Chapter 22 #2
“You don’t need to explain anything to me.” Her voice has shifted, darker. It’s the performance tone I recognize from the morning of her interview, the one she uses when she’s putting on armor so fast you can hear the buckles clicking. “You should go see what she wants.”
“You’re coming with me. You’re our pack now.”
She stares through the windshield at Trudy’s small, shaking form. I watch the conflict cross her face, her jaw tightening and her chin quivering.
“It was just my heat, Brody.” Her voice falls. “It meant the world to me, but now, the heat’s over and that’s your reality standing on your porch. You need to deal with it.”
Yet her words jab me in the ribs, and she’s already climbing out of the truck. “Claire, that’s not true.” The rain hits her and she’s moving, head down, crossing toward her front door.
I rush out of the truck, turning to go for her.
“Claire!” Jakob calls from the porch, stepping forward.
“I’m exhausted. Need a shower. Catch me up later.” She gives us a weak smile, but I’m not stopping. I’m at her door before she gets the key in the lock.
“Claire, please. Come inside with us. She needs to meet you.”
She glances past me toward our porch, where Trudy’s watching us. “She’s here for you three,” Claire says. “Things you need to sort out. Let me know how it goes.”
“Claire—”
“Thanks for everything.” Her voice splinters on the last syllable. She covers it with a smile that cracks open my chest. “The mountain was amazing. All of it. I just need some space now.”
She hurries inside, shuts the door, and the lock clicks.
I stand in the rain with my fists at my sides and the fury building behind my sternum because the perfect, devastating, life-altering weeks we’ve spent getting to know her are crumbling on a doorstep because a ghost chose today to turn up.
I cross the yards and up the porch steps.
Trudy’s between Corey and Jakob, trembling, and up close, the damage is worse than I expected.
She’s skeletal, her collarbones sharp, wrists fragile, her dark hair dull and tangled.
Her scent is wrong, almost soured. The bitter undertone of bond sickness so advanced it’s curdled, and beneath it the faded ghost of Kristian’s mark on her neck, proof he didn’t just reject her again—he hollowed her out.
She’s wearing a thin jacket over a shirt, jeans hanging off her hips, a wet backpack at her feet. She’s been sleeping rough, the exhaustion in her eyes confirming it.
“Trudy.” I stop in front of her. “What happened?”
She lifts her gaze to mine, and for one brutal second, the past bares its teeth.
I remember everything. The anger, agony, all those nights I lay awake replaying every word she said before she left, searching for the moment I should have known she would leave us.
I remember hating her. Missing her. Wanting her so badly it felt like punishment.
Three years ago, I used to imagine this moment until it buried me, dreaming of what I’d say if I ever found her again, whether I’d drag her into my arms or make her hurt the way we suffered.
But standing here now, with her eyes on mine, none of it comes back the way I expected.
The longing is gone.
The fury too.
All that’s left is the echo of what she broke and the strange, empty realization that some wounds don’t bleed forever. Eventually, they just become scars you stop touching.
“Kristian took me back when I returned to him.” Her voice is raw, scraped clean of pride.
“Then six months ago, he started isolating me. Friends gone. Family poisoned against me. No money. No phone. But he also pulled away as if he enjoyed flooding me with bond sickness.” She wipes her face with the back of a trembling hand.
“And I couldn’t take it any longer, convinced that if I stayed or left, I’d suffer the same, but maybe away from him, I’ll find a way to finally let go of him. ”
She breaks into full, ugly sobs that shake her entire body, and I stand there, because she’s broken and human and we’re not the kind of men who ignore that. But I can’t take her into my arms. Neither can Jakob nor Corey.
That part of us is gone. We can witness her falling apart and make sure she isn’t alone with it, but comfort is different from mercy, and none of us know how to offer the first without betraying everything she did to us.
Or the fact that we have found our actual scent-matched Omega.
I glance over at her house, at the lit window, and my heart squeezes. The ache on her face destroyed me.
Jakob shifts on the spot, eyeing me, and I shrug while Corey drags a hand over the back of his neck.
“How’d you find us?” Corey finally asks.
“ManBaker’s booking page lists Mistberry Cove.
I asked some local businesses, and one of them knew where you lived.
” She glances up at us. “Look, I’m not asking to come back, because I ruined that, and I’m so sorry for hurting you.
But I just had nowhere to go and figured maybe you’d find it in your hearts to help me out a bit.
At least until I figure out what’s next. ”
Jakob catches my eye, then Corey’s. We’re most likely all thinking the same thing, but there’s a whole ugly history inside it.
What she did to us, and if we owe her anything.
Which should be nothing, except we can’t leave a crying woman soaked on the streets.
So now we’re all heading indoors from under the porch cover.
We aren’t fucking monsters, and because once, before everything went rotten, we loved her.
“Take my room,” I state when she’s done, my voice rough enough to scrape. “I need to pack a few things. I’ll be staying next door.”
Jakob and Corey glare my way.
“I can’t thank you enough.” Trudy’s eyes are swollen, grateful, wrecked in a way I don’t want to recognize. “I promise I’m not here to cause problems.”
None of us answer that.
“Come, let me show you the shower so you can warm up and get changed out of those soaking clothes.” Corey guides her deeper into the house.
Jakob and I remain still in the hallway, shocked and staring at each other.
“Fuck!” I blurt out.
“You’re telling me,” Jakob groans, his shoulders curled forward.
“Claire saw Trudy, and I told her who she was.”
Jakob exhales loudly. “Guess that’s why she practically ran into her house without us.”
“She probably thinks she’s been replaced.” Every inch of me tenses.
Jakob’s jaw clenches.
“I’m going to speak with her, keep her company, and watch over her,” I explain.
His gaze cuts to mine, calm on the surface, steel underneath. “We sort Trudy, give her a few days, and then she needs to leave. Claire comes first.”
“One hundred percent.” I drag in a breath that does nothing to the noose tightening around my throat.
“Fuck, this couldn’t have come at a worse time, especially after Claire’s heat. We need to be with her, but we can’t force her into it now either.” Jakob’s expression darkens. “She can be scared and angry, but we’re going to show her she means the world to us.”
“That’s my plan.”
For one second, all I can hear is the rain and my own pulse beating too hard in my ears. Then Jakob says, “If she doesn’t answer her door tonight, I’m going through it.”
“Deep breaths,” I say, though mine aren’t exactly steady. “Let’s not terrify her after the day she’s already having. This is a surprise for her too, and if we come in like three Alphas ready to tear the walls down, she’s going to bolt so hard she’ll leave a Claire-shaped hole in the drywall.”
Jakob’s jaw flexes.
“I’ll bring her up to speed,” I add, softer now, because the thought of her over there alone, rewriting us into something cruel, is making it hard to think straight. “Plus, I need to go pick up Damien from the neighbor.”
Jakob nods.
I march to my bedroom and pack a small bag, including toiletries, then shove the strewn clothes around my room into the closet with no real system before closing it tight. Trudy can have the room, the bed, the walls. Whatever basic decency requires.
But my place isn’t here tonight.
It’s next door, before Claire convinces herself she isn’t ours.