Chapter 18 018

Chapter 18 018


ISABELLA

The flowers Kaelan had brought me three days ago were already dying.

I hadn't asked anyone to change the water. I'd watched them wilt from the chair by the window and said nothing about it because saying something meant admitting I'd noticed and noticing meant I cared and I wasn't supposed to care about dead flowers.

I cared about everything lately. That was the problem.

I heard him come in just after nine. The front door, his keys on the table by the entrance, his footsteps down the hall. I knew his sounds the way you know them after years of wanting someone and then finally having them. Every step, every pause, every variation that told you what kind of mood was coming through the door before you even saw his face.

Tonight's footsteps were the bad kind.

He came into the sitting room and looked at me and didn't say anything at first. Just stood there with his jaw tight and his eyes somewhere between tired and angry.

"Where were you," I said.

"Meeting."

"Which meeting."

"Pack business, Isabella."

I looked at him. "It's almost ten."

"I know what time it is."

I stood up from the chair. "You've been out every night this week. You came home twice past midnight and both times you smelled like—"

"Don't," he said.

"Like what then," I said. "Tell me what I'm smelling."

"I said don't." His voice dropped. That low warning tone I had heard him use on packhouse staff, on ranked wolves who pushed too far. He had never used it on me before.

Something tightened in my chest.

"I'm your Luna," I said. "I have a right to know where you are."

He looked at me then. Really looked, the way he used to when we were sneaking around and every look felt loaded with everything we couldn't say out loud yet. Except now it wasn't that. Now it was something else entirely.

"Sit down," he said.

"I don't want to sit down."

"Isabella." He said my name like a door closing. "Sit down."

I sat.

He stayed standing. Ran a hand through his hair and looked at the ceiling for a second like he was collecting something.

"There's news from the Vael territory," he said.

I went still.

"Nicholas went there two days ago," he said. "To get Meira back."

"I know that," I said. "Your mother told me."

"He came back alone."

I looked at him. "So."

"So Meira is still there," he said. "She's not coming back. Darius Vael isn't giving her up and she's not asking to leave."

I felt something move through me that I didn't want to name. Not quite jealousy, something nastier than that. More like the particular feeling of a thing you thought was finished turning out not to be.

"She made her choice," I said. "She left."

"She left because we gave her nothing to stay for," he said.

I stared at him. "We."

He looked at me.

"Don't you dare say we," I said. "You rejected her. You brought me here. You put that necklace around my neck and you stood up in front of your whole pack and you made me your Luna. That was you, Kaelan. Not we."

"And now the Lycan King has her," he said. "Do you understand what that means? Vael and Nicholas have history going back fifteen years. Meira being in that house is not just Meira being in that house. It's a political move. It's a weapon."

"Against Nicholas," I said. "Not against us."

"Nicholas is my father in law," he said. "Or he will be. Our families are linked now whether you like how it happened or not. What touches him touches us."

I looked at him standing there talking about politics and weapons and fifteen year old history and I felt something cold settle over me.

This was not what I had imagined.

I had wanted Kaelan for as long as I could remember. Wanted him the way you want something that belongs to someone else, desperately and shamefully and completely. And when the chance came I had taken it. I had done everything I needed to do to make him see me instead of her and it had worked.

But standing here now in this sitting room with the dead flowers on the table and his jaw tight and his eyes somewhere else I was starting to understand something I had not understood before.

Getting the thing you want is not the same as having it.

"You feel guilty," I said.

He looked at me. "What."

"About Meira." I kept my voice even. "You feel guilty about what you did to her and now that she's in Vael's house you're making it about politics because that's easier than admitting it."

Something moved across his face.

"Don't," he said.

"Why not," I said. "Because it's true?"

"Isabella—"

"She's carrying your children," I said. The words came out before I could stop them, flat and sharp. "She's in another man's house carrying your children and you're standing here telling me it's about politics."

The room went very quiet.

Kaelan looked at me and for the first time since I had been in this house I couldn't read his face at all. Couldn't find the angle or the tell or the version of him I knew how to handle.

"Go to bed," he said quietly.

"Don't tell me to go to bed."

"I'm not doing this tonight."

"You don't get to decide when we do this," I said. "You brought me here. You made me Luna. You don't get to check out every time something gets difficult."

He walked out.

Not a slam, not a scene. Just walked out of the sitting room and down the hall and I heard the study door close and that was it.

I stood there in the quiet with the dead flowers and the empty room and the sound of my own breathing.

I had won. That was what I kept telling myself. I had wanted him and I had him and I had won.

I sat back down in the chair and pulled my knees up and looked at the dead flowers and didn't call anyone to change the water.

Outside the packhouse was quiet and dark and somewhere out there in a territory I'd never been to, Meira was sleeping in the Lycan King's house.

And for the first time since all of this started I couldn't tell myself with any certainty that I was the one who had come out ahead.