Sterling

I quietly leave Maddy’s room, she’s been fighting me again. Ever since Wilder left, she’s been trying to push the rules. She couldn’t understand why he had to leave or why he wasn’t immediately coming back. I don’t want to hurt her, but I also had to keep in mind that no matter what happened, Wilder may have never come back into our lives again. It was a choice that I made, or in a way, that Wilder made for us. But all this time, it was me who could go back to him if I wanted, and I never reached out.

I know why he left, why he asked me what he did. It would have been unfair to push myself onto Wilder after having just lost Logan, and Wilder, having lost his mate himself, he understood that. He’s been through this before… He knows how easy it would be to try to fill up the void inside me with someone else, without considering their feelings or considering my own in the long run.

But for Maddy… She’s too young, to her it felt like she lost another person she was getting attached to, and that must have been hard for her. But to see her so happy to see Wilder again, that was amazing too. She doesn’t do that with anyone else, which has made me a little worried in the past. She doesn’t connect to people easily, so to have someone she likes taken from her, again, I was afraid it would harm her.

I walk down the stairs, I want to know about Wilder’s past, but at the same time… Seeing the way he’s broken down before when I asked about things makes me unhappy to force it. But now, we need to talk about Logan, and somehow, his past and Logan have been connected in some way. Which would make sense with the things that Logan left him in his will. We’ll need to talk about these things. Even if it’s about his past with his Alpha.

Wilder looked so ashamed when he talked about that before, about his Alpha. I know that some look down on it, an Alpha with an Alpha or an Omega with another Omega, like those things are shameful because they’re not naturally how we’re supposed to work. Like the only natural relationships are the ones that can produce children… I’ve seen people getting disowned over things like that, and I’ve heard even worse… But I can’t blame someone for falling in love with someone else. Because if that is wrong, then what is me falling— me being mated by Wilder? Isn’t that just as bad? First one Alpha, and then another?

Wilder comes out of the living room, his eyes on me for a moment. “I was about to grab us coffee, you go sit on the couch.” His voice is soft, caring, hiding the fear I can see in his eyes.

“Sure.” I walk into the living room, surprised by what I find there. Wilder has put some candles out and draped blankets on the couch. He’s made this into much more than just a talk, at least it’s more than just a talk now. I sit down on the couch, making myself comfortable.

Wilder sits down next to me, putting our mugs with coffee on the low table in front of us. “I thought that doing this may take the nerves away a little. Keeping me busy for a moment and making it all less scary.” He looks uncomfortable, his eyes on everything but me.

“Did it work?”

“No.” He shakes his head, and we fall into an uncomfortable silence.

“Wilder…” I’m as nervous as he is. I know he feels like he needs to do this, but I don’t think either of us has any idea how to start.

“Is there anything you really want to know about me?” His voice is low, and he’s still not looking at me.

“Everything.” As I say it, I mean it. There isn’t just one specific thing that I want to know, need to know. I really do want to know everything about Wilder, his past, his present, everything.

That gets me a little smile. “I was thinking about something more specific.”

I know. But at least he’s smiling now and doesn’t look as scared. I realise that I need to clear up one thing first, one thing that has been bugging me since this morning. “You said that you hadn’t seen Logan in years, is that why he never said anything about you? Him leaving you so much in his will means that it’s weird that I had no idea you existed. Right?” It’s been the one part that I can’t make sense of.

He nods, thinking for a moment. “You may have heard about me, somewhere in interactions between Logan and Sarah or Logan and his parents, but you probably didn’t know it was about me specifically. I’ve probably never been named, or not by my real name anyway.” His words are carefully chosen, not revealing more than he wants. Which is annoying, but I guess he’ll tell me later on anyway, hopefully.

“Did Logan know your mate?” Time wise, that would make sense, right?

Wilder flinches and tenses. “I’m not ready to talk about that yet. Different question.”

That’s odd, but I guess I can move on for now. “How did you find out about the funeral?” I’m not really good at doing this questions thing, am I? Or maybe Wilder isn’t good at giving me enough information to actually ask follow-up questions.

“My sister told me. She’s friends with Sarah.”

“Sarah didn’t call you herself? Or anyone else?” This is hard to believe, how can they not tell him? This is really getting more and more confusing.

“They rather forget I exist.” Wilder shrugs, putting on a brave face, and I can’t help but reach out to him, pulling him close as my heart breaks. Losing an important friend, even if he hadn’t seen him in a long time, and then not hearing about it from the people who should have told him. That’s just cruel. He takes a deep breath. “I wish I knew how to tell you all this. There is so much, and it’s all so messed up.” He keeps the next words he wants to say inside, and it hurts that he doesn’t trust me with them.

“How long did you know Logan?”

“Basically all my life.” My mind goes back to previous conversations, this definitely means that Logan knew Wilder’s mate. Is that the reason they didn’t see each other anymore? Wilder’s mate passing away broke their friendship? Something in the back of my mind starts putting things together, but I have no idea how everything fits yet, like I can’t properly grasp all the pieces. “He was there for me during all the important times in my life. Sadly enough, I apparently wasn’t for his.” He looks around, a hard edge to his voice. “Obviously.”

