Chapter 6
June
“Go inside.”
I jump at the coldness of Callum’s barked order.
My eyes flick from him to the cake I made to mark the start of our new life together. “But I made—”
“Torin, take her inside,” Callum says, not looking at me. His eyes never stray from his dad’s, and his tone is so cold. What happened to the alpha from last night who carried me up the stairs, tucked me into bed, and kissed me goodnight?
I desperately want to ask what’s happening, but the tension is so thick that I don’t dare in case whatever I say ignites the fury simmering beneath the surface of Callum’s bland expression.
I walk toward Torin. He doesn’t look at me. Just turns around once I approach him and walks inside. Archer’s eyes shift from me to Callum’s dad, and he steps aside to give me room to enter, then closes the door behind me.
No one says a word.
When I peer over my shoulder and through the glass door to the backyard, Callum is walking toward his dad. That’s all I have time to see before Archer steps in front of the glass door, his back blocking my view.
There’s no sign of Veronica as I hurry through the entryway and toward Torin.
“Torin, what’s going on?”
He doesn’t respond, so I follow him into a silver and beige living room, where he walks over to a small table and pours himself a glass of whiskey from a crystal decanter. Only then does he turn to look at me.
I’d wanted him to look at me, if only to tell me what’s going on, but the second his eyes flick to me, I regret having followed him at all. Every bit of warmth in his bright green gaze has evaporated into dust. He doesn’t look at me. He looks through me.
“You know Callum’s dad,” he says, his voice flat.
“Not really. We met at the ball.” I watch him closely, sensing more going on here. Whatever it is, it’s important, and I don’t want to miss any cues.
He eyes me from over the rim of the crystal glass. “Just at the ball?”
“Yes. He opened a door for me, and he wanted me to dance with his son. And I—”
“Seemed to know exactly where to find me in the library,” he cuts in. His eyes are full of suspicion and hostility. But I did nothing wrong. Why is he looking at me as if I did?
A sick churn is growing in my belly. “I wanted to escape the dancing for a bit. You know that. I told you.”
Why is he looking at me like he doesn’t believe me? Why does it suddenly feel like I woke up in a nightmare?
“Yes, you did tell me that,” he says in a tone of disbelief, “and this morning, we find you having a cozy little breakfast out on the patio.”
“You don’t like him.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. His expression doesn’t change, but I regret having spoken a single word at all.
He throws back his head, and the laugh that pours out of him is so cold and harsh that I inch back, afraid. The laughter ends as suddenly as it started, and he drains the contents of his glass, his face twisting in disgust.
I tell myself it’s the taste of the alcohol that he doesn’t like. But after he’s set the glass down on the small side table, he’s still looking at me the same way.
As if it’s me, not the whiskey, that disgusts him.
“Torin, what is going on?” I ask softly. I reach out to him, and he recoils.
Shocked, I twist my fingers together to stop myself from reaching out to touch him again. The tiny voice in my head, which hasn’t stopped whispering that maybe the dream life I thought I was walking into isn’t a dream after all, grows louder.
“How much did he pay you to betray us?” He looks me up and down, as if he’s working out a price I’m worth. From the sneer on his lips, I’d be lucky if that figure reached double digits.
My face feels hot. Inside, I’m cold. I keep wanting to touch him. He’s my scent match, yet he’s staring down at me with so much disgust in his eyes, like he would sever the bond between us in a heartbeat if he could.
As if I’m not worthy of him.
But maybe I can make him understand.
I can make him understand that whatever he thinks I’ve done, he’s wrong. It’s just a misunderstanding. That’s all this is.
“Torin, please just listen to me.” I take a step toward him, but it’s a reversal of what happened in the library.
As I take a step toward him, he takes two away from me. He doesn’t want me to touch him. He couldn’t have made it any clearer that my touch disgusts him. Beyond hurt, I lower my arm and keep my distance, not wanting to be rejected again.
“I don’t know what’s going on, Torin. Please, just tell me what this is about. Please,” I plead, willing him to believe me. Desperate for him to see that none of this makes sense to me.
But he’s so cold. None of my words are getting through to him.
Not one.
He stares at me. “Not one day in this house and you’re laughing with Veronica in the kitchen and smiling over breakfast with William in the garden.”
“I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but I haven’t done nothing wrong.”
