They Forgot Me 99 Times, I Won’t Give Them a 100th Chance Chapter 09

They Forgot Me 99 Times, I Won’t Give Them a 100th Chance Chapter 09

I looked at the things in his arms.

“You only brought me the venison hand pies after you noticed one was missing. The bookmark? That only

got remembered when the shop owner asked. The graduation bear? I had to tell you before you even realized

I didn’t have one.”

“The photos, the flowers, the graduation letters, and the apartment we agreed on.”

“Each thing on its own looks small, so every time I got upset, you all thought I was being petty.”

“But over three years, you made countless choices.”

“And every single time, the person who got left behind was me.”

Kael’s lips moved.

“I thought you wouldn’t care.”

“You didn’t think so.”

I cut him off.

“You just assumed that even if I did care, I wouldn’t leave.”

Rain slid down his forehead.

He was silent for a long time before he said quietly,

“Give me one more chance.”

“I’ll change.”

“I’ll keep my distance from Sienna too.”

Even then, he still thought the problem was only Sienna.

But it wouldn’t have mattered who it was. The ending would have been the same.

What truly made me leave was that he had never treated my feelings like something that deserved to be

taken seriously.

“Kael, we’re over.”

He grabbed my wrist hard.

“I don’t agree.”

“We never had a mating ceremony, and we never formed a mate bond.”

I looked at him. The wolf inside me gave no response.

“Starting a relationship takes two people agreeing.”

I pulled free of him, one finger at a time.

“Ending one doesn’t.”

Panic finally surfaced in his eyes.

“Then what were those three years?”

“They were three years of me loving you for real.”

I paused.

“They were also three years of me finally seeing exactly who you are.”

He stood in the rain holding those late gifts.

I turned and walked back to the Pack House.

Behind me came the sound of the paper bag touching the ground.

I didn’t look back.

What I hadn’t had before, I didn’t need now.

Three days after Kael left Silverpine, Adrian came.

Julian and Sienna came with him.

They booked a private room at a restaurant on the edge of pack territory.

Five gifts were laid out on the table.

Five bookmarks, five music festival commemorative cards.

Even the chairs were set out properly. Five of them.

Adrian pushed a graduation bear toward me.

“Your major and your name are both correct.”

I glanced at it.

“Thanks, but I don’t need it.”

His hand stopped.

“Freya, we’re family.”

“You can’t just throw away your family because we made a few mistakes.”

I looked up.

“Am I the one throwing away family, or was there never a place for me in that family?”

Adrian had nothing to say.

Julian pushed up his glasses, exhaustion written all over his face.

“We ignored you in the past.”

“We won’t anymore.”

“But I don’t owe you the rest of my life just to verify that promise.”

The private room went quiet.

Sienna suddenly burst into tears.

“Freya, I’m sorry.”

“I really didn’t know you were hurting this much.”

She choked out that after her biological father died during a border patrol for the Silverpine Pack, the Bennett

family adopted her. Back then, she was always afraid of losing her home again, so she fought desperately

for more attention.

Later, being favored became a habit, and she didn’t realize those things had originally belonged to me.

“I wasn’t trying to take them from you.”

She reached for me.

“Come back. I can give everything back to you.”

I avoided her hand.

“You can’t.”

“When Adrian was preparing gifts for you, you knew there was nothing for me.”

“When Julian only made four bookmarks, you knew.”

“When Kael moved onto the same floor as you, you still knew.”

Her crying paused for a moment.

I finally said the thing everyone had been avoiding.

“It’s not that you didn’t know.”

“You just chose to accept it every single time.”