A wave of anger and frustration washed over Asher, clouding his better judgment. "Skylar, you're not fooling anyone. You remember everything. You just want to hurt me."
The expression she gave surprised him even more as she let her head back and burst out laughing.
"Are you being serious right now?" She said with her voice laced with bitterness. "I don't even know you. Why would I want to hurt you? Don't flatter yourself. You're not with it with how you're behaving right now."
Those words hit him like a punch as he was left speechless.
How could she say that to him when he had…
Then he remembered he had actually hurt her.
He sighed and looked away from her.
Just as he was about to respond to her, she looked away and started away from him.
"Goodbye, Asher," she said.
He watched her seamlessly melt into the crowd of party goers as the alpha stood on his own, stunned and alone.
He watched her for a moment as she laughed with some of the guests.
Her smile was effortless and radiant. It was like she had not just pushed him aside a few moments ago.
He needed to let her know that she was his. But how could he do it when she would not even look his way.
He stood there for what felt like an eternity, his mind a moving mess. He was angry at who had destroyed his family, confused on why she didn't know him and filled with grief that he had lost his children and also his wife.
It would take him forever to heal from what he was feeling and he didn't want it to end this way.
This was Skylar. The woman he loved and was proud of. The woman he had mated with and given birth to his children.
Now that had changed.
She was a stranger to him.
He replayed the conversation in his head over and over, trying to find some explanation, some crack in her story that would make sense of this. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't shake the cold, hard truth: Skylar had no intention of acknowledging their past.
Whether it was out of spite, or some deep, unspoken pain, he didn't know. But she had shut him out completely.
The crowd around mingled and they continued to laugh and drunk as nothing has happened.
The world moved on, indifferent of his pain as he turned on his heels and walked towards the nearest exit.
The noise from the party faded into the background as he stepped outside.
He needed to breathe a little as he was tired of the noise.
The cool night air hitting him like a wake-up call. He stood there for a moment, breathing deeply, trying to steady himself.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
He remembers when he had met Shepard and there had been a romance between them.
He smiled to himself as he knew she was like his entire world. The way they used go laugh together and dreamt of the future that now seemed like a very impossible dream to get.
He remembered all the good times but also the bad ones. The fights, the misunderstandings and the slow way their relationship had broken that night.
He wasn't without blame, he knew that, but he wished he had been slow to anger and slow to judge.
Now it was like this, it seemed like his life was over.
Asher's mind raced with questions. Was Skylar really pretending not to remember? Or had she somehow genuinely forgotten their life together? And if she was pretending, what was she hoping to gain by denying their past?
His heart clenched with a painful realization: maybe Skylar didn't want to remember. Maybe she had chosen to erase him from her life because it was the only way she could move on.
But even as he thought that, a part of him refused to believe it. Skylar had always been strong, but she had never been cruel. She wasn't the type to act this way.
He soon sat on a bench in the garden as he was joined by an alpha of another pack who was drunk.
"You don't seem to be enjoying the party," the aloha said as Asher sighed.
"You're drunk. You should be inside."
"Oh no, you're drunk," chuckled the man.
They sat in silence for a while with Asher thinking of what to do next.
***
Skylar walked around the party talking to different people as her personal guard came to her.
"Ma'am, I'm here to make sure you're safe," the man said as she rolled her eyes.
"I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."
"Your father wouldn't like that kind of statement. I'm here for a reason."
She stayed silent and still walked to her seat as the man joined her.
"Have you thought of what to do next to send that man away?" He asked beside her as she sighed.
"Leave him. He is a guest. When he's done he'll go home."
"He was bothering you."
"He was not," she said with a stern voice. "Stop bothering yourself with him. There are drinks here. It is not my fault that people drink and decide to tell funny stories to each other."
The guard knew she was right. But he didn't like the man who had come to claim her when he didn't even know who she is.
"I don't feel comfortable with him still being around you," the man said, which had her cussing under her breath.
"You are making me age faster than I should. You know what? How about you do whatever you want. Leave me out of this. I'm done with this nonsense. Whatever you want to do, do it."
She got to her feet and started away from the man who smiled within himself and got out of the party to meet Asher.