LENA'S POV
She shouldn't have come.
Lena gripped the steering wheel as she drove down the winding road that led to the lake house. Her hands were sweating. Her chest felt tight. She'd been telling herself for the last hour that turning around was still an option. She could just go back to Riverside Town. Go to the memorial service. Face it like a normal person would.
But normal people didn't feel like their chest was going to explode when they thought about their dead parents.
The road was empty. Just trees and sky and the sound of her old car trying to climb the hill. She'd inherited this car from Blake's mom after her parents died. It still smelled like cigarette smoke and pine air freshener. She'd grown up on this road. Her mother used to sing in the passenger seat while her father drove. Her father used to tell jokes that weren't funny but made everyone laugh anyway.
They were both gone now.
The lake house appeared around the bend. Small. Weathered. The paint was peeling off the front porch. The windows were dark. Nobody had been here in years. Lena's parents had bought it when she was seven. They said it was their escape place. Somewhere to run when the pack got too loud and demanding. Somewhere to just be a family without all the weight of pack expectations.
They'd died six years ago and she hadn't set foot in this place since.
She pulled into the gravel driveway and sat in her car for a long time. The sun was starting to set. Orange light painted the sky. She could see the lake through the trees. The water was calm. Too calm. Like everything was fine when nothing was fine at all.
Lena grabbed the bottle of wine she'd bought on the way and got out of the car.
The memorial service was happening right now. People from her old pack were gathering to remember the families who'd died in the accident. Lena's parents were being remembered. Being talked about. Being made into stories instead of actual people who'd loved her and fought for her and made her feel safe.
She couldn't watch that. She couldn't sit through that.
So instead she was here. Alone with a bottle of wine and a lake house full of ghosts.
She opened the front door and the smell hit her. Dust and old wood and memories she wasn't prepared for. She walked through the living room toward the back porch. Everything was exactly like she remembered. The couch where her parents used to curl up together. The table where they ate breakfast looking out at the water. The bookshelf with her mother's favorite novels.
She kept walking.
The dock extended out into the water. It was rotting in places, wooden boards warped from rain and time. She walked to the end and sat down, dangling her feet over the water. The lake was so still she could see the sky reflected in it. For a second it looked like she was sitting in the middle of the clouds.
She opened the wine and drank directly from the bottle.
It tasted terrible. Cheap and sour. But it made her chest feel a little less tight. She took another drink and let herself cry. Actually cry. Not the polite tears she sometimes allowed herself. The kind of crying that came from her stomach and made her shoulders shake.
She was so focused on falling apart that she didn't hear someone approaching until they were already there.
A man walked onto the dock slowly. Like he didn't want to startle her. He was tall. Broad shoulders. Dark hair. His clothes were expensive but wrinkled. His face looked tired. Like he was carrying something too heavy to put down.
"I didn't know anyone was here," he said quietly.
Lena jumped and nearly dropped the wine bottle into the lake. She turned to look at him and something happened in her chest. Something shifted. Something recognized him even though she'd never seen him before in her life.
"This place is supposed to be empty," she said.
"Yeah, well. I kind of broke in through the back door." He almost smiled. Almost. "I was driving around and I saw it and I just needed to sit somewhere that wasn't my life for a while."
He walked to the end of the dock and sat down next to her. Not too close. Just close enough that she could smell him. Like pine trees and something else she couldn't name. Something that made her whole body go still.
"Bad day?" he asked.
"Bad year," Lena said. She should have told him to leave. Should have guarded herself. But something about him made her not want to do those things. "There's a memorial service happening right now. For people who died in an accident. My parents are being remembered."
The man nodded slowly. "That sounds terrible."
"It is." She took another drink. "I couldn't face it. So I came here instead. Where are they actually here, you know? I can feel them in this place. I can't feel them in a room full of strangers pretending they knew them."
He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "My father's been trying to control my entire life since I was born. Telling me what I should want. Who I should be. What my future should look like. And everyone around me just agrees with him because he's powerful and they're scared." He paused. "I had to disappear for a night to even remember what it felt like to be my own person."
Lena looked at him. Really looked at him. His eyes were dark and sad and familiar in a way that didn't make sense. She offered him the wine bottle.
He took it and drank and made a face. "That's awful."
"Yeah."
"But also kind of exactly what I need right now."
They sat on that dock as the sun finished setting. They talked about everything and nothing. He told her about the weight of expectations. She told him about the weight of loss. He told her that sometimes he felt like he was disappearing into someone else's version of his life. She told him that sometimes she felt like she was the only real thing left in a world that had stopped making sense.
The wine got finished. The sky got darker. Stars appeared one by one.
He told her his name was Wyatt. Just Wyatt. No explanation of who he was or where he came from. And she didn't ask. She just nodded and said that was a good name. She told him her name was Lena. He repeated it like it was important. Like it mattered.
When the sun came up, they were still talking. But sometime during the night, talking had become something else. His hand had found hers. They'd moved from the dock to the porch. They were wrapped around each other on an old blanket, watching the sky go from black to purple to pink to gold.
Wyatt pulled back to look at her as the sun broke over the water.
"This is insane," he whispered.
"Yeah," Lena said.
"I just met you."
"I know."
He reached up and touched her face like he was trying to memorize it. His fingers traced her cheekbone. Her jaw. The corner of her mouth. His eyes were so focused on her that she couldn't breathe.
"I feel something," he said.
"Me too."
And then it happened.
It was like lightning inside her chest. Like her entire soul recognized him. Like some part of her that had been broken since her parents died suddenly felt whole again. The mate bond. She'd heard stories about it her whole life. The magical connection between two people. Soulmates. Fated bonds. She'd always thought it was something that happened to other people.
Not to her.
But there it was. Snapping into place like a lock finding its key.
Wyatt's eyes widened. His hand tightened on her waist. He stared at her like he was seeing her for the first time and it was terrifying and perfect at the same time.
"Lena," he whispered her name like it was a prayer. Like she was something sacred. Like she mattered more than anything else in the world.
She leaned into him and kissed him. And it felt like coming home.
That's when his phone rang.
The sound shattered everything. Wyatt froze. His whole body went rigid. He pulled away from her slowly and grabbed his phone from his jacket pocket. The screen lit up with a name. Marcus. He stared at it like it was a bomb.
He answered.
His father's voice came through the line and Lena could hear it even though the phone wasn't near her ears. Angry. Commanding. Demanding. His father screamed something about Wyatt disappearing. About where he was. About the pack needing him.
Wyatt's expression changed. His walls went up. The vulnerable man who'd held her all night disappeared. The guy who answered his phone was someone else. Someone harder. Someone closed off.
"I'm coming back," Wyatt said quietly.
His father said something else. Wyatt's jaw clenched.
"Yes, sir. I understand."
He hung up.
For a moment he didn't move. Then he slowly got to his feet. He wouldn't look at her. He started pulling his clothes on like he was in a trance.
"What just happened?" Lena asked.
Wyatt was silent for a long time. Then he turned to face her and his expression was completely closed off.
"I have to go," he said. "My family needs me."
"But the bond. You felt it too. I know you did."
He looked at her with something like pain and something like regret and something like a goodbye.
"You didn't imagine it," he said quietly. "But I can't. I can't do this. I'm sorry."
He kissed her forehead once. Then he walked away from the porch and she heard his car start and pull away down the driveway. She sat alone on the blanket watching the sun rise over the lake and felt something break inside her that she didn't know how to fix.
He vanished like he'd never been real at all.