Chapter 84

Sienna’s POV

My wolf had just spoken to me.

Say something again, I whispered desperately, greeted only by silence. It was gone once more.

I looked back at Asher — Alaric; it’s Alaric now — hoping my wolf would say something, anything, again.

Nothing.

Instead, the baby shifts, ever so slightly, and I stifle a gasp, swallowing it before it can come out.

“Sienna?” Lucius frowned, turning towards me, concern written all across his face.

“I’m fine. This is just a lot.” My eyes traveled over to Alaric again, finding him already watching me. My stomach did a thousand backflips at once, sending an unpleasant wave of nausea through me.

Don’t get sick, don’t get sick, I begged myself, faintly tasting that familiar acidic flavor at the back of my throat.

Concern flickered across Alaric’s face from across the room, though he didn’t move any closer, respecting the boundaries I’d put in place.

“I’m sure he wants to talk to you,” Lucius said gently, following my gaze to Alaric. “But you know you don’t have to.”

“I do though,” I whispered back, my words being forced from my throat. “Because no matter what, I still care, somewhere deep inside me, beyond all the pain of the lies.”

“Then talk to him.” Lucius let my arm free, nodding slightly. “Give yourself closure.”

I think back to Alaric’s letter, the threat of tears swelling with the ache that formed in the back of my throat.

Lucius said he’d be close, to find him when I needed him, and then left me alone. The whispers had turned into a dull droning around me, the stares not bothering me one bit.

Because when I stared at Alaric, he was really all that I could see. To me he would always be Asher Blake, the beloved gamma of Nightwind, the man who stepped up for me when no one else would.

Maybe I could be mad at him, and hate him a little bit — but I could never truly hate him, even if I wasn’t capable of forgiving him completely.

It wasn’t your secret to be told, my conscience mumbled its reasoning to me, drilling the idea into my head.

I looked back up to him, startled to find him only a few feet away, smiling nervously.

“Hi,” he said carefully, testing the waters. “Is it…okay to talk?”

For a long beat, all I could do was stare at him, memorizing the lines of his face all over again, his perfectly carved jaw, piercing blue eyes and full lips. It felt like forever since I’d seen them all up close, leaving me thirsty for a refresher.

“Yes,” I said after a moment, finally meeting his eyes, ignoring the flips my stomach was doing. Blood roared in my ears, the pounding of my heart so loud I was sure he could hear it too.

Hopefully he can’t sense the babies too, I thought nervously. The less I thought about it, the less he’d catch on.

“Could we go out to the gardens?” He glanced around with a cool look on his face, eyeing the people who were already eyeing us. A few of them looked away as his gazed moved over them, but a few brave ones just stared back, unafraid of being nosy.

“Yeah, why don’t we,” I muttered, looking away from the crowd, growing tired of the whispers already, yet I’d hardly been at the event long at all.

This was going to be one hell of a rough night.

I followed Alaric out into the plaza adjacent to the ballroom, which was surprisingly empty. He nodded to some guards standing by the doors we’d come out from, and they closed it behind them, standing guard on the inside.

Good. Privacy.

Alaric led us over to a gazebo in the opposite corner which had a few plushy chairs scattered within it. I took one of them, staying quiet as he sat in the one closest to me, looking out over the plaza for a few quiet beats.

“I read your letter,” I said softly, avoiding looking at him, too. My pulse thrummed faster in overdrive the longer I sat there.

“I really am sorry,” he whispered, the pain in his eyes hurting me to see. At least I knew he really meant it.

“Yeah,” I croaked out, struggling to find the right words.

“I imagine you want to know about your parents.” He didn’t ask it — he already knew the answer was yes.

He sighed, reliving the memory obviously hard for him.

“There was a rogue attack, and I knew about it — well, suspected it. Days before.” He took a stuttering breath in, sounding like he was honestly about to cry.

My throat ached, but I refused to let myself cry.

“Scouts had been tracking rogues all across the continent, watching for any sign of threat. One group was straying awfully close — closer than we were comfortable with.”

I listened, hardly allowing myself to breathe, so afraid I’d miss a word of the explanation I’d waited so long to hear.

“That’s when we should have warned everyone in Nightwind.”

But you didn’t. I chose to fill in his unspoken words in my head.

“When the rogues attacked within a few hours, I realized the huge mistake I’d made in not sending out a pre-warning.” He sighed, steadying his voice.

It wasn’t what I’d expected to hear. For all the time I’d been under the impression it was Alaric’s fault, I’d imagined something so much worse. A personal plot to kill them, all on purpose.

Except it wasn’t like that at all. Alaric blamed himself for a simple mistake — one any of us could make at any time.

“Alaric,” I whispered, addressing him that way for the first time. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“But if I’d warned them…” he trailed off, the agony in his voice making me want to reach out to him.

“Anyone could make that mistake. I thought…I thought you’d planned to kill them in cold blood.” My hands and feet were tingling, that nausea fighting its way through my gut.

“Never,” he sighed, clearing his throat. “I loved your parents like they were my own.”

“Then why would the King blame this all on you like he did?” My brows creased together, sensing there was a whole side to this that I didn’t know, a labyrinth of secrets spreading out before me.

“Because — ”

The sound of the doors opening across the plaza stopped him mid-sentence, and Simon emerged, waving to me with a somber look on his face.

I was instantly pressed with nerves.

“Is everything okay?” I called out, sweat beading at my temples.

“The King is asking to see you,” Simon said with an agitated look in his eye. It was obvious he didn’t like the thought of that either.

As though he didn’t trust the King.

“Be careful,” Alaric whispered, the unease in me growing. “And don’t — ”

“Don’t believe him. I know.” The tiniest of smiles pricked at the corners of my mouth as I stood, unsure how to process what I’d just heard from him.

So I followed Simon to the other side of the plaza, away from the ballroom, and towards the heart of the palace to talk to the King.