Chapter 278

Chapter 278

Logan did not answer quickly enough.

That was the answer before any words came.

Drea felt it settle in her stomach, cold and certain, as he stood across the room with that brutal stillness she had once mistaken for indifference. His face did not change, but his silence did. It thickened. It pressed against every breath in the room until even the fire seemed too loud.

She had asked him twice.

Did you kill my brother and sister?

He looked at her, and for a moment there was no Alpha there. No conqueror. No man with a pack at his back and winter in his blood. There was only Logan, trapped in the space between what he had done and what he could still say without destroying whatever had shifted between them after his story.

Drea’s hands curled against the sides of her dress. “Say something.”

His jaw flexed. “Drea.”

“No,” she said at once. Her voice shook, but she did not look away. “Do not say my name like it is an answer. They had nothing to do with your father. They had nothing to do with Project X. My sister was a child. My brother was just…” Her throat closed, and she forced the rest out. “He was not an Alpha. He was not part of those decisions.”

Logan’s eyes sharpened faintly, and she saw the flicker of something close to pain before he locked it down. “War does not move cleanly.”

The words hit wrong.

Drea flinched as if he had touched her.

Logan saw it. His mouth tightened. “That was not what I meant.”

“It sounded exactly like what you meant.”

He took one step toward her, then stopped, as if he had remembered she might step back. She did not. She stood there with her heart beating too fast and her stomach twisting around the secret he still did not know.

“I did not enter Westside counting children,” he said, his voice low. “I went in for the Alphas. I went in for the men who built Project X, hid Lorne, funded Robert’s labs, and sat behind polished tables while they decided my family deserved to be erased.”

“And everyone else got caught in your revenge.”

His nostrils flared. “Yes.”

The honesty was worse than a defense.

Drea stared at him, eyes burning. She wanted him to deny it. She wanted him to tell her he had saved them, hidden them, spared them, anything. Instead he stood there and gave her the truth in pieces too heavy to hold.

“Were you there?” she asked. “When they died?”

Logan’s gaze dropped for the first time.

Drea’s breath caught.

He looked back up. “I do not know.”

A hard laugh broke from her. “You do not know?”

“I did not personally kill your sister,” he said, each word careful. “I did not personally kill your brother. But I gave the order that brought death to Westside. I cannot stand here and pretend that separates me from it.”

Drea’s anger faltered under the weight of that. He had not given her the clean answer she wanted. He had given her something uglier. Responsibility without the comfort of certainty.

She pressed a hand to her stomach before she could stop herself.

Logan’s gaze followed the movement at once.

Drea froze.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“You touched your stomach.”

“I am fine.”

“You went pale.”

“I said I am fine.” Her voice came too sharp, and she hated the panic that slipped through. She turned away, needing space from him, from the question, from the way he looked at her as if he could read every lie under her skin.

Logan did not move closer. “You should rest.”

Drea glanced back at him. “That is what you have to say now?”

“It is what is needed now.”

“Needed by whom?”

“By you.”

She scoffed softly, but there was no strength in it. “How convenient.”

His expression hardened, though his voice stayed controlled. “You are shaking. You have been unwell for days. You just froze the blanket without meaning to, and you are asking questions that could keep both of us here until morning. We can tear each other open later. Right now, you need to sleep.”

Drea hated that he had noticed the blanket. She hated that he was right about her shaking. She hated that some part of her wanted him to cross the room and make the world quiet for a minute, even after what he had admitted.

“I do not need you managing me,” she said.

“No,” he replied. “You need someone making sure you do not collapse because you are too stubborn to sit down when your body is warning you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “My body is none of your concern.”

For the first time, anger flashed cleanly across his face. “It became my concern the moment I brought you here.”

“That is not romantic.”

“I was not trying to be.”

“Good.”

“Good,” he said, and his voice sharpened. “Then hear me plainly. We cannot afford you to have more problems in the future.”

Drea went still.

There it was.

His concern wrapped in control. His fear disguised as command. His tenderness, if that was what this was, made ugly by the way he delivered it.

“We,” she repeated quietly.

Logan looked at her as if he realized too late how much weight the word carried.

Drea’s hand drifted once more toward her stomach, and this time she caught herself halfway and lowered it. He saw that too. Of course he did.

His voice changed. “Drea.”

“I am tired,” she said before he could ask again. She stepped away from him and moved toward the bed, every inch of her body aware of his attention. “You wanted me to rest. I will rest.”

He watched her for several seconds. “I will have Alice check on you in the morning.”

“Do what you like.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the answer you are getting.”

