Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 6

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DENISE

Sabur was the one who suggested the garden. She did it sweetly, of course, tucking the suggestion inside something that sounded almost kind.

"We should get some fresh air," she said, closing one of the binders with a soft snap. "Elena wants our thoughts on the garden layout for the ceremony anyway. Denise, you should come too. You always did have an eye for that sort of thing, didn't you? All those years arranging Dante's office."

Mina smiled beside her, the same smile I remembered from a decade ago, sweet on the surface and hollow underneath. I looked at Elena, half expecting her to intervene, to find some excuse to keep me inside. She did not. She only smiled and waved a hand toward the door, telling us to take our time, that she trusted our judgment completely.

I understood, walking out into the garden between them, that Elena knew exactly what was about to happen. She had known since the moment she put Sabur and Mina's names on this project. She simply preferred to keep her hands clean while it happened somewhere she did not have to watch.

The garden was beautiful, hedges trimmed into perfect geometry, a stone fountain at the center throwing soft arcs of water into the afternoon light. We walked toward it in silence, the three of us, until we were far enough from the manor that no window looked directly onto where we stood.

Sabur stopped first. She turned to face me, arms crossed, all pretense of garden planning gone from her expression.

"You've got some nerve," she said, "showing up here at all. Planning Dante's wedding. To Elena. After everything."

"I was asked to be here," I said. "I didn't invite myself."

"Please," Mina said, stepping up beside her. "You've spent years inserting yourself into that family. Sleeping your way into a life you were never meant to have. Everyone's always known what you were, Denise. A homewrecker. A stray with her claws in someone else's fiancé."

Something in me, the old habit of shrinking, of absorbing whatever was thrown at me and calling it deserved, tried to rise up out of instinct. I felt the familiar urge to lower my eyes, to apologize for existing in whatever space they had decided I was not allowed to occupy.

It did not come. Whatever thread inside me had been fraying for years, it had already snapped days ago, on the side of a burning highway.

"I never touched anything that wasn't offered to me," I said, and my voice came out steady, steadier than I expected. "You want to talk about claws, Sabur? I remember exactly whose homework went missing every week for a year. I remember exactly whose rumors kept me eating lunch in a bathroom stall, Mina. So don't stand there and lecture me about despicable behavior. You two invented the word."

Sabur's face went tight with fury, the kind of fury that comes from being told the truth by someone who was never supposed to have the nerve to say it out loud.