I blink at him. Not because I’m flattered. Because how dare he. “Don’t.” My voice lowers, clipped. “You don’t get to talk to me.”
“I just…” He raises a hand like that will somehow calm me down. “I didn’t know you were heading to Mistberry Cove. You visiting someone?”
I laugh. It sounds wrong in my throat, sharp and bitter. “Are you serious right now?”
He glances around, suddenly aware of the eyes on us. A few passengers have turned to watch, sensing drama. “Anita, come on. I didn’t want them to kick you out. You know that.”
“You didn’t stop them either,” I snap.
“I couldn’t! I?—”
“You stood there,” I cut him off, getting to my feet, my voice rising despite my best efforts to stay calm. “All the while, I went into heat alone, suffering. You watched me beg for help. For water. For anything. And not once did anyone come. You let Ethan keep me isolated from the pack and told yourselves it was for my own good.”
His jaw clenches, and I watch shame flicker across his face. Good. He should be ashamed.
“We wanted to help,” he says quietly. “But Ethan said you needed to learn that heat wasn’t an excuse for breaking pack rules. That you’d manipulated your cycle to get attention.”
“That’s bullshit!” My voice cracks despite my best efforts. “My cycle shifted. It happens. And instead of showing even a shred of compassion, you all chose to punish me and let me suffer alone because I didn’t fit Ethan’s perfect vision of what an Omega should be.”
Leon’s face reddens. “I know it was wrong. I wanted to come to you and help, but Ethan said if anyone broke ranks, if anyone showed you kindness, we’d be enabling your behavior. That we had to stay strong as a pack.”
“You didn’t vote me out, Leon,” I say, my tone dropping to something colder, harder. “But you didn’t lift a finger to keep me, either. You stood by and let it happen. That makes you just as guilty.”
He lowers his gaze, shame written all over his face, shoulders slumping. “The pack broke up after you left. About six months later. Everyone went their separate ways.”
“I don’t care.”
“Ethan’s alone now. Last I heard, he was?—”
“I said I don’t care.” I step back, creating distance between us. “Whatever happened to that pack, whatever happened to any of you, it’s not my problem anymore. You’re not my problem.”
He glances up, and there’s desperation in his eyes now. “You’re better off. Trust me. That pack was toxic, and we all knew it. We were just too scared to admit it.”
And that’s when it hits me.
The bitterness, the regret, the two years I spent wondering what I could’ve done differently, all of it? It means nothing. I feel nothing for him or them. No longing, no pain, no lingering affection. Just rage that I ever thought I owed them anything. Relief that I escaped.
“You’re right,” I say coldly. “I am better off. The only thing I regret is not walking away sooner.”
I stuff my earbuds into my coat pocket and tighten my grip on the handle of my wheeled suitcase, starting to move. I stride past him without another word, fury burning hot in my chest.
The smell of smoke sharpens in the air, carried on the wind as I push through the ferry doors onto the rear deck outside. It’s freezing, the kind of cold that slices through my coat and bites at my skin, but I need it. The slap of winter against my face is grounding.
I drag my suitcase behind me, the wheels clattering over the metal deck, echoing louder than I’d like.
Leon is still inside, probably watching me through the windows. Let him.
God, I hate that he’s here.
Two years of clawing my way back to myself. Of therapy, of solitude, of building new routines in a life I didn’t choose, but one I made my own anyway. Of forcing myself to stop waiting for closure that was never going to come.
And all it took was his face to split the wound open again. Only it’s not bleeding the way I expected. It’s not pain that rushes in to fill the space. It’s fury. Rage, thick and suffocating, not just at Leon, but at the pack, and at myself.
Because for too long, I thought it wasmeand that I wasn’t good enough. That if I’d just submitted more, stayed quieter, smiled sweeter, they might’ve kept me.
They didn’t.
Not when it mattered. And Leon, who claimed to be my friend, who used to share midnight snacks with me in the kitchen, who told me I was funny and strong, stayed quiet. He watched me suffer. And then he let them vote me out of the pack like I was nothing.
