Her eyes drifted from me to Raj—who suddenly dropped his flirty-boy attitude—to his arm around my shoulders. I shrugged him off. “Wow, thanks, Vanessa,” I said, sarcasm dripping from every word.
Her hair was ruffled slightly, like she had just rolled out of bed. I inhaled and tensed when I realized how good she smelt.
“Two cappuccinos for Vanessa,” the barista said.
Vanessa grabbed the coffees and smiled at us. “Well, I should get going. Don’t want to keep Roman waiting. I’ll tell him you and yourboyfriendsaid hello.”
My heart dropped.
Roman… that’s what her shirt smelt like. Fucking Roman.
I stared at her from behind. Why the fuck did she have his shirt on and why was she getting him coffee? Was she fucking Roman now? Decided to make her fucking move after I moved out?
I stepped forward, ready to follow her, when Raj grabbed my arm and tugged me back. “Lycans don’t make rash decisions,” he said. I clenched my jaw and watched her drive off in her stupid Mercedes.
My hand tightened into a fist, and my coffee spilt all over my stomach. Though it was hot, it didn’t sting as much as this, as much as betrayal, as much as rejection. My wolf whimpered inside of me. We were hurting.
“Isabella?” Raj asked, brows furrowed together. The logical part of me knew that Vanessa always liked to stir up trouble. This was probably an elaborate scheme to fuck with me even when I was gone. I shouldn’t have believed her, but I did. She was wearing his fucking shirt.
“Izzy!” Derek walked into the café, his brown hair tousled. Derek tugged me into a familiar big bear-hug. Since I left, I hadn’t seen him. We had texted back and forth every day. But hours between texts weren’t the same thing as an instant reaction from him like I was used to. There had been too many rogues lately to see him. “How have you been?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he pulled away and looked between me and Raj. “What’s wrong?”
I should’ve been as happy to see him as he was to see me since I hadn’t seen him in over two weeks. But how could I be happy when Vanessa was wearing Roman’s shirt?
“Derek,” I said quietly, not wanting to seem weak in front of Raj. “I asked you to watch Roman.”
Derek’s eyes widened, and just for a moment his gaze drifted to the ground like he was guilty. I grabbed his hand, squeezing so fucking desperately.
“Derek,” I whispered, tears threatening to fall. “Please don’t tell me he and Vanessa are together.” I shook my head, feeling a stray fucking tear fall. “Please.”
He didn’t say anything, just tensed.
My lips parted in disbelief, and it felt like my whole world came crashing down. Two weeks. I had been gone for two weeks. That’s it. “Oh, Moon Goddess. They are.”
Derek sucked in a breath and put his hands on my shoulders. “Isabella, I’m not sure what’s going on between them. All I know is that they’ve been spending more time than usual together. Something happened at Vanessa’s house and she claimed that she couldn’t live in it, so he offered to let her stay in the packhouse with him.”
Tears filled my eyes until everything was blurry. Derek. Raj. My whole future. Raj squeezed my shoulder, and I pulled away from Derek.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He pressed his lips together. “I thought it would only be for a day or two.” He shook his head, wiping the tears from my cheeks. “I even offered for her to stay at my house with me so she would stay away from him. But they both refused.”
My heart ached so fucking bad.
“I’m sorry, Isabella,” Derek said. But it didn’t make anything better.
It hurt as bad as his rejection would.
Chapter 37
Isabella
I gazed at the people dancing in the middle of the Night Raider’s Café with a frown on my face. All week, I had been thinking about Roman, about Vanessa being in the house with him, about him giving his shirt to Vanessa to wear. And all week, I wanted to march right onto his property and tell him to reject me.
This feeling was beyond me. I didn’t know what was happening there, and it was eating me alive. Sure, he might just be a nice alpha to Vanessa. But he wasn’t even nice to me before I turned eighteen. Sure, he might’ve been doing his alpha duties. But didn’t Vanessa have her own damn shirts to wear? Why did he let her go out with his shirt?
This pain was too much, and I hadn’t even gone through heat yet. In less than a week, I would go through it. I would scratch and claw through all the walls in my bedroom, begging for someone to take away the pain by mating me.
The pain would disappear if I rejected Roman, but I couldn’t get myself to even think about those words.
