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But I don’t move toward him. I don’t soften. I don’t offer him anything.

I wrap my arms around myself, anchoring the shaking deep inside, and stare him down across the battlefield we’ve made of this room.

If he wants a war, I’m done surrendering.

His mouth twists in anger. "And jumping into bed with my best friends was your solution?"

Heat floods my face, shame and fury warring inside me, but I don't back down. I won’t give him that satisfaction.

"You don’t get to judge me," I bite out. "You made your choice. You took my virginity, let me believe we were building something real, and then disappeared into the night without so much as a goodbye. You didn't even tell me to my face—you left me a note, Sebastian. A fuckingnote.You don’t get to show up months later and pretend you have the moral high ground."

The words spill out before I can stop them, sharp and fast and messy. I hate how much they reveal. I hate that he knows now—really knows—just how deep he cut me. But I also refuse to let him rewrite history into something that fits his narrative.

Sebastian's face shutters, his features locking down so tightly he looks carved from stone. For a moment, I wonder if I've finally managed to hurt him the way he hurt me.

But then I realize my mistake, because the change in the room? It’s instant. Palpable.

Silas stiffens beside me, the anger he had banked moments ago sharpening into something infinitely more dangerous. His whole body goes rigid, shoulders locking, jaw flexing as his hands curl into fists at his sides. Max goes still too, his eyes darting between me and Sebastian, reading the silent conversation none of us are saying aloud.

They didn’t know.

Oh, God. They didn’t know I was a virgin before I met Sebastian.

I watch the realization hit them, the way understanding slides across their faces. The slow, brutal comprehension that while they’ve been careful, protective, fierce in ways I didn’t even know how to want...Sebastian had the first of me. The parts that were fragile. New.

And then he walked away and left me pregnant and alone.

Silas turns first, stepping closer to Sebastian in a way that makes every hair on my body rise. "You knew.” His voice is rough, disbelief coloring his tone as he echoes the words Sebastian spat at him just minutes ago.

Sebastian doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even blink.

Max shifts next, his mouth tightening into a grim line. His fists flex once at his sides, knuckles whitening, but he doesn’t move. Not yet.

"Tell me," Silas says, quieter now, deadlier. "Tell me you didn’t know she was a virgin."

The silence stretches too long.

Sebastian doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t say a goddamn word.

He just stands there, chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged bursts, the refusal to speak saying more than anything he could possibly offer.

Silas’s mouth twists into something ugly. Max mutters something under his breath I’m almost glad I don’t catch, because judging by the way he’s vibrating beside me, it was brutal.

“It’s irrelevant now, isn’t it? She clearly had no problem moving on to not one, but two of my closest friends.”

For a second, I think Silas is going to hit him again. Part of me wants him to, wants him to knock that cold, unrepentant expression off Sebastian’s face. But the bigger part of me—the one that's still desperately trying to hold this whole mess together with both hands—steps forward instead.

"No," I say, my voice sharper than I intend. "You don’t get to twist this."

They all turn to look at me, three men who could break each other without trying, freezing as if remembering I’m still here.

"This isn’t about revenge, or desperation, or whatever narrative you’re spinning in your heads to make this easier to swallow." My voice shakes, but I push through it. I have to. “What I have with them has nothing to do with you.”

My boys don’t move an inch. Sebastian’s face, though—that perfectly carved mask he wears for the world—cracks just slightly at the edges. Enough for me to see the raw, ugly hurt he’s been trying to shove down since the second he walked through the door.

Good.

Because he doesn’t get to come back here and pretend he's the one bleeding.