I need to change tactics because this just upsets us both so much. “Sarah looks much more happy to see you than she ever was with Logan. Why is that?” If Logan’s family rather forgets that Wilder exists, then why does Sarah seem to be so glad to see him?

That surprises him, which confuses me in turn. “Really?”

“Yeah. They’ve always been civilised, but I knew something was wrong. She even was pretty cold towards me when I first met her, she didn’t like me. Maddy’s a little like her that way, they both don’t seem to really like new people.” The family connections are easy to make.

Wilder shakes his head. “I didn’t know that. She’s… Logan and Sarah were always the best of friends, the social ones, the ones who always made friends no matter where they went. I was always jealous of them for that. But I guess…” He falls silent, breathing deeply. “It makes sense. Knowing the both of them, it makes sense.”

“Why?” Because for me… that makes zero sense. That even makes less sense than it did before Wilder started to explain things.

“Sarah thought Logan made a stupid choice. She’s despised him ever since… I guess she really couldn’t overcome it in the end. I guess I thought that ten years would at least have made their relationship at a little better. But it seems that maybe it only got worse.” His voice is getting thick, sad, heavy.

“What choice?” I can’t imagine anything that would put siblings at such odds, but I’m an only kid, so what do I know?

Wilder’s eyes shoot to mine, making sure to look at me, so I hear his next words. “Because he left me.” His voice gives out, and I catch a glimpse of big fat tears before he stares at his hands, running them over each other, squeezing hard. His breathing hitches and he shakes a little. I want to reach out to him, comfort him, but I don’t seem to be quite able right now.

Logan… Logan left Wilder? What? “But…” Then a fragment of a dream pops up. “That first night. You said something while I was asleep. You…” I try to get a grasp on the fragment, it’s slippery, but one thing stands out. “You said that he left us both.”

Wilder nods, still not looking my way, his whole body stiff with tension, like he’s expecting me to flip out, like he’s expecting a beating. Like he’s expecting the world to crash down around him.

“Logan is…” It clicks in my head. Finally things start to make sense, a scary lot of sense. “Logan was your Alpha mate?”

“Yeah.” He forces the word out, his voice shaking and his breathing hard.

“The one who marked you? That was Logan?”

He nods again.

I don’t even know what to think now, what to think about this new information. If Wilder is Logan’s mate too… If Logan was in a relationship with an Alpha before he was in a relationship with me… Then what was our relationship built on? Did Logan even have any interest in an Omega like me? Was I just easily available? It’s one thing to know about Alphas who are mated to Alphas, or even just in a relationship with each other, but to know that Logan had already taken an Alpha mate before meeting me… To know that the other Alpha who mated me was the one already mated by Logan… It’s one thing to know it exists, it’s another thing to know that your mates both were involved with other Alphas like that… Even if they were involved with each other.

“Sterling? Please say something.” Wilder reaches out but doesn’t touch me, still that fear in his voice.

“I’m sorry, I’m still here, I’m still listening. I just… I never knew. I didn’t even know he’d had a relationship before he and I met.” It feels weird, above all, this is the part that feels the weirdest, like suddenly such a huge part of Logan’s life has become unknown, like I never even knew him. And not just Logan, but his family too, they kept this information from me on purpose. If they knew each other all their lives… Then so many of the childhood stories they told me would have involved Wilder, even without me knowing it. I get why Wilder didn’t say anything before, why he felt like he couldn’t. But Logan? His family? Sarah? Why didn’t anyone tell me anything? What I understood from Wilder before, they’d been together for so long. A relationship this long, and I never knew about it. “I just thought…”

“He’d been single for such a long time?” Wilder’s words are hard, but that’s understandable.

I nod, realising how foolish I’d been. “Yeah… it’s much more accepted for Alphas to be single late than it is for Omegas.”

“He wasn’t single.” Wilder almost growls a little.

I realise that it was totally my own mistake too, my own assumption. Logan never told me that he’d been single or if he’d been in a relationship before, he’d just conveniently not told me anything that would let me make up my mind. He let me take my own conclusions. No matter how wrong they were. “I know. I know that now.” I stand up, not able to sit down as my brain moves things around in my head, like my own life with Logan has suddenly become a mystery. The way Logan was so reluctant at first, the way he tried to make sure we had a proper relationship, the way he was focused on being a good and true Alpha. And sometimes… the pain in his eyes, the way he’d hide from me, or act like he couldn’t quite wrap his head around what he was supposed to be doing. “Was it even real? My relationship with Logan? Was it?” I turn to Wilder, even though he doesn’t deserve my anger or my confusion.

Wilder jumps up, coming over to me, grabbing my arms, his eyes intense. “Yes. Of course it was real. Don’t ever think that he didn’t truly love you. He loved you, or he wouldn’t have done any of this.” He moves his arm to encompass the whole house, the life I had with Logan. “Even mating you… He must have really loved you.” How can he fight so hard for the man that left him?

