The session hall filled slowly, delegations arranging themselves along the long tables in whatever order five different packs had negotiated among themselves over decades of these gatherings, and I found my seat near the back of the Hellfang section, close enough to see the Dreadmoon delegation without being obvious about watching them.
I told myself I wasn’t watching them.
I lasted about four minutes before I gave that up as a lie not even worth telling myself.
Maeve sat between her father and the Alpha brother, Killian, her posture straight in a way that read as discipline rather than tension, nothing like the version of her I remembered from five years ago, who used to fold herself smaller in rooms full of people who might judge her.
I didn’t know when that had changed.
I only knew that watching it now felt like watching a stranger wearing a face I used to know completely.
The second brother sat close on her other side, and it took me longer than it should have to place him — Bastian, I thought, though I couldn’t be certain, one of the two younger Alphas who’d arrived at some point during her recovery, according to the fragments I’d gathered over five years from scouts and rumors and a file I kept locked in my desk.
He leaned toward her partway through the opening remarks, murmured something close to her ear, and she huffed out something that might have been a laugh, quick and unguarded, her hand briefly touching his arm.
Something ugly and immediate twisted through my chest.
I recognized it as jealousy almost instantly, which somehow made it worse rather than better, because recognizing it did nothing to slow it down.
It arrived fully formed, irrational and possessive, gripping something low in my stomach at the simple, ordinary sight of her hand resting on another man’s arm.
I had no right to feel it.
I understood that with perfect clarity even as the feeling refused to care what I understood.
I’d rejected her in front of an entire pack.
I’d stood there and watched Astra’s people put her on the ground and done nothing to stop it.
I’d built five years of a marriage with someone else, however hollow, however loveless, and I had absolutely no claim left on who touched her arm during a diplomatic session or what made her laugh now that I wasn’t the one causing it.
None of that stopped the feeling from settling into my chest like something with claws.
I watched Bastian lean toward her again, whispering something else, and watched her expression shift into open amusement this time, and I had to look down at the table in front of me because I didn’t trust my own face not to give away whatever was happening underneath it.
*Is he her mate.*
I didn’t know anything about how mate bonds worked for someone like her now — whether the fated bond between us had been severed completely by the rejection, whether something new could form in its place with enough time, whether five years and the kind of power I’d only heard rumors about might have opened doors that hadn’t existed for her before.
I didn’t know.
And not knowing was somehow worse than any answer could have been.
I made myself watch the proceedings instead, forcing my attention onto the mediator’s opening remarks about border security and rogue activity along the northern territories, and I lasted almost ten full minutes before my eyes drifted back toward the Dreadmoon delegation entirely without my permission.
Bastian said something else.
She smiled again.
I gripped the edge of the table hard enough that I felt it in my knuckles, and some distant, more rational part of my mind was already cataloging how deranged this was, how little right I had to feel anything watching a woman I’d publicly discarded five years ago sit comfortably beside a man who clearly cared about her, in whatever capacity that caring existed.
I hated him.
I didn’t even know his name for certain and I hated him anyway, hated the easy way he leaned toward her, hated that whatever he was to her, brother or mate or something else entirely, he’d apparently earned a version of her laughter that I hadn’t seen directed at anyone in five years, least of all myself.
*You did this,* I reminded myself, the same reminder I gave myself most nights alone with that file in my study.
*You’re the reason there’s a version of her that laughs easily around someone else instead of you.
You don’t get to resent the outcome of your own choice.*
The reminder didn’t help.
It rarely did anymore.
The session broke for a recess an hour later, delegations spilling out into the courtyard to stretch and speak quietly among themselves before reconvening, and I found myself moving toward the Dreadmoon group before I’d consciously decided to, some old, unexamined instinct pulling me forward despite every reasonable argument against it.
Killian intercepted me before I got within ten feet of her.
“Alpha Darius.” His voice was perfectly civil, and somehow that civility felt more dangerous than open hostility would have.
“Is there something you needed?”
“I wanted to speak with Maeve.”
“She’s occupied.” Killian didn’t move, didn’t so much as glance over his shoulder to check whether that was true.
“This isn’t pack business.”
“Then I don’t think it’s my sister’s business either.” Something in Killian’s tone sharpened slightly, still civil, still perfectly controlled, but unmistakably a warning now instead of politeness.
“She’s built a life in the last five years that doesn’t include explaining herself to you. I’d suggest respecting that.”
I felt heat rise up the back of my neck, some combination of shame and the same ugly, possessive jealousy still simmering under everything else.
“Is that your decision to make, or hers?”
“Today, it’s mine.” Killian’s eyes didn’t waver.
“Because I watched what happened to her the last time she trusted someone at Hellfang to have her best interests at heart. I’m not eager to watch a repeat performance.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
I stood there instead, absorbing the accuracy of it, and past Killian’s shoulder I caught a glimpse of Bastian saying something to Maeve that made her laugh again, easy and unguarded, and the jealousy flared right back up alongside the shame, two feelings I had no idea how to hold at the same time without one of them winning.
“Tell her I still want to talk,” I said finally, because it was the only thing I had left to offer.
“Whenever she’s ready. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’ll tell her.” Killian’s voice gave nothing away about whether he intended to make it sound like a threat or a promise when he did.
“Whether she wants to hear it is entirely up to her.”
He turned and walked back toward his family without waiting for a response, and I stood alone in the courtyard watching them from a distance I had no right to close, watching Bastian’s easy hand on her shoulder, watching her tip her head back at something Lucian said, watching an entire family that had built itself around her in exactly the way I’d failed to.
I told myself, again, that whatever I was feeling wasn’t jealousy over a man who might or might not be her mate.
I told myself it was something more complicated, grief maybe, or guilt, or the simple difficulty of watching someone thrive without you after you’d convinced yourself for years that your rejection had broken her completely.
I didn’t believe myself.
Not even a little.
Whatever this feeling was, ugly and disproportionate and entirely undeserved, I recognized it clearly enough by the time the recess ended and I made my way back to my seat.
I was jealous of a man who might be nothing more than her brother, over a woman I’d thrown away myself, and I hated every single thing that admission said about who I still was, five years and an entire ruined marriage later.