CHAPTER 185: _ WON’T FIGHT THAT BATTLE

Morgan pulls up directly in front of the main entrance. The engine cuts, and the silence is deafening. Amias watches. His breath is shallow as a cold knot forms in his stomach. The twins remain in the car. They seem to be awaiting someone.

Amias begs every deity he has ever scoffed at: Let it be anyone else. Let it be a friend. A delivery driver. A hot freshman who needs a ride. Anyone but Heidi.

Vark is suddenly loud and insistent in his skull. "Don’t fret, Amias. You already did well. You acted. You protected her. You earned her gratitude. You deserve her more than those reckless pups.’

Yes, Amias thinks. I deserve her.

He leans forward, resting his forehead on the steering wheel, trying to calm the frenetic beating of his heart. She’s safe. That’s what matters. I made her safe.

He lifts his head, needing to look, needing to reassure himself with the sight of the empty entrance.

But as his eyes focus, the door to the dormitory spills out Heidi and a few friends. She’s wearing a simple, dark jacket, her hair loose. He watches her vigorously engaged in a conversation with her friends, not noticing the twins at first until Grayson, that clown, steps out and how she stills.

It’s not out of fear or disgust. At least, not the kind one feels for a person detested. It’s out of fear of what they made her feel. Amias can sense that much.

A single, silent gasp is all he can manage. The smile he had been picturing, the one meant for him vanishes, replaced by a sledgehammer blow of agonizing reality.

After a back and forth with the twins, he sees Morgan guiding her to the passenger side of their car. The door closes with a soft thunk, sealing her in their sphere, excluding him completely.

Amias stares at the spot where she disappeared, his vision blurring slightly. The world tilts.

The car pulls away, lights sweeping across the dark pavement, the midnight-black sports car disappearing around the bend, taking his heart, his victory, and his hope with it.

Amias sits paralyzed in his car, the thick, hot taste of betrayal and sheer, crushing loss filling his mouth. He knows he said whoever Heidi picks is her choice. He told himself he could bear it. He told himself he was the one who walked away first, driven by his self-righteous, arrogant principles.

But knowing she’s decided so early, seeing the casual, settled confidence of her joining them annihilates him.

The fact that she is marked by the twins, that she slept with Darien, that she is drawn to them... he can intellectually process all of that. But it’s how it makes him feel that pains him so. It’s the raw, visceral agony of his mate bondscreaming its rejection.

"She’s ours!" Vark roars in his chest, a sound like tearing flesh. "She’s ours! Go after them! They haven’t claimed her entirely! We are stronger! We are more ruthless! We will make her ours!"

Amias grips the steering wheel, his knuckles white against the silver leather. He can feel the mate bond tugging at him, a hot, silver chain connecting his soul to the swiftly departing sports car. It’s a painful, overwhelming impulse: turn the car, chase them down, rip the door off its hinges, and claim what is biologically his.

"It’s too late," Amias whispers, the words tasting like ash and iron.

’No! She is ours! You saved her! Now claim the reward!’ Vark argues, thrashing inside him, desperate.

He saves her from the clutches of mean girls who’ll probably ruin her social life, but not take her life in the most grotesque of ways, but Morgan and Grayson did when they went against all odds to step into that labyrinth just to save her.

Hence, the question of who deserves or has saved her is subjective. The choice now lies with her and what she wants. Amias knows he can’t be selfish enough to deny her the right of choice. From the look of it, she’s already made one.

Amias shoves his head back against the seat. A low animalistic grunt of despair tears from his throat. She slept with Darien. She bears Morgan and Grayson’s mark. The words are a mantra of his failure, his principles, and his terrible timing. He was the one who said no on the full moon night. He walked away from her need. He left a void, and his brothers, the greedy bastards, filled it.

He doesn’t care about the mark; he cares about the choice. And she just chose them.

A shudder runs through his body. The pain is not the sharp, manageable physical pain he inflicted upon himself earlier; this is the chaos he feared. It’s a relentless, emotional hemorrhage.

He closes his eyes, trying to block out the image of the empty space where the sports car was parked. And then, for the first time since he was a guarded, wounded twelve-year-old, the tears threaten to overflow again. They well up behind his eyelids, hot and searing. It’s a painful, humiliating admission of his broken state.

No. Bellamys don’t cry. Alphas don’t break.

He forces his eyes open, swallowing the grief, the tears turning into a burning acid behind his nose. He shoves the gear stick into reverse with a violent jolt that shakes the car.

He turns the car around, not toward the suite, not toward Lira, but toward the single destination that requires no emotional energy, no pretense of a plan, just quiet, crushing endurance: the Alpha estate.

He drives through the silent night. The pain is a cold passenger beside him. His wolf is a mournful, wounded creature whimpering in his chest. Amias is the extra piece. He saved her, but he couldn’t keep her. And the cost of his own righteousness is this unbearable heartbreak.

He has to respect it... Her decision. She must be happy and if the twins bring her that, he won’t ruin it for her by fighting a battle that’ll only leave her scarred at the other end.

Maybe, maybe it’s time...