Chapter 9:

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He stood up slowly, both hands pressing into the table, the way people do when their body needs the physical fact of standing to catch up with something the brain has already processed and rejected.

“She’s marrying me,” Theron said, because no one else had answered the question.

“That’s not—” Soren stopped. “That’s not right.”

“One more word.” Osmund didn’t raise his voice, which was somehow more effective than if he had. “One more word and I have you removed. We will deal with your future in the morning.”

Soren sat. But the look he fixed on me had the quality of a door left open, and when the dinner finished and Theron went back inside for my coat, Soren was in the entranceway before I’d gotten my gloves on.

“Tell me what this is.” His eyes were red at the corners. “Just explain it to me.”

“You can see what it is.”

Romаnс𝘦 ո𝗼𝘃e𝗅𝗌 oո 𝘨𝗮lno𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗌.𝗰𝘰𝗆

“Fable.” He caught my wrist, almost careful about it. “You loved me. I know you did. Say it’s not true.”

“It’s true,” I said. “For a very long time. It cost me quite a lot.”

Something crossed his face that was close to real feeling — not grief exactly, more like the first awareness that something is gone and not retrievable, the shock of the inventory. It lasted about three seconds before he covered it.

“Then come back. All of this with Theron — you’re making a point, I understand, and I’m listening. Tell me what you want. The bakery, the cake, the wedding, everything exactly your way—”

“I’m not making a point. I’m marrying Theron.”

“You don’t know him.”

“I know him better than I knew you after two years, and we’ve had three dinners.”

His grip tightened. “Don’t you dare—”

He didn’t finish the sentence because Theron had come through the door, and what happened next happened fast: one short, precise movement, Soren’s head snapping sideways, the sound of it in the cold air.

Soren straightened. Touched the blood at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked at Theron with something assembling itself into contempt, still assembling when he spoke.

“Everyone in this pack knows she spent years running after me. You want a woman who begged for someone else’s attention?”

Theron hit him again, harder.

“The next one will break something,” he said, with a quiet that was far worse than volume. “And I’d recommend you think carefully before you speak about her again.”

Soren picked up his dignity, what was left of it, and walked stiffly toward the gate. I watched him go. He didn’t look back, which probably cost him.

Theron held out my coat. His right hand had split at the knuckle, blood already surfacing.

“I need you to know there was nothing between us,” I said, starting to pull the coat on. “No marking, nothing formal, I know what it looked like but I want to be clear—”

“You don’t have to explain it.” He said it gently enough. “I’m not worried about it.”

“I know, but I’d like to finish—”

“Fable.” He was already turning toward the car. “It doesn’t matter. I trust you. Let’s go.”

I followed him.

He’d meant it kindly. I knew he’d meant it kindly. He’d defended me without hesitation, he’d said the right thing to his family, and now he was walking to his car and trusting me completely, which should have felt like exactly enough.

There had been more I wanted to say. Not to convince him of anything — he’d already believed me. Something else. Something about who I had been in that other life, about what the years with Soren had done to the shape of me, about the particular texture of arriving here having carried all of that.

He hadn’t wanted to hear it. Not from carelessness — he just didn’t see why it needed saying.

I got in the car. The door closed, solid and warm. I looked out the window and let it go.

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