“He was…” I look up at Wilder, suddenly remembering something that Logan had once said, way back when I’d just met him. “He said he thought he’d never find someone to love. That he…” How did I not see this before? These two are so similar, it’s scary almost, Wilder told me the exact same thing that first week. “That he was willing to stay alone for the rest of his life if he hadn’t found me.”

Wilder nods, his eyes darkening, he probably made the same connection as I just did. How did this even happen? How did their lives get so messed up?

I need to know. I need to know, and this may be my only chance. “What happened between you two? You’d been together for a long time, he’d marked you, mated you. Why did he leave?”

“We even lived together for a couple of years, during and after college. We had a life together. But his family… no, his parents…” Wilder shakes his head, his voice dejected. “I don’t know why. I thought Logan was strong… But, in the end, they got to him. His parents kept putting pressure on him to find himself an Omega. He had to make a real family, or…” He stops for a moment. “I don’t know exactly what they told him they’d do. But… it broke him enough that he left me.” Fuck. I can’t imagine his anguish, the pain he must have gone through. But the bad thing is, it makes so much sense. Everything that happened between Logan and me those first months and even years, it makes so much more sense that it hurts. Logan too, he must have been in so much pain.

“Can you tell me how it happened?” Wilder looks like he’ll really break down at any moment, but also, he looks like he needs to talk about this. And I feel like I need to know, this weird mess that has changed the courses of all our lives.

“We were supposed to go on holiday. He drove us to some holiday houses, it was late, it was dark. He’d picked me up from work, and we’d driven for hours by then. He looked troubled, but by then, he always looked like that. I remember that very clearly. I’d hoped that a weekend away for just the two of us would make things better. When we arrived, he told me to go inside the house first, that he’d drive up the road a little to park the car. I’d walked halfway up the path to the house when I looked back, for no particular reason, and saw him drive off. Away. Gone.” Wilder shakes his head, his voice rough, but strong. I can’t believe it. Logan, leaving Wilder just there, stranded.

“What?” I’m not sure that squeak really was my own voice.

“He left a letter in my bag. Saying that he couldn’t do this anymore, that he had to move on from our youthful puppy love.” Wilder’s jaw tenses and tears form in his eyes again. “I tried calling him, but he’d also left his phone in my bag. There was no way for me to go back home that night. And when I finally did get home the next morning… All his things were gone. Everything. He left me with… basically nothing.”

“He wouldn’t…” But I can’t finish the sentence. The fact that Wilder is standing here, talking to me, the way he kept reacting to Logan’s things around the house… It’s true, even if I don’t want to believe it. I know it is, or at least enough of it is that the exact details no longer matter. Another realisation sets in. “Logan was the one who called you Wild.” His constantly flinching when I say it, even if I mean it well, it makes sense. “Fuck, it must have been insanely weird for me to say it too. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. Yeah. He was the one who called me Wild. Just like he was probably the one to call you Star.”

I nod. Yeah. It’s not like it was easy for me either, having Wilder call me by that same name. But, in all of this, the weird connection between us, it makes a little more sense now. Even how we react to each other, part of it is simply because that is how we reacted to Logan. “Fuck. He messed us up so much.”

“And he’s not done with us yet. There are so many things that he dumped on us, even with just the things he’s done in the will. It won’t be easy. And…” He stops, shaking his head, not finishing his thought. “There is just so much mess he has left for us to figure out.”

He’s right. The will hasn’t made things easier, though at least a little less scary. And it now also makes sense why Wilder told Sarah that whatever is in the will is between Logan, me and him, because there were never just two in this relationship, no matter what Wilder or I knew. The only one who knew everything was Logan, and he seems to have been great at hiding his secrets.

“In the letter…” Wilder starts.

“The one he put in your copy of the will?” I remember him getting upset after reading it.

“Yeah. He said that he’d been hiding from me, that he was the one who was at fault for all of this mess.” Wilder looks upset again, a deep sadness that seems to overtake him. “Do you think… Do you think he ever meant for us to meet? I mean, if he hadn’t passed away?”

I never really thought about that, there was never any reason to doubt what was going on. Meeting Wilder had seemed a trick of fate, but what if it was only a trick of Logan? “I don’t know, but at least he meant for us to meet at some point. I want to, no, I need to believe that.”

“Yeah…” Wilder looks at me, and I know that the pain in his eyes in also reflected in mine. “Was he happy? In the last weeks?”

I’ve been going over those last couple of weeks in my head many times. Trying to figure out if it was something I could have seen coming, that it wasn’t just any accident. But I’ve not been able to find anything. “I thought he was. But with everything else he’s been keeping… I don’t know anymore. He sometimes had these moments where he’d be different, but now… I guess those moments make some sense. But no, I don’t believe he died by his own hand. I don’t believe he’d have done that. Even with all the mess that he made.” Going back in my mind over all the memories, those feelings, how it was so silly to believe that such an Alpha would ever be mine alone. Little did I know that I had nothing to fear from new people, it was Logan’s own past which should have been my focus.