I look down at my hands, unable to speak for a moment. My heart aches with old wounds and now with fresh ones. A part of me wants to scream, to fight and run, and never look back. But the other part, the part that would do anything for Jaxon, that saw the way he lit up when Ryder hugged him, tells me that maybe there’s still something worth salvaging. Even if it’s just for Jax.
“I need some time to process all of this. To figure out what’s best for Jax. For me,” I say quietly.
“Take all the time you need. Just let us be here. Let us show you what life here can be like,” Ryder says.
I look at Ryder now and see the raw emotion behind his eyes. The hope and the desperation bleed from him. My eyes shift to Callen, who is silent for once. His cheeky grin has gone, replaced by a clenched jaw and intense stare. He has his arms crossed over his chest, and I sense he’s hiding something.
“This package deal thing… it’s not happening. I’m not like you. That doesn’t happen in my world. You don’t get to claim me like some object you can own,” I say, and watch as Callen’s posture sags.
“You’re not. It’s not like that. Think of it more like a marriage, but without the ceremony and all the paperwork. It’s a bond, the strongest of connections. Soulmates, fated mates, true mates….Call it whatever you need to make it easier for you. You can deny it, and we won’t force it, but it’s there, and it’s real,” Callen says, his voice softer than I expected.
“That’s not making it any better,” I shake my head. “I don’t want real. I want normal, and to be with both of you, that is not normal.”
“Normal doesn’t exist for people like us,” Ryder says.
I press my forehead against my knees and let out a long breath. I’m so tired. So overwhelmed. I just want to go home, but as I sit here surrounded by monsters who aim they care, I realise something.
Jaxon belongs in this world now, and whether I like it or not, that means I do too.
**Paige’s POV **
I sit in silence as the weight of this entire insane new world bears down on me. I can still feel their eyes on me, like they’re waiting for me to do something. For what I don’t know. For me to scream?… To cry?… To run?
I don’t do any of those things. I can’t. Instead, I just breathe slow shaky breaths.
In and out. In and out.
Because the truth is echoing in my head now, and it’s louder than my fear, louder than my pride. Jaxon belongs here. Not in a city. Not in some clinical school with fluorescent lights, plastic playground toys and fragile humans. He belongs here, in the woods, with his pack. With them. Which means I have to stay here too.
“So what happens now?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
“We take it one day at a time. No pressure. No weird rituals or howling at the moon,” Callen says, a little humour in his tone.
“You’re not helping,” Ryder snorts, and I look up just in time to catch a flicker of a smile as he looks at
Callen.
“I’m trying not to scare her off, brother,” Callen huffs.
My eyes flick between the two of them. They’re so alike. How is it I spend all this time searching for one of you, only to find two?”
I shake my head. Still struggling to wrap my mind around Ryder being a twin.
“I told you, you get two for the price of one,” Callen winks, and I have to fight to keep a smile from my face.
Callen is one of those people that brings laughter in a crisis. He finds humour in the darkest of days. He keeps everyone’s spirits lifted.
“Paige,” Ryder says, drawing my attention as he leans forward, his eyes searching mine. “I know how this sounds. How insane it all feels. Believe me, I’ve lived it. I am it. But you are doing better than you think. You are so much stronger than you know.”
“I don’t want to be strong,” I admit. “I want someone to tell me what to do. I want someone to fix this. To make it simple again.”
“I can’t promise you simple, but I can promise we will help. We will be here,” he says.
“You say that, but you weren’t before,” I whisper, pulling my eyes from his, so I don’t have to see the pain I know I’ve just caused him.
Silence stretches between us, full of regret and memories.
“I know, and if you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life taking up for it,” he says, and there is something in his tone that softens me and makes my heart ache for lin.
“I still don’t trust you, but I want to, and I think Jaxon needs me to. He needs his dad. So for now, I’m staying for him. But make no mistake, this doesn’t mean I’m yours. You have no claim over me. We are not pretending to be some happy little supernatural family. I’m here for Jax, and that’s it. Are we clear?”
“Understood,” Ryder nods.
Callen lets out a long breath and rubs a hand over his face. “This is probably a terrible time to tell you, but in the interest of transparency. You won’t be able to resit the bond with us, just as we won’t with you.
My eyes snap to him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s subtle at first, but the more you try to resist it, the harder it will get for all of us. It’s not something that can be ignored,” he explains.
“No.” I shake my head, pushing up to my feet. “I might have no choice but to stay here for my son, but I get to choose the rest. No magic wolfy bond cr*p gets to make those decisions for me. I don’t want you, either of you, and if you can’t accept that, then we have a problem.”
“You know, this is not exactly how I planned on meeting my mate,” Callen says, standing now too. “This is not the day I’ve been dreaming about for years, but this is it. This is what we get. There is no choice, because it’s already been made, way before we were even born. Our perfect partner, created to be exactly what we need. The only choice we have now is to fight it or embrace it. Either way, the end result will be the same.”
I process his words and I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, shout, tell him to f*ck off, or promise to prove him wrong.
“I didn’t ask for any of this. I just wanted a fresh start with my son,” I say, shaking my head in denial as panic twists in my chest.
“You got it. It doesn’t get much fresher than this,” Callen shrugs. the
“It’s going to be okay, Paige. You are doing the right thing for Jax, that’s all that matters right now, rest will work itself out when you are ready,” Ryder says as he stands and approaches me cautiously, like I’m the monster here, the one capable of turning into a creature that could bite of his head.
I back away, moving closer to the stairs. “I need air.”
“Then let’s take a walk,” Rye offers, holding out a hand to me.
I look at his offered hand and shake my head. “Alone.”
“Okay. We will be right here if you need us,” he nods, seeming reluctant.
I don’t respond. I just move. One shaky leg in front of the other, down the stairs and straight out the door, with no one trying to stop me. They know I won’t run, not without my son.
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