Camila's POV
“Julian, you what? You married Vivienne Laurent? ”
Standing in the hallway of the Ravencrest packhouse, I was cradling a bottle of aged Bordeaux I'd driven two hours to buy. Five years ago tonight, Julian's wolf had recognized me as his mate. I'd come to surprise him. Yet I was the one to be shocked.
"Yesterday afternoon." Julian's voice came smugly. "Small ceremony. Her father insisted on keeping it quiet until the announcement."
Yesterday afternoon? I remembered how the left side of my neck suddenly flared at the same time.
"Julian." Austin again, lower now. "Tell me you didn't mark her." The pause that followed lasted three heartbeats. I felt my palms sweat.
"Of course I marked her." Julian chuckled. "What kind of marriage would it be otherwise?"
"Then how about Camilla?" Austin asked. "She's your mate and you've been together for five years. Everyone knows that."
"She'll understand," Julian said dismissively, and I could picture the casual way he flicked the ash from his cigarette. "After all, everyone knows it's already an honor that I'm willing to acknowledge her as my mate. No ambitious Alpha would choose a wolf-less Omega over an Alpha's daughter like Vivienne for their Luna."
That was enough for me to swing the door open. The laughter died so fast it left a ringing silence behind it. Eight of them sat around the long table and at the head of it, my mate, with a wine glass halfway to his mouth and the color draining from his face.
"Camila." Julian set the glass down carefully and stood. "Sweetheart. How long have you—"
"Long enough." I crossed the room without hurrying, and watched him decide, in real time, how he was going to play this.
He came around the table with both hands open, his voice dropping into the register he used to gentle me. "Whatever you heard, it isn't what you think. The marriage is politics—paperwork. Come outside, let me explain. You know you've never been good at understanding these things."
"Which things?" I asked. "The wedding, or the mark you put on her neck while your mate was two hours away, buying you this?"
I lifted the Bordeaux so he could read the label. Something flickered in his eyes, and then it hardened into what lived underneath, the thing I'd spent five years refusing to see.
"You want honesty?" His voice cooled. "Fine. Look at yourself, Camila. No wolf. No name. A pauper from a pack nobody can find on a map. The bond doesn't even work on you—you can't feel it, so what exactly did I take from you?" He stepped closer, wine on his breath. "Five years I kept you when any other male would've tossed
you back. You should be grateful. And if you're smart, you'll stay sweet, because what I said in there is still on the table. Nothing
about my marriage has to change what we—"
I swung the bottle. Two hours' drive and a hundred and eighty dollars of Bordeaux caught him across the temple and burst, wine and glass going everywhere, red sheeting down through his hair and into the collar of his crisp white shirt. The table erupted—chairs scraping, wolves surging up—and Julian staggered into the sideboard, clutching his head, roaring my name.
He came at me with one hand outstretched; whether to grab my wrist or my throat, I never found out, because I drove my knee up into his groin with every ounce of five wasted years behind it. The sound he made wasn't a roar. It was a whistle.
"Consider that a wedding gift," I said as he folded. "Vivienne can thank me later."