I laughed, though there wasn’t much humor in it. “You could say that.”
“Tell me about her. About Mary. If you’re comfortable sharing.”
So I did.
I told Jasmine everything I knew, everything I had been told, everything I had managed to piece together. About Mary’s obsession with my mate. About how she had threatened my pups, had sent burning blankets and knives in doors. About the attack on my shop. About Mika getting stabbed. About Isabella trying to inject me with sedatives while I lay unconscious in a hospital bed.
About waking up and not knowing who I was, who my children were, who the man crying at my bedside was.
By the time I finished, my coffee was cold and my throat was tight with suppressed emotion.
Jasmine reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
“I understand,” she said quietly. “More than you know.”
“You do?”
She nodded, her green eyes distant with memory. “Mira Bennett didn’t just appear in your life out of nowhere. Before she came here, before she started targeting you, she was in my pack. She was one of my tormentors.”
I sat up straighter, my attention sharpening.
“Mira and my mother-in-law schemed together for years to make me leave Ryder,” Jasmine continued. “They wanted me gone. Wanted me out of his life so someone more ‘suitable’ could take my place. Someone like Mira.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It was.” A sad smile crossed her face. “I’ve been in love with Ryder since we were young. I’m his sister’s best friend. We grew up together, knew each other our whole lives. When we finally got together, I thought that was it. I thought we would be happy forever.”
“What happened?”
“His mother happened. Mira happened. They made my life miserable. Convinced me that I wasn’t good enough, that I was holding him back, that he would be better off without me.” Her voice dropped. “I was pregnant when I ran.”
My heart clenched. “Jasmine...”
“I stayed away for years. Raised my son alone. Told myself it was better this way, that Ryder would move on and find someone worthy of him.” She shook her head. “Then circumstances forced me to return to the pack. And he was there. Still single. Still waiting. Still in love with me after all that time.”
Tears pricked at my eyes. “How did you work through it?”
“It wasn’t easy. There was a lot of pain. A lot of anger. A lot of discovering old wounds and owning our mistakes. But eventually, we found our way back to each other.” Her jawtightened. “Despite Mira’s continued threats and attacks. She never stopped trying to tear us apart.”
“And now she’s here,” I said quietly. “Doing the same thing to me.” I shook my head, frustration and confusion mixing together. “I don’t even know what I did to get her to target me. I’d never met her before any of this started.”
Jasmine’s expression hardened. “Well, if she’s friends with Mary, she wouldn’t need much convincing to start a mission to ruin someone’s life. She’s that bitch.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed.
“I know what it’s like to have someone who doesn’t want you to be happy,” Jasmine continued. “I know what it’s like to be hunted by a woman who thinks she deserves your life. And I want to help you because everyone deserves happiness, Lina. Everyone deserves to be with the person they love without some angry, envious person trying to destroy them.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. I wiped it away quickly, embarrassed by my own emotion.
“Thank you,” I managed. “I... thank you.”
“You’re not alone in this. Remember that.”
We talked for hours after that. About our lives. Our experiences. The challenges of being luna, of leading a pack, of balancing our own needs with the needs of everyone around us. Jasmine told me about her son, about watching him grow up without a father, about the guilt and the fear and the loneliness. I told her aboutthe twins, about Blake, about the fragmented pieces of my life I was still trying to put back together.
We laughed. We cried. We bonded over shared pain and shared hope.
By the time we looked up, the sun had set and the shop was closing. The sky outside had turned from blue to orange to deep purple, and the streetlights were flickering on.
