how best to handle the situation. I offered to act as a medium purely because I would rather you heard this from me than from Priscilla. According to her, Ashlynn simply believes it’s time she came home but fears she won’t be welcome.”
She’d never be welcome to Tate—too much shit had happened between them. And who wanted to be around their ex when said ex had fucked them over? But he’d always known she’d return sooner or later. Whereas the news once would have riled him, it now did no more than irritate him. She no longer had any real power over his emotions. “I’ll call Priscilla and inform her that Ashlynn can return.”
Vinnie frowned. “You want her back here?”
“No. But nor do I feel any great need to keep her away. She’s no one to me.”
“You and Ashlynn were a couple for over twelve months. The stirrings of imprinting were there. You suffered greatly after those minor threads broke.”
He had, yeah. And it had killed what Tate felt for her. Back then, he’d been so sure he loved her that he’d also been open to imprinting on her, even though it meant forsaking his true mate. The decision had been simpler for Ashlynn. She’d known for a long time who her true mate was; she’d known she couldn’t have him.
She’d been just twelve-years-old when she felt that one of their pride mates, Koby—a man fifteen-years her senior—was her true-mate. She hadn’t wasted a moment in declaring it to him. Freaked out, Koby had insisted she was wrong. He’d later imprinted on the female he was dating, Gita.
It had devastated Ashlynn, but she’d ploughed through, determined to build a life without Koby. She’d claimed she wanted to build that life with Tate. But when Gita later died, Ashlynn had told Tate that she needed to be with Koby. Not just to rally around him and help him overcome his loss, but to eventually make him accept that Ashlynn was meant for him.
At first, Tate had been too shocked to connect with her declaration. She’d made promises to him when they first got together. She’d vowed that he wasn’t second best. She’d sworn that she had let Koby go, too angry at him to consider claiming him anyway.
She’d lied.
Once the shock wore off, a freezing-cold burn had spread through his body and iced his blood, numbing him to everything, shrouding him in apathy. He hadn’t raged, ranted, or even talked it out with anyone. Instead, he’d thrown himself into the Beta role and allowed his friends and family to distract him. Tate hadn’t been willing to let the breakup eat him whole. He hadn’t been willing to spend even a moment’s time grieving the loss of a person who’d already wasted a year of his life.
People had watched him closely, expecting him to unravel. But he hadn’t. Not even when, a month after he moved out of her apartment, the imprinting threads snapped. It had felt like drowning. Drowning in pain, emotion, nausea, exhaustion—waves of which had hit him at random times and pulled him under. But he’d always resurfaced, and the nightmare eventually ended.
When the numbness finally wore off, some anger had crept in. He couldn’t blame her for wanting her true mate, but Tate was pissed that she’d made him so many empty promises. He’d let that anger go for his own sake, though. There was no sense in clinging to that kind of dark emotion.
“You don’t think it would be hard for you to have her around?” asked Vinnie.
“No,” replied Tate. “She’s part of my past—a regrettable part. That’s it.”
“And what if she wants you two to try again?”
“It won’t happen. If I wanted her back, I could have had her back.” Four months after they separated, she’d turned up at his old apartment, begging him to take her back. He’d instantly suspected what he later learned—Koby had refused to accept her. More, the grieving male had claimed he’d never want her.
Tate felt pity for her now, but back then he’d felt only anger that she’d think so little of him as to ask that he take her back after all she’d done … like he should so easily forgive her betrayal and, moreover, be content with being second best. Well, he wasn’t. So he’d turned her away, and she’d hauled ass out of the pride the day after that.
“Does she know Koby switched to his brother’s pride?” Tate asked, because it was possible that she was returning