Chapter 21 021

Chapter 21 021

DARIUS

Rhen came into the study

He had that look. The one that meant something had happened that I wasn't going to like.

"Kaelan's at the gate," he said.

I looked up from the papers on my desk. "Alone?"

"Alone. No pack men, no Beta, nothing. Just him in a car."

I sat back in my chair and looked at the window for a moment.

Kaelan. Here. I had expected Nicholas to make another move before this happened. Had expected more calls, more pressure on Castellan, maybe a formal challenge through the council. I had not expected Meira's ex mate to drive himself to my territory alone and show up at my gate like a man with nothing left to lose.

Which meant that was exactly what he was.

"Let him in," I said.

Rhen looked at me. "You sure."

"Turning him away looks like I have something to hide," I said. "Let him in. Bring him to the study. And keep Meira upstairs until I say otherwise."

Rhen nodded and left.

I put the papers away and sat back and waited.

He came in ten minutes later. Rhen showed him through the door and closed it behind him and it was just the two of us in the room.

I had seen Kaelan before. At the ceremony, briefly, across a crowded hall. Up close he was bigger than he looked from a distance. Broad through the shoulders, dark haired, the kind of face that probably got him everything he wanted for most of his life. He looked like a man who hadn't been sleeping well. There were shadows under his eyes and something tight around his jaw that hadn't been put there by one bad night.

Good.

He looked around the study once and then looked at me and didn't look away.

I didn't stand up. I stayed where I was behind the desk and let him be the one standing.

"Sit down," I said.

He sat. Slowly, like a man who was deciding whether to accept the invitation or not and chose to accept it on his own terms.

We looked at each other for a moment.

"You know who I am," I said.

"Darius Vael," he said. "Lycan King. Ironwood Pack was your father's."

So he'd done his research. That was something at least. He hadn't come here completely blind.

"Then you know why Meira is here," I said.

"I know your version of it," he said. "Nicholas's version is different."

"Nicholas's version is a lie," I said. "She came here on her own. She had nowhere else to go because of choices you made."

His jaw tightened. "I know what I did."

"Do you."

"Yes," he said. Flat and straight. No performance in it.

I looked at him. He wasn't trying to justify himself, wasn't coming in here with a story dressed up to make himself look better. That was either genuine or it was the smartest play he could have made walking into this room. I hadn't decided which yet.

"What do you want," I said.

"I want to see Meira."

"Why."

"Because she's carrying my children and I handled everything badly and she deserves to hear that from me directly."

I looked at him for a long moment. "That's it."

"That's it," he said.

"You're not here to take her back."

Something moved across his face. "I'm not here to take anything," he said. "She's not mine to take. She made her choice and I'm not here to argue with it." He paused. "I just need to see her. Talk to her. That's all I'm asking."

I studied him. The tiredness in his face, the set of his shoulders, the way he was sitting — all of it pointed at a man who had been sitting with something heavy for a while and had finally decided to do something about it even if he didn't know how it would land.

I had expected someone easier to dismiss. Someone who would come in here with entitlement and bluster, demanding things, giving me a reason to throw him out. This wasn't that.

That made it more complicated.

"You understand where you are," I said. "This is my territory. My house. Whatever happens here happens on my terms."

"I understand that," he said.

"And you understand that Meira is under my protection. That means nobody gets to her without going through me first. Not Nicholas, not you, not anyone."

"I'm not Nicholas," he said.

"No," I said. "You're the man who rejected her while she was pregnant and threw her out with one bag. Which in some ways is worse because Nicholas never pretended to love her."

The words landed. I watched them land. His face didn't crumble but something in it shifted, something that had been held tight giving slightly.

He didn't argue with it. That told me more than anything he could have said.

"I know," he said quietly. "I know what I did. I'm not here to defend it."

I looked at him for a moment longer. Then I stood up.

"Wait here," I said.

I left the study and went upstairs.

Meira's door was closed. I knocked once.

"Come in," she said.

I pushed the door open. She was sitting on the bed with a book open in her lap that she clearly hadn't been reading. She looked up at me and read my face immediately, the way she always did.

"What happened," she said.

"Kaelan is downstairs."

The book slid off her lap. She caught it before it hit the floor, set it beside her, and looked at me very carefully.

"Here," she said.

