The statement arrives without preamble. No hedging. No qualifiers. No but I was young or but I did not mean it or any of the hundred escape routes that people use to avoid the unvarnished shape of their own wrongdoing.
I blink at him.
Surprised, despite myself, that he has chosen this moment to open this door. We have been circling this conversation since the day I arrived on campus, stepping around it with the careful choreography of two people who know where the cracks in the floor are and have silently agreed to avoid them.
He looks down at his hand on my waist, then back to my face.
"I thought supporting Rafe was the only path to becoming an official pack," he confesses. "I have always craved company. Always needed people around me. Being alone terrifies me in a way I have never fully admitted because Alphas are notsupposed to be afraid of solitude, are they? We are supposed to be self-sufficient and dominant and perfectly comfortable in our own skin without needing anyone to validate our existence."
The vulnerability in his voice is raw. Unpracticed. Not the polished confession of someone who has rehearsed this speech, but the stumbling honesty of a man speaking truths he has barely acknowledged to himself.
"I thought if I sucked up to Rafe. Supported his behavior. Laughed at his cruelty and stood in his corner even when his corner was built on other people's pain. Then I would fit in. I would find a pack. I would find an Omega who wanted me, and the loneliness would finally stop eating me alive from the inside out."
He swallows hard.
"Obviously, I have learned over the years that it is more complicated than that. That loyalty to a person who treats others like garbage does not earn you love. It earns you proximity to their toxicity and a front-row seat to the damage they leave behind. But I was hopeful in some stupid, naive way. Thinking I had to be an asshole to win the girl. Like the enemies-to-lovers plots in Netflix shows where the cruel Alpha gets the Omega in the final episode and the audience swoons instead of calling the police."
I sigh, the sound carrying more affection than exasperation.
"You know enemies to lovers does not translate to real life, right? That trope requires a screenplay, a sympathetic backstory reveal in act two, and a soundtrack that emotionally manipulates the audience into forgiving behavior that would result in a restraining order in any functioning society."
He chuckles.
The sound is warm and self-aware, the laugh of a man who has already arrived at the same conclusion and is not offended by having it reflected back to him.
"I am starting to realize that, yeah." His smile dims slightly, his gaze dropping to his hand on my waist. "Maybe I tried the hopeful romantic route and got my heart broken instead."
"Really?" My voice softens.
"Yeah." He nods, the admission landing heavy. "There was an Omega. A while back. I liked her. Genuinely liked her, not the performative interest Alphas display when they are trying to impress their friends, but the real, quiet, keeps-you-up-at-night kind. And she despised me."
His jaw tightens briefly.
"Not because of how I looked or my status on the team. It was exactly what you described. I may not have insulted her directly, but my actions communicated everything my mouth did not. The company I kept. The behavior I endorsed through silence. She saw through the neutral expression and recognized the complicity underneath, and she wanted no part of a man who watched cruelty happen and did nothing."
He meets my gaze with an honesty that makes my chest ache.
"I did not understand it back then. But having you explain it, having you put the concept into words I can picture and apply to real memories, helps. It makes the pattern visible in a way my own reflection could not."
He pauses, his thumb tracing an absent arc against my hip through the jersey fabric.
"I know it has only been a few days since Raphaël arrived and this whole pack dynamic shifted into gear. But I can already see the difference in myself, Mae. I feel more focused. More grounded. The compulsion to mingle with the guys on the team just to fill the silence, to participate in gossip and talk stupid shit and perform camaraderie I do not actually feel, has quieted. I do not need the noise anymore."
He smiles, but it carries a shade of melancholy.
"Which is weird. And a bit isolating. Because the habits you build to survive loneliness do not evaporate overnight just because the loneliness starts to lift. They linger like phantom limbs, reaching for distractions that are no longer necessary."
"Really?" I tilt my head, studying him with the attentiveness he deserves. "Why did you not come talk to me? Or hang out with me and Etienne? You know the door is always open. Literally. I still have not figured out the lock on my side."
He looks away. The tips of his ears flush pink.
"Because I feel embarrassed," he mutters.
"Why?"
The word is gentle. An invitation, not a demand.
"Because I was mean to Etienne too." His voice drops, the confession escaping in fragments that he has to force through the resistance of his own shame. "When we were younger. I approved of Rafe's bullying. His side comments about Etienne being too quiet, too soft, too passive for an Alpha. I laughed when I should have intervened. I stayed when I should have left. And now I am living with a man I helped torment, sleeping under the same roof, eating at the same table, and the cognitive dissonance of that is suffocating."
