Page 145 of Knot Unwanted: Part One

“That wasn’t your fault,” Finn says the way he always does, but Ren shakes his head violently.

“My fault. Everything’s my fault. Saw them today. They’re still—still doing it. Can’t stop them. Can’t save everyone like I saved you.”

That stops me short and I exchange looks with Finn over Ren’s head. In all our years together, I’ve never heard him talk about his family like this. He’s always kept that part of his life carefully separate.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” I say, but Ren clutches at my shirt.

“Don’t you see?” he pleads, looking between us with glassy eyes. “The gala. They were hunting. That’s what they do. But I saw him first. Saw my Finn first. Had to make him mine before they could—before?—”

He pitches forward suddenly, and I barely manage to keep him from face-planting. His next words are muffled against my chest.

“Love him so much. Too much. Shouldn’t have driven that night. Should have been more careful with precious things.”

Finn’s hands have stilled on the first aid kit. His face is ashen. “Ren,” he says softly. “What exactly did they do to you?”

But Ren has finally passed out, breath evening into alcohol-heavy exhalations. The silence that follows is deafening.

Hailey is the one who breaks it. “I can help you clean him up.”

I help Ren to the couch, laying him down gently despite my anger and the worry threading through me. But beneath all that is concern. Whatever happened today has broken something in him, something that alcohol couldn’t numb. As I step back, watching Hailey approach with tentative compassion, I wonder what demons he’d been out there fighting alone.

Ren

I went back. Back to the house. Back to talk to them.

My head falls back against what feels like the couch cushions. Someone is next to me—honey and vanilla. Someone that smells too good, too soothing, when I’d rather feel it all. All the anger. All the pain. All the disgust.

I groan, remembering as the taxi left me just outside the gates of that place…

—

The wrought iron gates still gleam, stretching toward a sky that’s too bright for my pounding head. I shouldn’t have come. Not even the fucking whiskey in my blood is giving me enough courage. Every instinct screams to turn around, but I force myself up the winding drive, past manicured gardens that hide too many secrets.

The house looms ahead—all gleaming windows and pristine white stone. Perfect. Too perfect. Like a mask worn too long. How many times had I stood at my bedroom window, watching cars arrive late at night, trying to convince myself I was imagining things?

Until Finn. Until I saw him at that gala, pink suit making him glow under the chandeliers. Something in the way my parents watched him made my blood run cold. I’d never moved so fast in my life. Never been so certain of anything as I was when I made sure he left with me that night. Made sure he stayed with me.

The doorbell’s chime hasn’t changed. Still that same pretentious Westminster melody that echoes through marble halls. I hear footsteps—the quick, light tread I’d know anywhere.

When the door opens, Mother’s smile freezes on her face. She’s still beautiful, all elegant lines and perfect posture. The omega that brought my sires to their knees. But there are new threads of silverin her dark hair. New wrinkles that weren’t there the last time I saw her. Her omega scent catches me off guard—honey threaded with jasmine, so similar to Hailey’s it makes something war in my chest.

“Ren?” Her voice wavers, her face falling. “What are you?—”

“Who is it?” A deeper voice calls from inside. Heavy footsteps approach, and then Dad appears behind Mother, his hand settling possessively on her shoulder. “Well. You’ve got some nerve showing up here, after what you’ve done.”

The familiar rage rises, hot and choking. The whiskey doesn’t fucking help. “What I’vedone?” I bark out a laugh. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

“Marcus,” Mother murmurs, “perhaps we should?—”

“Let him in?” Another voice joins the tableau. Father emerges from the shadows of the foyer, every bit as imposing as I remember. His ice-blue eyes—my eyes—narrow. “After he nearly destroyed everything we built?”

“Built?” The word tastes like vomit in my mouth. Or maybe it really is vomit. Perhaps I drank too much beforehand. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

Dad’s grip tightens on Mother’s shoulder. “You made your choice, boy. The day you took that omega and ran?—”

“His name is Finn.” My hands shake. “And I didn’t take him. I saved him.”

“Saved him?” Father stalks forward, and I see where I got my temper from. “You sabotaged a perfectly planned function. Cost us valuable connections. And for what? Some pretty thing that caught your eye?”

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