Page 59 of The Alpha's Crimson Vow

She doesn’t wait for me to answer.

“That day, I found out my parents were murdered.”

The words hit like a punch.

She’s staring at me, but it’s like she’s seeing something else entirely. Her loss. The pain. The horror of it.

“Katherine, I—”

“That day, I learned that the people who killed them might have been behind the car crash that almost took my life. That my life was in danger.”

A sharp breath leaves her lips, shaky and uneven, but she presses on.

“I saw it on a video, Alex.” She swallows hard. “Do you know what that did to me? Watching footage of my parents being killed? After believing for all this time that it was an accident? And then to find out they were after me next?”

Her voice shakes, and every instinct in me wants to pull her into my arms, to shield her, to make all of it disappear and to tell her the truth about the car crash.

I take a step forward. “Katherine, I can expla—”

“And then I came looking for you.”

She cuts me off, and my entire body tenses.

“I didn’t know where else to go. I was breaking apart, and all I could think was—‘If I can just get to Alex.’”

The ache in my chest deepens.

“I ran to you.”

Her words shake something loose inside me.

“And what did I find?”

She takes another step closer, her expression twisting with hurt and fury all at once.

“That you had been using me all along.”

My jaw clenches. “Katherine, that’s not—”

“I spent weeks… Months even… thinking—hoping—it was some kind of mistake.” She lets out a hollow laugh. “Maybe you were drugged. Maybe you were blackmailed. But no. That was you.”

Her voice drops, raw and wounded.

“I was breaking apart, Alex. And I ran to you.”

A single tear streaks down her cheek. And that’s it. That’s my breaking point.

I reach for her, my hand brushing her arm.

She smacks it away.

“Don’t you dare.”

A beat passes.

The air between us is thick, suffocating. The only sound is our breathing—mine slow and controlled, hers unsteady.

She wipes her face, her hand trembling for just a second before she steadies herself. She regains her composure now, as if demanding it of herself not to ever be vulnerable with me again, and when she speaks, her voice is like steel.

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