Page 10 of Stella

Meredith sniffled. “I’m fine.”

“Right. I was fine too when my pack dumped me.”

Her eyes widened.

“Sorry, I recognized you.” I shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, I cried just as hard. My name is Stella, by the way.”

Meredith looked out into the water. “It doesn’t.”

“They didn’t have to be assholes,” I said. Maybe I should have waited to see if she wanted to work things out before talking trash about her pack. But if they were willing to treat her that badly, she needed to get over them.

“I knew something was off.” Her face crumpled. “I thought it was pre-bonding jitters.”

I gritted my teeth. “I want to run them over with my car.”

She laughed, using the bottom of her shirt to wipe her face. She was in a business casual skirt and blouse, so this beach trip wasn’t planned. “My brother will probably beat you to it.”

“I had to hold off my family when my pack dumped me.” I grinned. “Only the threat of prison kept them from doing something extreme.”

Especially after my family found out my pack basically wanted me to cut off all ties with them, because my alphas couldn’t handle me having a strong family bond.

I paused. I could tell her the truth or try to soften it up for her.

The truth was kinder in the long run.

“Not for a while.” I sighed. “You keep going over everything that happened before they dumped you. Did you ignore the signs? What if you had agreed to Italian food that one time? You go between thinking there’s no way you could have known, and being angry about that, and then hating yourself because you should have realized.”

Meredith’s eyes welled up with tears. “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly it.”

“At some point, you’ll accept that they were the ones who decided to dump you. And that’s on them. Not you.”

She looked doubtful.

“It’s easy to blame yourself.” I bumped her shoulder with mine.

“Yeah.” Meredith looked haunted. “I was supposed to be the most sought-after omega of the season…”

“It’s a load of crap. You like who you like. If they dumped you for someone else, you dodged a bullet.”

Meredith sighed. “I should be relieved.”

“Relief didn’t come for me until later. Much later, and after a lot of angry tirades, throwing stuff, and eating my weight in ice cream.”

“But it hurt less?” She sounded so hopeful.

I touched my chest. “It still hurts. I thought I would spend the rest of my life with them.”

The old ache in my chest flared up.

The trips to San Francisco to go to the zoo, Tyler loved the zoo. The long talks in bed. I thought we were going to be bonded forever.

But then Brock and Kyle transferred to a New York firm without telling me. Expected me to come, to uproot my entire life without talking to me about it.

I was the omega, I would obey my alpha, right?

We fought for hours, and it ended with them telling me to choose my family or them.

“But part of me is relieved, and whenever it hurts again, I remind myself of how hard some things were.”

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