He walks over to me, and I instinctively back up.
Every step toward me feels like a threat. And I keep backing away until a wall stops me.
My heart is in my throat. Tears are filling my eyes, and Torin is looking down at me like he’s made of stone.
Pinned against the wall, in a horrible repeat of what happened in the Haven Academy library, he puts his mouth beside my ear. “We would have given you everything. Anything you wanted, it would have been yours. Anything.”
Tears of frustration well in my eyes. Overflow. I don’t waste time brushing them away. More are already falling. “But I didn’t do anything.”
“Yet,” his voice is silky. “You didn’t do anything yet.”
Every soft look in his eyes that was there before is there no longer. I’m worse than a stranger in his eyes; I’m an enemy. He’s shutting me out. I don’t just see it; I feel it.
“Our meeting in the library wasn’t a coincidence. It was a trap. A setup,” he says.
Torin’s first words to me when I slipped into the library, looking to rest my feet from squished toes and two-footed alphas, was whether “he” had sent me.
I was so close to giving up. I thought I would never find the love and happiness I had spent most of my life hoping for.
I slipped out of the ballroom, chased by a fear that I would end up in the same cold, sterile society mating as my parents, and their parents before them, which made everyone thoroughly miserable.
Only my great-grandmother, before she passed when I was still so young, told me to hold out for more. To chase a love that made each day worth living. I was too young then to understand what she meant, and now I do.
I found it, but I’m losing it, and I don’t know why.
“You were hiding from someone at the ball,” I say.
I can guess exactly who he was hiding from. William Russ, Callum’s dad.
“Then you walked in,” Torin says, pulling away from me with an ugly smile stretching his lips. “The easiest fuck I’ve ever had in my life.”
I flinch.
A dagger in the heart would have hurt less.
“We’re scent matches. I was a virgin. You—”
“Stop!”
I shrink back, cowering, terrified he’s going to hit me with the fury that twists his face into something I barely recognize. “If you think I’m going to let you ruin my life just because you’re my scent match, you have another think coming. I’ll destroy you first.”
He walks away from me, back to the small side table. Pours himself another glass of whiskey. His right hand shakes a little, spilling amber liquid onto the surface. But as he lifts the glass to his mouth, his hand steadies.
I watch him. I never stop watching. Too afraid to ask any more questions. Too frozen to leave.
“You’re poison,” he says, his voice almost gentle.
But he means it. Every word he has said to me in this room, he has meant it. Those words puncture a new place in my heart, and a tear slides slowly down my cheek, cool against my hot skin.
He gulps from his glass and turns toward me.
It’s as if he needed the drink to look at me. As if the first whiskey wasn’t enough to deal with me, and from the speed he drains the contents from his glass, a second isn’t enough either.
His eyes are chips of ice. “I should have known exactly what you were from how fast you opened your legs. How much did he pay you to whore yourself?”
I can barely see him with the tears filling my eyes. I brush them away, swallow the lump lodged in my throat as I try, once again, to make him understand that whatever he thinks I did, he’s wrong. “Torin, please. I-I didn’t—”
His bark of laughter cuts through my voice. Cuts into me. "I don't want you. I never did. Biology makes me need you, but if you weren't my scent match, I wouldn't look twice at you. Get out."
My mind is reeling, struggling to take in each jab. Struggling to process how things were so perfect yesterday, and now everything is crumbling to pieces right in front of me.
And I don’t know why.
"I did nothing wrong.” I cry.
His smile is so cold my heart hurts. "Did you mistake a quick fuck for love? Your acting needs work. The only thing you’re convincing me of is that he should have chosen a better actress. Get. Out."
My eyes brim over with tears that fall even when I tell myself not to cry. Hardening my heart doesn’t work. How can it when it’s your scent match cutting your heart open?
I reach for the Haven Academy shield. I seek solace in politeness, and in being the perfect hostess who doesn’t raise her voice and would never curse. But I grapple with the mask. It slips. I wrench it back into place as a tiny sob escapes.
You have to be strong, June.
I turn around and walk out, tears sliding down my cheeks as I jog up the stairs. And it’s so stupid, but I keep waiting for Torin to call me back. To laugh and hug me and say it was just a cruel joke that he didn’t know would hurt me so badly.
But he doesn’t call me back.
And once again, my mask slips because nothing could ever hurt as much as this does.