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“Looks like pack business, Tully. We should step out and let them talk.”

“I told you earlier I was sober. Why would you…why would you…” He muttered, more to himself and hope flared like a firework. Bright, brilliant, and then gone.

Lloyd opened the door with a scowl. “I think it’s best you leave, but Tully will stay.”

Chase was losing patience with me. His congenial smile slipped the longer I didn’t fall into his arms. What did he expect? That I would race back to him the moment he came to collect me? Did he not understand the lengths I’d gone to make sure he would never touch me again?

“She’s not a part of your pack.”

“Not yet, but I will be,” I said out loud, and my lower lip quivered.

“You’re so naive, Tully. It’s sad, really. Do you think this pack gives a shit about you? You think they’re your heroes? They’re using you,” Chase sneered.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you think it’s coincidental that the Baylark Pack took you in right before their big gala? The one Walden is using to launch his political career? Try to string a thought together now.”

Chase’s words trapped my brain in a fugue. A dangerous maze, with no way to escape. I closed my shocked, open mouth witha click. It was another ploy by Chase, and it almost worked. Walden made a noise that threatened to tear me apart. He faltered, like there was truth in the words.

“That’s not true,” my voice wobbled. “Pan, that’s not true, is it?”

“The prince wanted you here.” Pan nodded, his eyes oddly bright, “It wasn’t a coincidence that we met you, angel, it was fate…” He trailed off as my bottom lip wobbled, frowning.

They lied.

They used me?

And what was fate, anyway? It was the gods playing tricks on our hearts. The Oracle never saw fit to warn me of this heartbreak, and I cursed her as a blistering wave of pain rolled through me.

I thought I’d found a home, but it had been a lie.

“I-it’s not what it sounds like, Tully.” Ajax held his hands palm up as I rose from the seat.

“Explain.”

Chase hovered behind me, and his scent bled through the scent blockers. Heavy sweat and the screaming wind of a bitter storm. It used to make me feel alive. Now I realized the danger, how easily the storm could swallow me whole and never give up its hold.

“It’s true that the high prince wouldn’t attend unless you came, but everything else is just a coincidence.” Ajax’s eyebrows crashed together.

Part of me cracked. A deep fissure, a deadly rupture. My pulse battered my throat.

“So that talk we had. Where you waxed lyrical about me taking my place and not caring what others thought about me? Did you mean it, or was it just to make sure I agreed?”

“If you truly didn’t want to go, we wouldn’t have pressed.” Ajax looked at Walden like he wanted him to step in and take control.

“Sure, you just pulled my insecurities like strings to get the result you wanted. I trusted you.”

Ajax let out an exhale, as if punched.

Lloyd came to me, white and trembling. “The campaign announcement has nothing to do with you. We love you for who you are.”

If I believed that was true, they loved an idiot.

“Nothing to say?” I prodded Walden.

He waved his hands around the room and let out a hiss of displeasure. He looked untouchable in his suit tonight.

“Do you think I would hinge my success on something so flimsy? I don’t need you, Tully—”