She walked toward him with the same focused intensity she brought to emergency coordination. No fear. No submission. Just a competent omega who’d dealt with difficult situations before and knew exactly how to handle this one.
“They don’t speak for me,” she said, her dark amber eyes locked on Nathan. “I speak for myself. And I’m telling you to leave. I’m not yours. I never was. You made sure of that five years ago when you stood at an altar and told everyone I was too much trouble.”
“Sable, I was wrong,” Nathan said, and through my sensitivity I felt his genuine remorse mixing with desperation. “I’ve spent five years regretting that decision. I came here to apologize. To ask for another chance.”
“Five years too late,” she said. “I spent five years rebuilding myself after you broke me. Five years proving I didn’t need an alpha to validate my worth. Five years learning that being too much for one person just meant I needed to find better people.”
“These three?” Nathan gestured at us dismissively. “They’ll realize the same thing I did. That you’re exhausting. That your independence is actually selfishness. That you’ll never prioritize pack over your career or your need to be in control.”
Through the bond, I felt Sable’s hurt spike. Felt her fighting against the voice in her head that said Nathan might be right. Felt her preparing to defend herself against accusations that cut close to old wounds.
“My career saves lives,” she said, her voice steady despite what I felt through the bond. “My independence means I contribute to the pack as an equal instead of a subordinate. And my need for control is actually competence that you couldn’t handle because it made you feel inadequate.”
“Sable, please,” Nathan said, and through my sensitivity I felt his desperation increasing. “Just talk to me. Give me ten minutes to explain.”
“No.” The word was flat, final. “You don’t get to show up after five years and demand my time. You don’t get to tell me I’m too much and then decide you were wrong and expect me to care. You don’t get anything from me except this message. LeaveHollow Haven. Leave me alone. Leaveusalone. And don’t come back.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Nathan said, his scent shifting to anger now that desperation wasn’t working. “You think three alphas will be easier than one? You think having a pack means you can keep your independence? It doesn’t work that way. Pack means submission. Pack means following the pack alpha’s lead. And you’ve never been able to do either.”
“Our pack works differently,” Dane said, his voice carrying absolute certainty. “We don’t have a pack alpha. We have four equals who make decisions together.”
“That’s not sustainable,” Nathan argued. “Someone has to lead. Someone has to make final calls. And she won’t follow anyone, which means your pack will fall apart the first time you face real crisis.”
“We’ve already faced crisis,” I said, thinking about the storm response, about the timber mill collapse, about every emergency we’d coordinated together. “We function better under pressure than most established packs. So your theory about her breaking us apart is already proven wrong.”
“Give it time,” Nathan said bitterly. “Give it a year when she’s fought you on every decision and refused to compromise and made it clear that her way is the only way. Then you’ll understand why I walked away.”
“You didn’t walk away,” Sable said, her voice going cold in a way that meant she was done with this conversation. “You rejected me publicly. You humiliated me in front of everyone who mattered. You made sure I knew that my personality was wrong, my strength was wrong, my independence was wrong. You didn’t just leave. You tried to destroy me on your way out.”
Through my sensitivity, I felt Nathan flinch at the accuracy of her words. Felt his shame mixing with his anger.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you that badly,” he said quietly. “You were supposed to see how wrong you were and change. You were supposed to come back to me and promise to change.”
I could feel the outrage flowing from Beau and Dane through our bond. Their disgust at his words, at his intentions.
“Idon’tneed to change. I built something better than what you were offering. Found alphas who see my strength as an asset instead of a problem.” She crossed her arms, the defensive posture I’d learned to recognize. “So thank you, actually. Thank you for rejecting me. Because if you hadn’t, I never would have found them.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Through my sensitivity, I felt Nathan processing, felt his disbelief that she wasn’t interested, felt his anger at being dismissed, felt his genuine hurt that she’d moved on.
“You’ll regret this,” he finally said.
“No,” Sable replied. “I won’t. The only thing I regret is wasting two years trying to make you happy. But I learned from that mistake. I don’t make myself smaller for anyone anymore.”
Nathan looked at each of us, probably cataloging our claiming bites, probably trying to understand how she’d found three alphas willing to accept what he’d called too difficult. Then he turned and walked away, his expensive shoes clicking against the linoleum floor with each retreating step.
We stayed silent until he was gone, until the stairwell door closed behind him, until his scent finally faded from the hallway.
Then Sable turned to look at us, and I felt her emotions through the bond like a tidal wave. Pride and fear and love and frustration all tangled together.
“I handled that,” she said quietly. “I didn’t need you three to rescue me.”
“We know,” I said, grinning despite the seriousness of the situation. “We just wanted him to know what he lost. And maybewanted to see you tell him off. That was extremely satisfying to witness.”
Through my sensitivity, I felt her surprise at our response. She’d expected us to be overprotective, possessive, to say we’d been defending her because she needed defending.
Instead, we were giving her credit for handling herself while acknowledging we’d enjoyed watching her do it.
“You really weren’t going to fight him?” she asked. “All three of you showed up and you were just going to let me handle it?”
