Chapter 22 022

Chapter 22 022
MEIRA

He looked terrible.

That was the first thing I noticed. Not in a satisfying way, not the way I might have imagined it in the first few days after everything fell apart when I was still raw enough to want him to be suffering. Just — he looked like a man who hadn't been sleeping and had been carrying something heavy for a while and it showed.

He was standing when I came in. Stood up the moment I walked through the door like he'd been waiting for it.

Darius said something about being outside and then he was gone and it was just us.

I stopped a few feet into the room and looked at Kaelan and he looked at me and neither of us said anything for a moment.

Four years. Four years I had loved this man. Had organized my whole life around him, his pack, his mother's expectations, his needs, his future. Had stayed when it was hard and stayed when it was harder and told myself every time that it meant something, that what we had was real even when it felt thin.

Standing here now looking at him I felt — not nothing. I wanted to feel nothing. Nothing would have been cleaner. But it wasn't nothing. It was something older and quieter than anger, the particular ache of looking at someone who used to be your whole world and realizing they've become just a person. Just a man standing in a room looking at you with tired eyes.

"Meira," he said.

"Kaelan," I said.

He looked at his hands for a second then back up at me. "I don't know where to start."

"Start wherever," I said. "I'm not going anywhere."

He nodded. Looked at me straight.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For all of it. The way I handled everything, the rejection, throwing you out the way I did. All of it." He paused. "I know sorry doesn't fix it. I know that. I'm not here expecting it to fix anything. I just needed you to hear it from me directly because you deserved that much at least."

I looked at him. "You knew," I said. "Didn't you. Some part of you knew before Isabella came back that what we had wasn't working. And instead of talking to me about it you just — waited. Waited until there was a reason and then used it."

He didn't look away. "Yes," he said quietly. "That's true."

"Why," I said. "Why couldn't you just talk to me."

He was quiet for a moment. "Because talking to you meant admitting I was the problem," he said. "That the bond wasn't weak because of you, it was weak because I wasn't giving it what it needed. And I didn't want to face that." He paused. "So when Isabella came back I told myself it was the pack, the heir, all the things that made it sound like a decision instead of a choice I made because it was easier."

I stood there and took that in.

It was honest. More honest than I had expected from him. More honest than he had been with me in four years of marriage.

Funny how people found their honesty when it was too late for it to change anything.

"I'm pregnant," I said. "You know that."

"Yes."

"Twins," I said. "Your twins. I found out right after you rejected me. Rose told me in the infirmary while you were still in the packhouse with her."

Something crossed his face. Pain, real and unguarded, there and gone.

"I know," he said. "I found out after." He looked at me. "I'm sorry, Meira. I'm sorry they're going to grow up not knowing — I'm sorry for the situation I put you in. All of it."

I looked at him for a long moment.

"What do you want," I said. "Not the apology, I hear it. What do you actually want from coming here."

He held my gaze. "I want to know my children," he said. "That's it. I'm not asking you to come back. I'm not asking for anything from you personally. I just — they're mine. And I want to know them."

I stood there with that.

Part of me wanted to say no. Wanted to be hard about it, wanted to make him feel the full weight of what he had done before I gave him anything. That part was still there, still hurting, still angry underneath everything else.

But my children had a father. Whatever he had done to me they had a father and growing up without knowing him because of choices adults made before they were even born — that wasn't something I could do to them. That wasn't the kind of mother I wanted to be.

"I'm not going to make that easy for you," I said. "You don't get to walk in and out of their lives when it suits you. If you want to know them you show up. Consistently. Not when you feel guilty and not when it's convenient."

"I know," he said.

"And you don't get to use them to get to me," I said. "Whatever you feel about this situation, whatever guilt or regret you're carrying, that's yours. You don't put that on them."

"I won't," he said.

"I mean it, Kaelan."

"I know you do," he said. "I'm not arguing with any of it. Whatever you need, whatever terms you set, I'll work with them."

I looked at him. He meant it. I could hear it the same way I had always been able to hear the truth in him when he bothered to use it.

"We're not friends," I said. "I don't know if we ever get there. Right now we're two people who made children together and have to figure out how to be decent to each other for their sake."

"That's enough," he said. "That's more than I came here expecting."

I nodded once.

We stood there for a moment, the conversation settling around us, everything said that needed to be said.

I looked at him and felt that thing again, that quiet ache, smaller now than it had been, smaller than it had been yesterday even. Grief did that. You didn't get over it, it just got smaller by degrees until one day you picked it up and it didn't weigh what it used to.

"You look terrible," I said.

Something shifted in his face. Almost a smile. "I know."

"Isabella giving you trouble."

He looked at me. "That's not—"

"I'm not asking to be cruel," I said. "I just — I spent four years in that house and I know what it looks like when things aren't right."

He was quiet for a moment. "It's complicated," he said.

"It usually is," I said.

He nodded slowly. Looked at me with something in his eyes that was harder to read. "Are you okay," he said. "Actually okay. Not the version you show people."

I thought about that. About the heartbeats I had heard, the morning walk with Darius, the letter my father didn't know I knew about, all the things that had happened in the last two weeks.

"I'm getting there," I said. "Better than I was."

"He treats you well," Kaelan said. Not a question exactly. "Vael."

I held his gaze. "Yes."

He nodded. Something in him settling, or accepting, I couldn't tell which. "Good," he said quietly. "That's — good."

I looked at him for a moment longer.

"You should go," I said. Not harsh. Just final.

"I know." He didn't move right away. "I'll reach out when the time is right. About the children. I'll do it properly."

"Make sure you do," I said.

He looked at me one last time. Something in his face that I didn't have a name for, something between regret and resignation and the particular look of a man watching a door close that he left open too long.

Then he nodded and walked out.

I stood in the middle of the study and listened to his footsteps down the hall, the front door, the sound of a car starting on the drive.

Then quiet.

I stood there for a moment with my hand on my stomach.

That's done, I told them. That part is done.

The door opened behind me. I turned.

Darius was standing in the doorway. He looked at me, taking in my face, reading it the way he always did. Not pushing, not asking, just — looking.

"Okay?" he said.

I thought about it. Really thought about it.

"Yes," I said. "Actually yes."

He nodded once and stepped back from the door, giving me the space to walk out when I was ready.

I took one more breath. Then I walked towards the door