The patrol coordination meetings became a fixed monthly occurrence over the following weeks, always the same small room, always the same careful distance Maeve maintained across the table, and I told myself each time that I was satisfied with what little she allowed me.
I wasn’t satisfied.
I recognized the lie for what it was every time I told it to myself, and I kept telling it anyway, because the alternative was admitting how much I wanted something she’d made explicitly, repeatedly clear I wasn’t getting.
It was after the third meeting that I made the mistake.
I’d heard, through channels I wasn’t proud of maintaining, that Bastian traveled to the border town of Ashford most weeks to oversee trade negotiations on Dreadmoon’s behalf, and that he did it largely alone, without the heavier security that traveled with Killian or Roman.
I told myself, the morning I found myself riding toward Ashford instead of back to Hellfang territory, that I only wanted information.
That a conversation with her brother, away from her, away from the formal boundaries she’d drawn around every interaction with me, might tell me something about her life I had no other way of learning.
I understood, even as I told myself this, that it was a lie built specifically to let me do something I already knew was wrong.
I found Bastian outside a trading post on Ashford’s main street, and something in his expression when he saw me shift immediately from casual to guarded, his easy warmth replaced by a wariness I recognized because I’d earned it.
“Alpha Darius.” His voice carried a careful neutrality.
“This is a surprise.”
“I wanted to talk to you.” I kept my tone even, though something underneath it was already straining against the composure I was trying to project.
“Away from the formal channels.”
“Maeve made the formal channels explicit for a reason.” Bastian’s eyes didn’t waver.
“I’m not in the habit of circumventing my sister’s boundaries on her behalf.”
“I’m not asking you to circumvent anything. I just want to understand—” I stopped, hearing how the sentence was going to sound before I finished it, and said it anyway, because five years of restraint had apparently worn thinner than I’d realized.
“Are you her mate?”
Bastian went very still. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
“Excuse me?”
“At the accord. I saw the two of you together. I need to know if—” I heard myself, heard exactly how unhinged the question sounded coming out of my mouth, and couldn’t seem to stop it regardless.
“If there’s someone else. If that’s why she won’t—”
“Won’t what?” Bastian’s voice had dropped, quiet in a way that carried more danger than volume ever could have.
“Won’t talk to you? Won’t forgive you? Won’t hand you back five years of her life like you’re entitled to collect on it?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I think it’s exactly what you meant.” He stepped closer, and though he wasn’t as physically imposing as Killian, something in his stillness made it clear he wasn’t backing down from this conversation regardless of who I was.
“I’m her brother, Darius. I have been for five years, since she showed up on our land bleeding and broken by people who were supposed to protect her. There’s no mate bond between us, and even if there were, it would be none of your business, because you forfeited any right to that question the night you pushed her onto stone floor in front of your entire pack.”
The words landed like a blow, precise and deserved, and I stood there absorbing them without an argument to offer in response, because he was right, and some exhausted part of me had known he’d be right before I ever rode out to Ashford looking for a conversation I had no business having.
“I need to see her,” I said instead, the words coming out rougher than I intended.
“Properly. Not through formal channels, not with an aide taking notes. I need her to know that whatever I did, whatever I let happen—”
“She knows what you did.” Bastian’s voice stayed flat, unmoved by whatever was cracking apart in mine.
“She’s known it for five years. What she doesn’t need is you riding out here, cornering her brother, asking whether she’s found someone else to want her, like her life is a story that stopped mattering the moment you stopped being the one writing it.”
I didn’t have an answer for that either.
I stood there in the middle of Ashford’s main street, feeling every version of shame I’d been avoiding for five years arrive at once, compounding on top of each other until I couldn’t have separated one from the next if I’d tried.
“I’m going to tell her about this,” Bastian said, and something in his voice made clear it wasn’t a threat, just an unavoidable fact.
“I’m not going to lie to my sister to spare your feelings. You came here uninvited, asking questions you had no right to ask, and she deserves to know exactly what kind of judgment you’re still capable of, five years and however much guilt later.” Read this novel at NovelPing for the best experience.
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do. Not yet.” Bastian studied me for a long moment, something almost pitying crossing his expression, which somehow felt worse than the anger had.
“You keep circling her like you’re owed a resolution. Like enough guilt eventually converts into a right to be forgiven. It doesn’t work that way, Darius. It never did.”
He turned and walked back into the trading post without waiting for a response, and I stood alone on the street for a long time afterward, understanding with a clarity I hadn’t let myself access in five years exactly how thoroughly I’d just undone whatever fragile ground I’d managed to hold onto since the accord.
The message from Maeve arrived two days later, delivered through the same formal channel she’d established at our first meeting, cold and precise in exactly the way I deserved.
*You were told the terms.
You broke them within a month.
Patrol coordination will continue through my father directly going forward.
I have nothing further to say to you.*
I read it three times, and each time it landed the same way, a verdict I’d earned the moment I decided my own need to understand outweighed her explicit boundary.
I didn’t try to contact her again.
I understood, finally, with a clarity that came far too late to matter, that every argument I’d built in my head justifying the trip to Ashford had been exactly what Bastian named it — the belief that enough guilt, held long enough, eventually earned something back.
It didn’t.
I’d just proven that to myself in the worst possible way, costing myself the one small foothold I’d managed to build, and there was no one left to blame for it but the same man who’d pushed her onto stone floor five years ago and never fully stopped finding new ways to prove he hadn’t changed nearly as much as he wanted to believe he had.