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Vee jerks a finger up to point at him. “No. You don’t get to pretend like I had the ability or the right to do that. I was an underage, non-presented teenager with literally four hundred dollars to my name. How would I have fought for you?”
“You don’t need money to fight for your pack, pip,” Ford says quietly. “You just need to not be a fucking coward.”
I swear I see his comment land like a blow. He might as well have hit her. She stumbles back a step, one hand clutching at her chest, while tears form in her eyes, absolute fucking agony in her expression before she wipes it clean. With a blink, those tears simmering along her lower lashes are gone.
“Oh, I’m a coward?” she sneers. “What the hell does that make you? You had every opportunity to tell me privately you didn’t want me. You could have at least given me the dignity of breaking my heart in private. But you didn’t. Hell, you didn’t even have the balls to actually break up with me. You let Maxim do it in front of twenty reporters and two hundred guests.”
“Vee, angel,” Asher says, completely ignoring her request to not call her pet names. “We didn’t break up with you because that was never our intention.”
Vee shakes her head again, hands dropping to slap against her thighs. “So your plan was just to string me along? Keep me as a side piece? Your dirty little beta secret? That’s what I was at the end anyway, right?”
“What the hell does that mean?” Davis says, sounding hurt and confused. Not one of us thought it would go this way, that she would refuse to listen, to hear us out. The old Vee—the girl she was before we broke her heart—always listened to us. And maybe that was the problem. She trusted us to tell her the truth, believed us when we lied to her.
I can’t blame her for not believing us now. She’s learned she can’t trust us. And that is on us.
Vee pins him with a look. “After you met Yasmin, after you started spending time with her, taking her out to dinners and movies and soirees, showing her off to all the world, the only time I saw you, any of you,” she sweeps her gaze over us before looking back at Davis. “Was at the cabin. No more day trips to the lake. No more visiting me at the ice cream parlor while I was working. No more taking me out in public for any goddamn reason at all. I didn’t even realize what was happening, because you were all so good at lying to me-”
“We weren’t lying, beautiful.”
“-at making me feel important, like I mattered.”
“You do matter, angel.”
“But you were ashamed of me. Hiding me.”
“Vee, no!” The words explode out of me. Even though she’s right. We did that. The entire reason we bought the cabin was so we’d have a place to just be with her outside of the public eye, but it’s not for the reason she seems to think. “If you’d just listen to what we’re saying-”
“I don’t want to!” She shouts at me. “I don’t fucking want to, and I don’t owe you anything. I don’t owe you listening to your explanation of why you fucking pretended to care about me. I don’t have to listen to you tell me why you broke my heart. And I sure as fuck don’t have to listen to you tell me why you rejected me in public and said such awful things about me. I don’t have to sit here and listen to you about fucking anything! You made choices. I made mine. It’s fucking done. Get over it.”
“Get over it?” Ford growls. “Seriously?”
Something flickers over her face when she looks at him, but just like before, she buries it. I fucking hate it. There was a time when I could read this girl better than I could read myself. And now I have no clue what the hell she’s thinking. It’s frustrating.
“Yeah,” she says quieter. “Get over it. Get over me. Get over yourself. Get over fucking everything. This is all pointless anyway.” Her shoulders slump, the fight leaving her. “Talking about it doesn’t change anything. There’s too much…” She bites her lip and shakes her head. “No. It doesn’t matter. I can’t stay here.” Her chin tips up and says firmly, “I’m leaving now.”
“Running away again?” Jackson asks, gray eyes still laser focused on her.
She sways, another reaction to words like their physical blows. “Again?”
“You should have stayed, but you ran away!” I snarl at her, as close to an alpha as I’ve ever felt. Years of worry for her overriding my normally calm beta demeanor. I’m not sure she realizes the fucking agony we’ve been through, not knowing where she’s been.
Vee scoffs and shakes her head. “I didn’t run away. And even if I did, it would have been completely fucking justified!”
I barrel on like she didn’t say anything. “You ran away from your pack, Vee! We were terrified, going fucking crazy from not knowing where you were or what was happening to you. We thought you were dead, Vee. Dead. So don’t act like this isn’t a big fucking deal and there’s nothing to talk about.”
She gives one sharp shake of her head. “We’re not pack. We never were. You all made it very clear that there wasn’t room for me. The dynamics would have been all fucked.”
I scoff, shaking my head, fucking furious that she’s using such a weak excuse as pack dynamics. “I love you, Sylvie! I never would have resented you being in my pack! We can have two betas-”
“Can you have two omegas in a pack, Toph?” She shouts, arms flying wide of her body. “Because that’s what I fucking am. And even if I was a beta, do you really think Yasmin Forsyth would be okay with sharing her pack with me? Do you really think I would be okay with sharing you with her?”
She sounds so damn angry and hurt, and I pick up on that, but I’m not sure if anyone else in the room does, because the alphas, my alphas, only heard the first part of her shouting. The part where she said she’s an omega and now they’re all leaning forward, eyes intent on her.
Shit. This is going to go off the rails fast. Well, more than it has already. “You’re an omega?” Asher asks, voice deepened to a near growl.
Vee’s mouth snaps shut, like she just realized what she told us, hazel eyes going wide as she looks around, eyes focusing on the door. She takes one step toward it, but Ford’s voice whips out. “Don’t even fucking think about it, pip. You won’t make it two steps. Answer the question.”
I watch as Vee’s jaw tightens and I think for a moment that she won’t answer, but finally her eyes drop to the floor and she mutters, “yes.”
