Piss Off, Alpha! You Lost Me Forever-Chapter 167 Saving Bianca II

SOPHIA’S POV

Bianca’s apartment was warm.

That was the first thing I noticed when we stepped inside. The space was lovely and neat as usual.

Her kitchen counter had three different filming setups stacked neatly to one side. There were recipe cards spread across the table, a half-edited video still paused on her laptop screen. The apartment smelled like garlic and rosemary from whatever she had cooked for her channel earlier that day.

She went straight to the kitchen and poured water into three glasses. I noticed how her hands shook a bit. I watched her but didn’t comment on the tremor, because pointing it out would embarrass her and she had already spent enough of tonight feeling frightened.

Zade sat at the kitchen table without saying anything. He just looked around a bit.

Bianca set the glasses down, sitting across from us. She wrapped both hands around her water glass, then looked up.

"I don’t know what I would have done," she said. She took a deep breath then let it out again "If you hadn’t come. If he had-" She stopped, swallowing hard "He wasn’t himself tonight. The way he was standing there, just calling my name over and over-" She shook her head. "I’ve never seen him like that before, even at his worst."

"It doesn’t matter what he was like," I said. I reached across the table and covered her hand with mine. "You didn’t open the door. You called me immediately. You did everything right."

She looked at me with tears in her eyes "I was so scared, Sophia."

"I know." I squeezed her hand. "You’re allowed to be scared. He’s an obsessed psycho but he’s gone now. And if he comes back - the moment you see his name on your phone, the moment you see his car on your street - you call me immediately. I don’t care what time it is."

Bianca nodded, but her eyes moved briefly to Zade as well.

He had been quiet, giving us space, but he was listening. I could tell from his eyes. He leaned forward slightly.

"Don’t go out late alone," he said. "Not until this is fully resolved and you’re certain he’s stopped. If you feel unsafe here, if you start checking your locks twice at night, if you hear a sound and your wolf spikes - don’t push through it alone." His eyes moved briefly to me, then back to Bianca. "Either move in with Sophia temporarily, or tell me and I’ll find you somewhere else, somewhere he can’t find."

Bianca looked at him for a moment. She had never trusted Zade. She had said so to me directly and repeatedly, with good reason and without apology. She had always been suspicious of him, of his intentions.

But she was also a perceptive woman, and she could read sincerity in people.

Right now, Zade was being sincere.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

Zade just nodded.

The three of us sat for a while after that. The silence wasn’t heavy or awkward. It was needed, especially after everything that had happened tonight. Bianca talked a little. She told us about the filming she had done that afternoon, about the rosemary chicken recipe that had taken four attempts to get right, about the comment a follower had left that had made her laugh so hard she had cried.

I listened to all of it with a smile.

Zade mostly listened too. He asked Bianca one question about her channel. He asked what kind of food she focused on. She smiled as she answered. She loved talking about her cooking.

By the time she finished explaining her philosophy about cooking as emotional language, she looked more like herself.

I glanced at the clock on her kitchen wall. It was nearly one in the morning.

"We should go," I said, standing. "You need to sleep."

Bianca didn’t argue which told me how tired she actually was, because the Bianca who was fully herself always argued. She stood and walked us all the way down to the building entrance.

She hugged me at the door. Through the hug, I could feel all her emotions.

I held her back and felt her breathe.

"Thank you," she said into my shoulder. "For coming and for bringing him." She pulled back to look at me. "I know tonight wasn’t simple for you either. You had your own things happening."

"You are always worth coming for," I said simply.

She smiled.

She said goodnight to Zade, who nodded his head in acknowledgment. After that, she went back inside and the door closed behind her.

-

The drive back was different from the drive there.

Going to Bianca’s, the silence had been filled with tension. My mind was entirely on what we were driving toward, what we might find, whether we’d get there in time.

Coming back, the urgency was gone. Now, what remained was simply two people in a car at one in the morning with the city quiet around them.

It wasn’t uncomfortable. That was the thing I noticed. I looked out at the passing streets as we moved.

He pulled up outside Sky Manor and cut the engine.

I reached for the door handle.

"Wait." He said.

His voice was quiet. I paused with my hand on the handle and looked at him.

He was facing forward, not looking at me. He had one hand still resting on the steering wheel. With the other hand he reached into his jacket pocket. He brought out a small box. It was a blue box tied with a simple black ribbon. He held it out toward me

I looked at the box. Then at him.

"What is this?" I said.

"An apology." He still wasn’t looking at me directly. "For the event. For the woman. For-" A pause. "For being childish, as you correctly said."

I looked at the box for a moment longer.

It was small but for some reason, I could tell it was clearly chosen with care. It wasn’t his usual look-at-what-I-can-afford gifts he had sent before, the ones meant to impress me. This was something else. This was smaller. It looked more considered. This was the kind of thing that took thought rather than money.

Which somehow made it harder to decline.

But I did.

I shook my head slowly. "I don’t need a gift, Zade. And I don’t need the apology either. What you did was childish, yes. You know it was. I know it was. Wrapping something in a box doesn’t change it or undo it." I paused. "Just....don’t do it again."

He looked at me then. He really looked at me, like he was studying me. The look in his eyes made my heart race fast.

He didn’t argue. He didn’t push.

He just held the look for a second then he slipped the box back into his pocket.

"Goodnight, Zade," I said.

I pushed the door open and stepped out. Slowly, I entered inside, closing the door behind me softly. I looked through the window, watching Zade’s car.

THIRD PERSON’S POV

Outside, Zade sat in the parked car for a long moment.

The box was in his pocket.

His expression, in the dark of the empty car with no one watching, was not the expression he showed the world. It was quieter than that. It was dimmer. It was the face of someone who was beginning to understand that wanting something very much and deserving it were not the same thing.

He sat there until the light in Sophia’s bedroom window came on.

Then he started the engine and drove away.