kiss that wasn’t like him.
“What the fuck!” Sawyer screamed as alarm bells went off in my head.
How can he be screaming while he’s kissing me? He pulled away from me and I looked up into the eyes of a man I’d never seen before.
Light blond ashy hair, hard brown eyes and a chiseled jaw.
My hands went to my mouth as shock ripped through me.
What the fuck was happening? Confusion seeped into me as the brown-eyed dude grinned at me and then looked back at Sawyer. Meredith and Sage stood just behind Sawyer, watching me, both with open mouths.
Fuck.
Sawyer lunged for the guy, but he leapt over the patio railing and took off running, leaving me with my hands over my mouth and my heart beating frantically in my chest.
“Demi,” Sawyer’s voice held so much anger. “Who the fuck was that?” I noticed he was wearing a weird necklace he didn’t have on before. It was a blue pendant on a thick chain, not his style…
My hands shook as I pulled them away from my face. “I dunno … I thought it was … you.”
He scoffed. “You fucking played me!” The hurt in his voice gutted me.
“No I didn’t! I’m … confused. I thought it was you.” My fingers went to my lips again as I tried to think of a logical reason for what just happened. “Maybe I was drugged.”
He frowned, suddenly looking concerned. “Do you feel drugged?”
I shook my head. “No, but—”
“Did anyone give you anything to eat or drink here?” he pressed.
“No.”
“Then why the fuck was some random dude’s tongue just down your throat!” he yelled as people in the room started to gather behind him and stare. This wasn’t like him, he wasn’t mean, not to me, not ever.
Tears lined my eyelids. “I … I don’t know.”
Anger washed over his features, before morphing into pain. “I … trusted you … with everything. Is this why you were having second thoughts on the way over? Oh my God, I feel sick.”
He turned to leave and I clung to his jacket. “Sawyer, wait! I’ll figure out what this was, it must have been magic—”
“No.” He looked back at me with stone cold fury. “This was a mistake! I love you but that doesn’t mean anything.”
He lowered his head to look down at me. ‘I have to look out for my family now and what’s best for them. It doesn’t matter that I love you. The curse only breaks if you love me back. I’m sorry, Demi. I can’t risk their lives on a girl who just made out with some random dude at what was supposed to be our engagement party.’
He jerked out of my grasp and burst through the crowd, going inside. It was like he’d smacked me in the face. Each word slammed into me like hot coals being thrown at my skin.
‘Sawyer, don’t do this. I love you! This was magic or something. I didn’t know what I was doing!’ Desperation took hold of me. ‘What about the imprint? True mates?’
I could feel his anguish through our bond, like a hurricane of emotions slamming into me with gale force winds. ‘I want to believe you but … I can’t. That was clearly Paladin magic and I don’t want anything to do with it.’
Pain ripped open inside of me, fresh and hot as my wolf, and I felt the full brunt of his rejection. When he turned the corner, I caught a glimpse of Meredith. She was waiting for him, all sad and dopey eyed. He pulled her into a hug and my wolf reared to the surface, trying to break out and howl in misery, but I pushed her down. When Meredith looked over his shoulder at me, she was grinning.
This can’t be happening.
“Miss Calloway, I’m here to escort you back to your dorm room,” Eugene said behind me in a cold and unforgiving voice. He’d walked up behind the patio and was waiting on the other side to kick me out of my own engagement party.
Fuck.
Sawyer’s voice filtered out onto the balcony from inside the speakers in the room: “Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming. I’ve called you all here because I’ve made my decision early. I know who I’m meant to be with, who loves me more than anything, who has been by my side for years…”
It was like someone reached down my throat and squeezed my heart.
‘Don’t. She doesn’t love you. Please. This was an accident,’ I warned him. His entire family