"In my study. Alone. No pack men."

She was quiet for a moment. I watched her process it, the way she always processed things, taking it in and turning it over before she spoke.

"What does he want," she said.

"To talk to you," I said. "He says he wants to apologize. That he handled everything badly and you deserve to hear it from him directly."

She looked at her hands in her lap.

"He's not here to take you back," I said. "He said that himself. He's not here to argue with your choices or make demands. He just wants to talk."

She was quiet for a long moment.

"Do you believe him," she said.

I thought about that properly. About the man sitting downstairs, the shadows under his eyes, the way he had taken everything I said without flinching or defending himself.

"Yes," I said. "I think he means what he says."

She nodded slowly. Looked back at her hands.

"It's your choice," I said. "Completely yours. You don't have to see him. I'll go back down there right now and put him back in his car and that's the end of it. You say the word."

She looked up at me. "And if I want to see him."

"Then I'll bring him up or take you down. Wherever you're more comfortable. I'll be close by the whole time."

She held my gaze. "You'd let me see him."

"It's not my place to stop you," I said. "He's the father of your children. Whatever he did, that doesn't change. If you want to hear what he has to say that's your right."

Something moved through her face. That look she got sometimes, the one I had started to recognize, when something surprised her in a way she hadn't been expecting.

She looked back at her hands for a moment.

"I'll see him," she said. "Down there. In the study."

I nodded. "Take your time. Come down when you're ready."

I pulled the door closed and went back downstairs.

Kaelan was where I'd left him, sitting in the chair, elbows on his knees, looking at the floor. He looked up when I came back in.

"She'll come down," I said. "When she's ready."

He exhaled. Something releasing in him.

"Thank you," he said.

I sat back down behind the desk and looked at him. "Don't thank me. This isn't a kindness. She chose to see you. That's the only reason you're still in this house."

He nodded.

We sat in silence for a few minutes. Not comfortable silence, not the kind Meira and I had found our way into. This was the silence of two men in a room with something unresolved between them, neither willing to fill it with anything that didn't need to be said.

Then Kaelan spoke.

"The children," he said. "My children. What happens to them. Growing up here."

I looked at him. "That's a conversation for you and Meira."

"I know," he said. "I'm asking what you think."

"What I think doesn't matter," I said. "They're not mine."

He looked at me steadily. "You're going to be around them. Whether you plan to be or not. You're going to be the man in the house and they're going to grow up knowing your face." He paused. "So what you think matters whether you want it to or not."

I looked at him for a long moment.

He wasn't wrong. I hadn't thought about it in those terms, not directly, but he wasn't wrong. If Meira stayed here, and right now there was no reason she wouldn't, then her children would grow up in this house. Would know this territory. Would know me.

I hadn't let myself follow that thought to where it went.

"They'll be safe," I said. "That's what I can tell you. Whatever else happens they'll be safe and they'll have what they need."

Kaelan looked at me for a moment. Then he nodded once, slowly, like that was enough for now.

The door opened.

Meira came in.

She had changed, a simple dark top, her hair down, and she was holding herself the way she always did when she was bracing for something — straight backed, chin level, that composure she wore like armor. But underneath it I could see the effort it was taking. The slight tightness around her eyes, the way her hands weren't quite still at her sides.

Kaelan stood up the moment she walked in.

They looked at each other across the room.

I stood up too. "I'll be outside," I said.

Neither of them looked at me.

I walked to the door and pulled it almost closed behind me and stood in the hallway.

I wasn't going to listen. That wasn't what this was. I was close in case she needed me and that was all.

But I stood there in the hallway with my back against the wall and the almost closed door between me and the two of them and I felt something I hadn't expected to feel.

Not jealousy. Not quite. Something adjacent to it. Something that came from the fact that there was a history in that room that had nothing to do with me, four years of it, and Meira was in there facing it alone and I was out here and couldn't do anything about that.

I stayed where I was.

The house was quiet around me, just the low sound of voices through the door, too muffled to make out words. I looked at the wall across from me and waited.

Whatever happened in that room was between them.

But I was going to be here when it was over.

That was the thing I was certain of. Whatever came out of that conversation, whatever she felt walking out of it, I was going to be standing here in this hallway and she was going to walk out and I was going to be the one she walked toward.