Logan’s jaw flexed again, but he did not push. Maybe he was learning. Maybe he was too exhausted to fight another front tonight. He turned toward the door, then paused with his hand near the handle.

“I did not enjoy what happened to Westside,” he said quietly.

Drea’s fingers tightened around the bedpost.

He did not turn back. “That may not matter to you. It may not change anything. But it is true.”

Then he left.

Drea stood alone in the room, the fire low, the damp patch on the blanket cooling near her hand. She wanted to cry, but nothing came. Her grief had too many directions now. Her father had been evil. Her home had still been her home. Logan had been wronged. Logan had also destroyed people who had nothing to do with his pain. Her body was changing, and something cold inside her was waking without permission.

She lay down because standing began to feel impossible.

Sleep came with no mercy.

In the dream, the room was white.

Not the Snow Palace. Not Westside. Not anywhere she recognized.

Just white. Walls, floor, air, all of it blurred together until she could not tell where anything began. Her breath came out in mist. The cold did not hurt her. It should have. She knew it should have, but instead it moved under her skin like it belonged there.

Logan stood several feet away from her.

He was not looking at her.

Blood ran down his shirt.

Drea tried to speak, but her mouth would not open. She tried to move, but her feet stayed locked to the floor. Logan lifted his head slowly, and the look in his eyes made fear tear through her chest.

Not anger.

Betrayal.

She looked down.

There was something in her hand.

A sword.

No. Not a sword exactly. A long, narrow blade, cold enough that frost gathered over her fingers. The tip was buried in Logan’s chest.

Her body refused to move, but the blade was in her grip. Her hand was wrapped around the hilt. His blood slid down over her knuckles, warm against the cold.

Logan’s mouth moved.

She could not hear him.

She tried to let go.

Her fingers tightened instead.

Panic ripped through her. She fought her own body, fought the dream, fought the impossible weight of the weapon in her hand. Logan staggered forward one step, and the blade went deeper.

This time she heard him.

“Drea.”

She woke with a violent gasp.

The room was dark. The fire had burned down to red coals, and the blankets were tangled around her legs. Her nightdress clung to her skin with sweat despite the chill in the room. For a moment she could still feel the hilt in her palm. She opened her hand and stared at it, expecting blood.

There was none.

Only frost.

Thin, glittering frost along her fingers.

Drea sat up slowly, breathing hard. Her stomach turned. The baby, the cold, Logan bleeding in the dream, her hand on the weapon. None of it made sense, but her body reacted as if it had seen a future instead of a nightmare.

She could not stay in the room.

She slipped out of bed, pulled a robe over her nightdress, and stepped into the corridor. The guard near her door straightened, but she lifted a hand before he spoke.

“I need air,” she said.

He hesitated.

She looked at him. “I said I need air.”

The guard bowed his head and let her pass, though she felt his eyes follow her all the way down the hall.

The palace was quieter at night, but not asleep. Drea heard distant footsteps, low voices, the faint crackle of fires behind closed doors. She moved without thinking toward the terrace, drawn by the thin line of cold air slipping under the outer doors.

She pushed one open.

The night met her at once.

Snow drifted beyond the railing, soft and steady, silver under the moon. Drea stepped onto the terrace and wrapped her robe tighter around herself.

Then she heard the sound.

A heavy impact.

Then another.

And another.

She turned.

At the far end of the terrace, beneath the partial shelter of the stone archway, Logan was punching a suspended training bag in the dark. Shirtless. Barefoot. Hair damp with sweat despite the cold. His shoulders flexed with each strike, muscles shifting under scarred skin, breath coming hard through clenched teeth.

He hit the bag again.

“Fuck,” he muttered, low and vicious.

Another strike.

The bag swung back. He met it with a brutal punch that would have broken bone if it had landed on a man.

“Fuck.”

Drea stood frozen.

There was violence in him, yes. But this was not the clean violence of an Alpha performing control. This was a man trying to beat something out of himself and failing.

He looked up.

Their eyes met across the terrace.

The cold between them felt alive.

For one breath, neither spoke. Drea saw the blood on his knuckles, the sweat on his chest, the fury still locked in his jaw. Logan saw her robe, her bare feet, and whatever terror had not left her face since waking.

His expression shifted.

“Drea?”

She shook her head.

Not because she was answering him.

Because she had no answer for anything.

She stepped back, turned, and returned to her room without another word. The guard looked at her strangely when she passed, but she ignored him, shut the door behind her, and leaned back against it.

Her palm still felt cold.

Her chest still hurt.

And the image of Logan dying with her hand on the blade would not leave.

Drea pressed both hands over her stomach and whispered into the dark.

“What was that dream about?”