Tears of frustration well in my eyes. Overflow. I don’t waste time brushing them away. More are already falling. “But I didn’tdoanything.”
“Yet,” his voice is silky. “You didn’t do anythingyet.”
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 knowwhy.
“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 neverstopwatching. 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 intome. "I don't wantyou. 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 knowwhy.
"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?
