Chapter 44

Isla POV

The last phrase hit me like a blow.

I wanted to scream at him, to deny it, to silence the truth he was carving out of me but the words tangled in my throat, choking me.

I stumbled back, clutching the bark of the oak tree for steadiness. “Kieran, don’t-” My voice broke. “Don’t say that.”

The silence that followed was unbearable, filled only by the loud pounding of my heartbeat.

Keiran studied me, shadows crossing his expression, frustration flickering in his storm-gray eyes.

Then, slowly, he stepped back into the darkness.

“You can keep running,” he said, his voice fading with the night, “but eventually, you’ll have to choose. And when you do…” His gaze burned one final time into mine, “…you’ll realize it was never Tristan.”

The garden swallowed him whole, leaving me trembling in the moonlight.

Just like that, he was gone.

But his presence remained.

For a long moment, I couldn’t breathe. My fingers dug into the bark of the oak tree as though it could hold me upright.

But then my gaze dropped lower…. my stomach twisting.

Claw marks scored the trunk, deep grooves slashed into the wood where Keiran’s body had hovered. He hadn’t touched it.

I knew he hadn’t.

My eyes were on him the whole time.

And yet the bark was blackened, the edges singed faintly as if burned by lightning.

What the hell was this?

A warning?

Or proof that his control was slipping?

My pulse thundered in my ears, and before I could gather my thoughts, the mate bond inside me jerked.

It wasn’t the familiar warmth I’d known with Tristan…. this time, it was pain, sharp and searing, lashing across my chest.

I gasped, stumbling to my knees. My hand flew to the burning sensation present on my skin, heat flaring outward like a brand.

Instinctively, I thought of Tristan.

He had felt something.

He knew.

“Isla?” His voice carried faintly from the house, urgent even through the distance.

I could hear him clearly, even all the way out here.

Panic clutched at my chest. I pushed to my feet, smoothing my trembling hands over my dress, trying to calm my ragged breaths.

My chest still burned, but I forced my expression into something neutral, something harmless.

The last thing I could allow was for Tristan to see me like this….with faint marks in my chest, Keiran’s words echoing in my skull, and the bond itself screaming its protest.

I turned away from the tree, from the shadows, from everything that had just happened, and walked toward the house on legs that barely held me.

But deep down, I knew the truth I couldn’t bury anymore.

The bond was faltering. Keiran was right.

And Tristan…. He had felt it.

I still tasted the metallic tang of iron on my tongue when I stepped over the threshold, as if the whole experience left a bitter taste in my mouth.

The garden air clung to my skin… wet earth and something darker, Keiran’s cologne like an accusation on my skin.

I felt like a mistress sneaking through the night, her body vibrating with the tension of the illicit affair.

My fingers kept returning to my lips, running the pads of my fingers along the edges as if I could relive Kieran's lips on mine.

I shouldn't want him but I couldn't stop myself from doing so.

Inside the house, everything was arranged the way Tristan liked it… orderly quiet, an invisible map that told you where silence belonged and where laughter was allowed.

I have been here for less than two months yet it feels so foreign and alien to me.

I wanted to change the decor so I could feel more at home but after Tristan uttered vivianna's name when he was on me, I decided to leave everything in the way it was.

Something told me that this was the way Vivianna preferred it.

The lamps threw soft halos across the room and for a moment I wanted to believe we could step back into our normal: dinner, an estranged or stilted conversation… the rhythm we had been keeping for the past few weeks.

‘I know you felt it...’

What the hell did that mean?

Felt what…His touch?

The pack? The bond? I had tried to ignore his words and shove them aside but he kept creeping back or polite stubborn little bit weeds.

Tristan’s silhouette was angled at the window when I crossed the room.

He hadn’t turned, still staring out the window into the dark where the trees blended with the courtyard.

My mouth suddenly went dry.

The closer I came, the more uncomfortable I became.

I could feel him searching me the way wolves search for a wounded scent.

“You were out,” he said without turning.

My throat bobbed as I swallowed, unease lodged in my throat like a splinter.

“I—” I almost said the truth.

I almost told him I’d been in the garden trying to sort out the ache in my chest, trying to separate what was mine from what Keiran made me feel.

I almost said Keiran had said things that fit into the hollows I didn’t know I had.

I almost admitted everything.

Almost.

Instead, I wrapped my shawl securely around my body as if that would hide all my secrets and keep them at bay. “The air,” I said, my voice small and light. “I needed air.”

Tristan turned then, and the light carved his face into planes I wished I knew intimately, angles I’d only traced with my eyes in the dark.

He scanned me like the way you would look at a stranger, trying to measure if they were what the effort or not.

There was curiosity in his look but deeper than that, I could also send worry tangled up with something more dangerous….suspicion.

“You were in the garden.”

Not a question.

A statement.

My pulse stuttered. “Yes.”

The truth felt like stepping out onto ice. Slippery and full of potential to break.

He crossed the room in three steps. Up close I could see the small twitch at the corner of his mouth. The bond hummed inside me—only it didn’t roar.

It whispered, like an old radio losing signal. A hollow that used to be a drumbeat had thinned to a single thread.

When he reached for my hand, I waited for that familiar surge that used to answer him without words. Now there was a cold sensation, almost wrong feeling that greeted him.

“You’re shivering,” Tristan said, surprised and bitter at the same time.

“I’m fine.” My voice was razor sharp.

My fingers kept the scrap folded into a vice, fingertips white.

He drew my hand down, and when his thumb circled the closed fist, he paused, glancing up at him.

The air between us tightened like a tense wire. “What’s in your hand?”

At that question, I thought of what to say that sounded reasonable.