Chapter 159

Lila

The door to Damon’s study gave under my hand with a soft groan, and the smell hit me first: ink, wax, steel oil, and him. Always him.

The room was half-shadowed despite the daylight, the tall windows crosshatched with lattice that carved the sun into bars across the floor.

The bars felt appropriate.

He looked up from the desk, a quill paused in his hand. Calm. That made me want to rip every map off his wall and slap the serenity off his face.

“Lila,” he said, like my name might coax me into gentleness.

“Are you marrying Elena?”

No preamble. No pleasantries or how are yous. The words came out raw and ugly, and I didn’t care.

Something flickered in his eyes that was there and gone just as quickly. He set the quill down with infuriating care, aligning it against the inkwell as if tidiness could save him from this conversation.

“Where did you—”

“—Answer the question.” My voice shook and I bit down hard on the trembling to keep it from taking over my whole body. I stepped farther into the room, the door swinging shut behind me with a click that sounded like a lock.

He stood. The movement was slow, measured, a king rising rather than a man startled. “There are… discussions.”

Discussions?

My laugh scraped out of me, brittle as my bones these days. “Discussions,” I repeated. “Is that what we call a wedding now?”

He held my gaze and said nothing. The silence between us swelled until I could hear everything in the room: the scratch of a branch against the outside glass, the muted murmur of guards beyond the door, the quick rabbit-beat of my own heart.

“Tell me it’s a rumor.” I took another step, the bar of sunlight cutting across my skirts. “Tell me you didn’t let me sit in those rooms, alone, while you proposed marriage to my sister.”

His jaw tightened. “Nothing is final.”

Final. Not ‘untrue.’ Not ‘never.’ The words were a final slap in the face.

“Why?” My voice fractured on the single syllable. The anger held me upright, but beneath it I wasn’t sure how long I would stay that way.

“Because my wolf is quiet? Because the council wants a better bloodline? We do have the same father, remember? It is because I’m easier to lock away than to fight for?”

He exhaled, long and harsh through his nose, like he was reining something in. “This isn’t about any of that.”

“Then what is it about?” I demanded. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you decided I was a problem and Elena is a solution.”

Zane’s presence brushed the frayed edges of our bond for a fleeting moment: thin, distant, restless... and angry?

Damon’s eyes darkened into a storm contained, and for a heartbeat I felt it: the urge in him to cross the distance, to gather, to claim. But he stayed put.

“You’re not a problem,” he said, low. “You’re—”

“—Don’t.” The word came out a whisper, all the air from my lungs gone. I didn’t any more lies through omission. I wanted the truth, sharp and clean.

“Did you ever intend to choose me? Truly choose me, Damon. Not because I was convenient or you marked me out of desperation. Me.”

His throat worked. He looked past me, just for a second, at something I couldn’t see. When his eyes came back to mine, they were steady. Guarded.

“There are games at work you don’t see,” he said. “Threats you don’t know.”

“Because you won’t tell me.” Heat flared, burning away the tremor in my knees. “You don’t trust me to be a true mate; you’ll just lock me in your rooms and call it protection.”

“It is protection,” he snapped, the mask cracking. “You think I wanted guards outside your door? You think I wanted—”

“I think you wanted control.” The words surprised me with how calm they sounded. “And when you couldn’t control me, you controlled my walls.”

The silence after that was different. Wider.

Damon took a step toward me and I felt the pull of him like the tide.

Another step, slower. The sun slid across his cheekbone, gilding the shallow scar at his brow.

He stopped an arm’s length away, as if there was an invisible line his body refused to cross without permission. And I no longer knew how to give it to him without losing myself completely.

“If there were another way,” he said softly, “I would take it.”

“Another way to what?” I asked. “To keep me and marry her? To hide me away like some shameful mistake and feel better about yourself in the morning? You have to know people are whispering about the ‘broken wolf you have locked in the tower’…”

His mouth opened, closed. He looked… tired. Not the battlefield kind, but the kind of tired that crawled under the skin and took up residence.

But I had carried my own tired for weeks, and his didn’t absolve him.

“I have stood in front of your enemies, your council, your court, taking hit after hit because I thought we were on the same side. I thought you were fighting for me.” My voice rose, echoing off the stone.

He flinched like the words had struck him, but it was too late.

“Say it,” I whispered. My hands had curled into fists without my noticing; nails bit into my palms and I welcomed the sting. “Say you love me. Or say you don’t. But stop standing there like the truth might be the end of me. I. Am. Not. Weak.”

His breath caught.

In the pause that followed, the world narrowed to the space between us: to the salt of dried tears at the corner of my mouth, the faint scent of ink and smoke on his shirt, the memory of his hands on my back the last time we joined together.

He could have ended it then. He could have lied, even. He could have saved us both with a single word.

But he was struck dumb. And I couldn’t feel the bond between us to know how he felt.

“Right,” I said, and the word broke. I nodded like we’d just concluded polite business. “Understood.”

A sound scraped out of him, rough, almost words. He reached, instinct faster than judgment, and I flinched before his hand could touch me. The recoil hurt worse than if he’d actually grabbed me.

“Lila,” he said, as if the name could rewind the last five minutes.

“No,” I said. My vision had gone too fuzzy at the edges, fatigue threatening to take me under. “You don’t get to keep me in the dark and then ask me to be gentle with your feelings.”

I stepped back. The skirts caught on the heel of my bare foot and I stumbled; I hated that he moved in the same instant, pure reflex, to steady me. I caught myself on the corner of his desk instead.

“I hope,” I said, and found there was nothing left to wish for. “I don’t know what I hope.”

I felt violently out of place, a ghost trespassing in the rooms of the living.

I turned before he could see me cry. The door fought me for half a second, swollen at the jamb, and then gave.

“Lila.” His voice this time was quiet, almost wrecked.

Behind me, the door eased shut with a soft click. It sounded like the end of our story. And yet, somehow, I knew it wasn’t, if the ache under my ribs meant anything.

The guards stationed outside straightened as I passed, their gazes sliding away quickly, as if they’d heard every word and wanted no part of the aftermath.

I kept walking.

I had come here with questions, with the desperate need for truth, thinking if I could just get him to say it aloud, the pieces might finally fit together.

Something inside me fractured.

It was enough to make my throat burn. Enough to send me walking faster, each step carrying me further from the male I thought was my mate.

I didn’t know where I was going. Only that I had to move before I turned back and begged him for something he clearly couldn’t give.