Parker's POV
Watching them together twisted something deep in my chest, a pain sharper than anything I had experienced before.
The way Bella spoke to Vance, so soft and deferential, transported me back to the woman I had known years earlier. Back then, she had looked at me with that same gentle expression, before everything fell apart.
She never challenged him or shot him those fierce, cutting looks that had become her signature when dealing with me and everyone else in the pack. With Vance, she was docile, almost fragile.
Of course she treated him differently. He was her husband, the man who had supposedly saved her in the human world when she fled from me.
While I remained the alpha who had shattered her trust and driven her away with my betrayal.
The contrast was unbearable. Even during the mundane process of signing her pack membership documents, I caught myself fixated on how Vance held her left hand possessively.
