Soraya
The question hung between us like a blade.
He opened his mouth, closed it, and looked away. And that, that cowardice, was more devastating than any answer could have been.
There it was. The truth I'd been running from for five years. The reality I'd dressed up in patience and understanding and unconditional devotion.
He would never love me back. My knees almost gave out. Our child would be born into this broken thing we called a marriage.
"Oh my god." My hand flew to my mouth. "You can't even say it. You can't even pretend."
"It's not that I don't..." He reached for me, but I jerked away.
"Don't touch me right now. Please." My voice broke on the word. "I can't... if you touch me right now, I'll break completely, and I need to hold it together."
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to physically hold the pieces in place. "Do you remember what next week is?"
He looked confused by the change in subject. "What?"
"Next Wednesday. Think, Jordan."
Realization dawned slowly, followed by guilt that told me everything. "Your birthday."
"Our anniversary." My voice was flat. Dead.
"Same day. Five years ago, you married me on my twenty-first birthday because you said you wanted every year to be a celebration of us. That you'd give me 'a lifetime of birthdays worth celebrating.'" I laughed bitterly.
I had to stop, had to breathe through the memory.
"You proposed to me. You said you'd be here for me as I was there for you. Through the pain. The nightmares. The torment. That I'd always be your anchor. Your safe harbor. That you'd give me the happily-ever-after I always told you about."
"You stood in front of the Moon Goddess and promised to honor me as your wife. To cherish me. To choose me."
"I did choose you," he protested weakly.
"No." I stood up, suddenly needing to move, to pace, to do something with the energy crackling under my skin. "You settled for me. There's a difference. I was convenient. I was there. I loved you so completely, so desperately, that you knew I'd never leave. So you married me because it was easier than being alone."
"That's not..." He reached for me, but I jerked away from his touch.
"Don't." The word came out sharp. "I'm your crutch. There's a difference. I'm the person you leaned on when you couldn't stand. But now she's back, and suddenly you don't need me anymore."
"That's not true!"
"Then why did you lie?" The question came out softer than I intended. "You've never lied to me before, Jordan. Not once in twenty years of friendship and five years of marriage. But today you did. You told me you were in Silver Ridge Pack. You let me believe you were two hundred miles away while my grandmother was dying. While I was calling and calling and calling you."
I pulled out my phone, showing him the call log. Fifteen missed calls. "I needed you," I whispered. "For once, I needed you, and you weren't there because you were with her."
"I was trying to protect you..."
"By lying? By letting her pick up Eleanor from school?" My voice rose again. "By letting her buy our daughter ice cream and play mommy while I was burying my grandmother?"
"You know about that."
"Eleanor told me everything." Each word tasted like poison. "She told me how Aunt Magda looked like a princess. How she said they could be a real family now. A real family, Jordan. Like what we've been for five years doesn't count."
"Do you know what that means?" I continued, my voice deadly quiet. "It means for five years, while I was waking up at 3am with Eleanor's nightmares, while I was teaching her to read, while I was braiding her hair and singing her to sleep, Magda was playing the victim somewhere. And the moment she decided to come back, she got to swoop in and be the princess while I'm just... what? The hired help?"
"Eleanor called me Mommy in front of Magda tonight," I said, my voice dropping to barely above a whisper.
"And you didn't correct her. But you didn't correct Magda when she implied we weren't a real family either. So which is it, Jordan? Am I Eleanor's mother or not? Am I your wife or not? Or am I just the placeholder until the real one came back?"
I looked up at him then, really looked. At the man I'd built my entire life around. The boy who'd held my hand through the times my stepmother beat me. The teenager who'd kissed me in the forest and called me beautiful. The Alpha who'd married me on my birthday because I'd asked him to let me help carry his grief. And I saw him clearly, perhaps for the first time.
He was weak. Not cruel, just weak. Too weak to choose. Too weak to let go of Magda. Too weak to love me properly but too comfortable to release me. Even though he ruled the pack with authority and did his job excellently, Magda had something I would never have.
She had his heart. She was his weakness.
I walked to the nightstand and pulled open the drawer. My journal. The one I'd kept since I was twelve. The one with pages and pages of "Soraya Rutherford" written in different colored pens like a lovesick teenager.
I'd never stopped being that girl, had I?
"Do you know what I was doing when my stepmother called?" I asked without turning around. "I was planning to cook your favorite meal, planning to tell you about our..."
I stopped myself just in time, my hand flying to my stomach. Not yet. I couldn't tell him about the baby yet. Not like this. Not when everything was falling apart.
"Tell me what?"
"Nothing." I slammed the drawer shut. "It doesn't matter now."
"Soraya..." Grief etched into the lines of his face, into the guilt and confusion and desperation of a man who wanted to give me what I needed but simply couldn't.
"While you were what?" He stepped forward, concern flickering across his features.
"Soraya, what happened?"
"Nothing that matters now." I turned away, unable to look at him anymore. My reflection stared back at me from the darkened window— tear-streaked face, tangled hair, a woman I barely recognized. "She's your first love."
It wasn't a question. We both knew the answer.
"Yes." The word was barely a whisper, but it might as well have been a gunshot.
"What are you saying then? Just say it. Stop dancing around it and say what you came in here to say."
He looked tortured, conflicted. His hands clenched by his sides, and for a moment I saw the war raging behind his eyes. The man who married me. The boy who loved Magda. The Alpha trying to hold his pack together.
And still, somehow, beautiful in the dim light of our bedroom. It made me hate him a little. It made me want to pull him into my arms and soothe that pain away, even when he was the one who caused it.
"I need to tell you something," he said carefully.
Ice flooded my veins. This was it. The moment everything that could change everything.
"I know what it is." I swallowed hard, bracing myself for the impact. Already separating myself from this moment, from this man, from this life. "You're asking for a divorce, right?"
"What?" His head snapped up. "No! I'm not... I'm not asking for a divorce. That's not what I'm saying."
Confusion glazed my expression. "What?"
"I'm not asking for a divorce," he repeated, taking a step toward me.
The numbness cracked, letting confusion rush in.
"Then what..." I shook my head, trying to understand. "If you're not asking for a divorce, what are you asking for?"
He looked at me with those storm-gray eyes I'd been drowning in since I was twelve years old, and I realized with sudden, horrible clarity that whatever he was about to say would be so much worse than a divorce.
My hand moved protectively to my stomach again. Our child, his child, was growing inside me. And I was about to hear words that would change everything.
"I..." he started.