Chapter 8

Olivia

“Why choose me, then?” I whispered.

It wasn’t fair that Nathan suddenly decided to choose me to take the fall for wanting to pull out of his wedding at the last moment. Unless he had real feelings for me, it felt totally unwarranted.

Any honest man would have ended the wedding privately without causing a huge scene; he could have talked to his fiancee when he found her kissing her bodyguard, but instead he decided to drag me into it.

And in a strange way, I didn’t want to shatter the illusion that maybe Nathan chose me out of all of the other pretty girls in the church because he may have actually had secret feelings for me after all these years.

But, much to my dismay, Nathan simply shrugged at my question. I felt sickened by his blase attitude about the entire situation. “Everyone else around here knows each other well,” he said. “Since you’ve been gone for ten years, you’re the only one around here who’s untestable.”

Nathan was right; only fated mates knew who their fated mate was. Only the people involved would be able to know, and since I had been gone for a decade, no one was able to test us to see if it was true or not. And besides, my wolf was dormant, so even Nathan himself wouldn’t be able to know if we were fated mates.

But this fact only made me even more upset, because it just meant that my childhood friend used me as a shield simply because I was the easiest target.

Not only could no one possibly know if I was his fated mate or not, they also couldn’t argue much about it because the status of having a fated mate was so powerful and supreme that it was one of the few reasons that could possibly rationalize withdrawing from a marriage like that.

“That’s really the only reason?” I asked angrily. “You publicly shamed me in front of everyone!”

Nathan looked up at me. His blue-green eyes looked over me awkwardly for a moment. “I guess I just thought that you would always help me. After all, we used to be best friends.”

“Used to be,” I replied, resisting the urge to yell. “I don’t even know who you are now. It seems like now you’re just a male chauvinist pig who only thinks about himself and no one else’s feelings. Do you not care what you just did to my reputation at a time when I needed to be working on building up a better reputation?”

“Look,” Nathan said, “I’m sorry, Olivia. It wasn’t my original intention to get you involved in this mess. It was just a spur of the moment decision.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the stupidity. “Your apology has fallen on deaf ears,” I growled. “You’ve only shown me that you’re a childish and impulsive bum with no real backbone. I won’t forgive you for doing this to me.”

My childhood friend stood and shrugged again, seemingly a little embarrassed by my words. “Well, it’s not like you’ll stay here for long anyway, right?” he asked. “I figured that you would be gone soon, and it wouldn’t matter then. I can handle everything after that and you won’t need to be bothered by it for long.”

I scoffed and folded my arms across my chest in complete disbelief. How could he think that I would just up and leave this place right after I was finally let back into the pack? Why would I have fought so hard for my aunt’s villa otherwise unless I was planning on staying?

At least now, on the bright side, I had a better chance at keeping my aunt’s villa since Nathan no longer had a valid reason to keep it.

At least one good thing could come out of this whole mess… But what would be the point in staying anyway if I was just going to be a social pariah who was viewed as a homewrecker?

Even if it ever came out that Nathan was lying about being my fated mate, I would still only be seen as someone who stupidly and weakly obeyed him to help facilitate his lies.

“I don’t have any family left, Nathan,” I snarled. “And I don’t have anywhere else to go, either. So no, I won’t be leaving… But thanks for ruining my reputation within the first week of my return. I guess how that will affect me doesn’t matter to you, does it?”

Nathan gave me a puzzled look. “What about your dad?” he asked quietly.

My eyes widened at Nathan’s question. “My dad?” I whispered. Already, I could feel tears beginning to well up in my eyes just at the thought of my dad. “Do you not know?”

Nathan looked at me for several moments, still with that puzzled look on his face, before he slowly shook his head.

“No,” he replied. “Why? Did something happen?”

Once again, I scoffed at my childhood friend’s idiotic ignorance. “Gamma Kamran died five years ago.”

Nathan stared at me in shocked silence. His eyes were wide; he really had no idea that my father died. I thought that, at the very least, news like that would have made its way back to our pack eventually. Maybe Colin kept that information from Nathan.

“Olivia, I…” Nathan began. I suddenly put my hand up to stop him and shook my head.

“Don’t even bother,” I said angrily.

There was a long silence between us. The air felt thick and palpable, and it felt so heavy that I felt as though I couldn’t even get a full breath into my lungs. Nathan just looked at me with surprise and dismay on his flustered face for a long time before he finally broke the silence.

“Well, either way,” he said, turning away and pacing over to the counter at the back of the room where a coffee machine sat. I watched in disgust as Nathan nonchalantly poured a cup of coffee for himself.

He turned toward me and gestured to me with the cup as though asking if I wanted one, and I shook my head and scowled. “Either way,” he continued as he stirred his cream into the coffee, “I know you’ll be okay. You have a family man at home, right? Someone waiting for you?”

I narrowed my eyes. “What do you not understand?” I asked. “I have no one.”

Nathan turned back to face me and gave me another puzzled expression. His eyes flickered down to my stomach, making me feel a bit uncomfortable.

The way that he looked at me suddenly reminded me of what he said at the wedding in front of everyone… He mentioned that he would take care of our ‘baby’.

“Wait,” I said, holding up my hand in shock before Nathan could say anything else, “you don’t seriously think I’m pregnant, do you? Or was that just another scheme of yours back there to garner sympathy from the wedding guests?”

My childhood friend said nothing and just looked at me with surprise drawn across his face.

“You didn’t know you were pregnant?” he asked incredulously.