From Now On, It’s Not About You Chapter 08

From Now On, It’s Not About You Chapter 08

Ryan stood in the wind, so gaunt he looked like a shell of his former self.

The exhaustion etched into his face made him look ten years older.

When he walked toward me, his eyes were already red.

“Little Phoebe… I got the necklace back.”

He shakily opened his hand to reveal the star necklace resting in his palm-the very one he had personally told me to give to Willow.

Hope and desperation filled his eyes.

I glanced down at it briefly and let out a soft laugh.

“You know better than anyone. What’s thrown away can never be taken back.”

“No.” His fingers tightened around the necklace. Words stumbled from his lips.

“I sent Willow to prison. There won’t ever be another woman.”

“I only want you. Please believe me!”

I looked at him with cold amusement.

“Didn’t I believe you before? Twice. And what did it get me?”

He trembled, unable to utter a single word. Tears streamed down his face, one after another.

Ten years. He’d saved me, helped me, loved me.

I had imagined every beautiful future possible. I truly believed he was the person I would spend my life with.

But now, none of it was necessary anymore.

“Ryan, go home. There’s no going back for us.”

He didn’t leave. Stubbornly, he tried to prove his remorse with time.

Every day, he waited for me along the route I took to class-sometimes with flowers, sometimes with food or gifts.

In the end, Mom saw how exhausted I was becoming and contacted his Alpha parents.

I never learned what she said to them.

But that very night, people came and took him away.

For the next three years, we never spoke again.

On the day I graduated from the elite academy, an old classmate told me what had happened.

Ryan’s parents had completely cut off his plans to come to the United Packs.

–

In defiance or perhaps as a form of self-punishment-he had renounced both his admission to Silver Moon Academy and his claim to the Alpha title of his pack.

He spent his days drowning in alcohol and indulgence, wrecking his body to the core.

Now he could barely stay out of the pack hospital.

I listened as if it were someone else’s story. A chapter long since closed.

Then I turned the page.

In the distance, the sunset painted the sky in brilliant shades of gold.

Dad and Mom stood side by side, bouquets in their hands, smiling as they walked toward me.