not fully, not the way I would in the days to come—that I'd just had my last real chance to fix things, and I'd walked out the door instead of finding the words that might have changed what came next.

By the time I realized my mistake, Evelyn would already be gone.