Page 109 of Alpha-Ex Wedding Ruse
And that pissed me off.
She shook her head. “I can’t do this, Luca. It’s late and I have to get back to my son tomorrow. So, if you could just—”
She turned to leave, to shut me out again. But I was in front of her in a flash, blocking her path.
“No, you don’t get to do this, Leila.” My voice dropped, low and pulsing. “You don’t get to be the one who’s angry when you’re the one who hid something this important from me. When you stole five precious years of my life with my son.”
“What do you want me to say, Luca?” she yelled. “That I’m sorry? Well, I’m not!” Her voice trembled with fury. “You don’t get to stand there and act like I stole something from you. I mean, you already believed the accusations of me being a thief—and now you’re calling me one to my face.”
Something shifted in my chest, and I felt my wolf stir, growling from within. Not at her. At me.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Leila…” I tried to say, but she shook her head with a fierce, violent vehemence.
“No, Luca.” Her voice cracked, hoarse with buried hurt. “Over the past few weeks, I started to forget what happened between us five years ago. I let myself forget how you treated me. How you destroyed me.” She took a shaky breath, her arms falling to her sides. “You deceived me with all your talk about love. About how you wanted meto meet your father. About how beautiful our future would be…how we’d start a family.
“You were my Fated Mate, Luca,” she whispered amidst the crack of her voice. “You were supposed to complete me. Make me whole.” Then quieter, she added. “Instead, you shattered me. Completely. Broke me to the point I didn’t want to live anymore.”
The sting in my chest bloomed into something worse. She went on, her voice steadier now, cutting sharper with every word.
“You want to know why I didn’t tell you about Ollie?” Her gaze never left mine. “Because I didn’t trust you, Luca. I didn’t trust you not to do to our son what you did to me. You showed me exactly what your love looked like—conditional. Fragile. Fickle.” A tear slid down her cheek, but she didn’t wipe it. “You cast me out, rejected me, turned your back the second you heard something bad—without even asking if it was true. You knew the entire pack was against us, and still, you didn’t give me the chance to explain.”
Her voice thinned out with pain. “I was going to tell you I was pregnant that night,” she said, dabbing at the tear slipping down the other cheek. “I’d woken up on a high. I was so damn excited. We were going to start a family. And what did I get? Silence. A cold, brutal rejection. Like I was nothing.”
She exhaled sharply, like the truth had been rotting inside her and now finally clawed its way out.
“That’s not the kind of father I wanted my son to have. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
I recalled that night with horrifying clarity. I could still see her eyes, wide and pleading, while I stood there like a stranger. I’d thought I was protecting myself—from betrayal, from humiliation.
But all I did was destroy something sacred.
I’d rejected my Mate.
While she was carrying my child.
I ran a hand down my face, breathing hard. My chest was rising and falling like a man who’d just been shot in the heart. Guilt and anger twisted in my gut.
“You should have told me,” I said, voice quieter now, strained. “I had a right to know.”
She scoffed, blinking back more tears, arms folding across her chest like she needed to hold herself together. “You lost that right the moment you stopped trusting me.”
“I didn’t stop trusting you, Leila,” I bit out. “You betrayed—” I stopped. “I thought you betrayed me.”
“And you believed the worst of me. Rejected me. And then forgot about all we shared, all the promises you made to me every time you made love to me.”
“You think I forgot you?” I snapped. “I tried, Leila. I tried to forget. I buried myself in work, in anything that could make me feel something—anything to drown it out.” My voice was tight with restrained agony. “But it didn’t work. Nothing worked.” Even when I felt betrayed and used, I still couldn’t stop needing her. It made me feel pathetic, like some kind of masochist clinging to the one person who’d broken me.
Her eyes closed briefly. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t say that now.”
“Why not? It’s the truth, Leila.”
“It’s too late for truths.”
Something inside of me broke. I took a step back, drawing in a breath, steadying the storm inside.
Then I leveled her glare. “I want to be in his life.”
Her eyes flared. “Look, Luca, you can’t just…swoop in and change everything.”
