Too Old for My Alpha, Worth the Wait for His Rival novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Twenty Years Late

Alexander's POV

She told me in nine sentences, standing on the bottom step with her arms wrapped around herself.

I did not interrupt.

I kept my hands at my sides because I did not trust them anywhere else.

When she finished, I turned and walked to the end of the porch and put my fist against the post, hard enough to split the wood.

Behind me, she said nothing.

For twenty years I had told myself one story.

I had woken in my own bed three weeks after the stones with a hole in my ribs and a fever that took the last of my strength, and my beta had told me, carefully, that Catriona Cedarquist was already bonded to Braden Hartwell.

I had asked if she was forced.

They said no.

They said she stood in front of Cedar Fork and said yes.

So I had decided she had looked at what the moon gave her and chosen the man who could stand up in the morning.

I had hated her for it, and I had never once stopped smelling her on the wind.

"I thought you chose him," I said, to the post. "Every day. For twenty years."

"I thought you refused me."

"I couldn't stand up."

"I know that now."

I turned around.

She was still on the step, looking up at me, and the porch light caught the grey in her hair.

She looked exhausted, and she looked steady.

"I should have gone to find you," I said. "In the first year. I should have knocked on that gate and asked you to your face."

"I'd have told you what I believed."

"Then I'd have known."

"We both would have," Catriona said. "That's what he took."

The wind moved the pines.

I came down off the porch until I stood in front of her, and she tipped her head back to hold my eyes.

"I said once," she said. "And it changes nothing."

"You did."

"I lied."

I did not breathe.

"I've been lying since the ridge," she said. "I lie better to myself than I do to you. Come inside, Alexander."

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