Harper pulled a letter from her pocket and thrust it at Griffon.
“If Taya hadn’t left you this, I would never have told you anything.”
After stuffing the letter into his hand, Harper walked away from the graveside.
Griffon stared blankly at the paper, then unfolded it.
[Today, Griffon said, “Don’t think I’ll love you.” It turns out that he really doesn’t love me.]
Regret filled him.
He remembered that night. He had said such harsh words because he had been angry and didn’t want her to leave with Silas, but when he was about to ask her to stay, he suddenly changed his mind.
If only he had known…
He would have let go of his pathetic and ridiculous Alpha ego and told her…
The truth was, he had fallen in love with Taya the moment he saw her.
It was not quite midnight, and it was raining heavily.
He was covered in blood and sat under the shade of a tree near Arcadia University, waiting for Preston.
Taya had probably come to the school to look for someone; she didn’t look old enough to be in college. When she saw Griffon was injured, she kindly gave him a bottle of water and asked if he needed help to get to the hospital.
His response was to turn his back on her. She had put down the water behind him and hurried into one of the buildings.
Later, when they met again, it was the night she was selling herself. He pa*sed by the nightclub door and saw her kneeling on the ground.
Her entire body was drenched, and her eyes were swollen from crying and filled with despair. Seeing her like this, Griffon couldn’t help but walk over and hold his hand out to her.
From the moment he was inside her, he was addicted to her. He wanted her crazily and was afraid she would walk away, so he shamelessly forced her to sign a lovers’ agreement to tie her to him. Perhaps he could make her fall in love with him, perhaps someone would see through the shield of armor he had to wear as an Alpha…
But when he heard her crying and calling out to Silas in her sleep, it wrecked him.
Later, when Tara returned to the country, he had no choice but to terminate the relationship agreement with Taya.
Griffon thought that he could let her go and forget about her, but he didn’t expect that he couldn’t let her go at all.
Instead, he had used Tara to test her many times.
He was even crazy enough to approach her as Greyson.
He didn’t understand why he would do such a thing.
It wasn’t until Jackson appeared that he could no longer suppress the feelings in his heart.
He couldn’t help looking at her and testing her.
All he wanted to know was if she had ever fallen in love with him in the past five years.
If she had, he would get rid of everyone in his pack who stood in their way. He didn’t care if she was a human with no wolf-he would have ripped everything apart for her, gone against every pack law.
No, he didn’t expect her to love him as much as she loved Silas. It was enough for her to fall in love with him just a little.
But the only answer she ever gave was that she would never love him…
Only then did he realize that he was obsessed with her.
But his ridiculous Alpha ego and loyalty to pack laws and traditions prevented him from expressing his love.
And now, she’d died thinking that he hated her.
He clenched the letter and looked out at the horizon.
As the light of life faded away, he followed the afterglow into the night.
At the moment when the sky wholly darkened, the whole world was quiet.
He stood in the darkness by Taya’s gravestone, searching for any light.
But he had pushed the light away a long time ago…
Jackson watched quietly from the side, something inside of him-and his wolf’s intuition-telling him to let things unfold naturally right now.
He’d been right all along-Griffon had feelings for Taya, but he had never shown them.
Jackson looked at the letter in Griffon’s hand. He couldn’t help stepping forward and grabbing it.
When he saw it was from Taya, something that she’d written specifically for Griffon before she died, he pretended to be calm, but inside…inside he was dying of a broken heart.
It turned out that Taya had really fallen in love with Griffon.
Even though the last thing she had done in this life was to mate Jackson, she had loved Griffon.
Taya had left something behind for Griffon, but not for him.
Griffon snarled at Jackson and snatched the letter back. It was all he had left of her.
Both Alphas stood by the gravestone, hackles raised, claws and fangs out, growling low at each other.
It was as if they were both stuck somehow, frozen in place with grief and by their animosity toward the other.
Andre and the pack guards stayed back, not wanting to get in the middle of whatever was happening. It was best to let Alphas sort things out on their own.
Surprisingly, Griffon was the first to back down. He knelt on one knee in front of the grave and raised his hand to gently touch her photo. The more he looked at her, the more he missed her. His longing for her was deep in his bones, as if it were a living, breathing entity inside of him, as much as his wolf was.
“I’m sorry…” he whispered to her picture.
He had been afraid his family would discover Taya’s existence, that she would end up like Cici. Once Shelly had become involved, threatening to involve her mother…he’d felt he had no choice but to turn his back on Taya and slap her.
It was funny how these things worked…he was the most powerful Alpha in Arcadia and beyond, yet when it came to his mother and his family, he was utterly useless. Those familial bonds and the way your family could hurt you, ruin your life, was no match for his Alpha strength.
And it didn’t help that since his mother had given birth to him, she was practically immune to any of Griffon’s strength or power. His “Alpha-ness” was nothing in the face of the woman who’d given him life.
So he’d hurt Taya in the name of “protection.”
They were right. People like him had no right to fall in love.
He deserved to suffer all the pain of losing everything.