Chapter 57 SERA

Chapter 57 SERA
I had watched Zane rebuild himself once already.

I was sixteen when our father died. Zane had been twenty-two and suddenly the Alpha, and I had watched him take everything soft about himself and press it down until it stopped being visible. 

I hadn't resented him for it because I understood. You didn't carry a whole pack on your back and also let people see when your hands were shaking. But I had quietly held onto the version of him that used to laugh louder, because someone had to hold onto it and I was pretty sure it was going to matter again one day.

I was starting to think that day was getting close.

I knew the difference between Zane being careful with someone and Zane being present with someone. I knew the way his posture changed, and the way his shoulders eased up in a room when Nadia was there. 

It felt like he was paying attention to her in a way he never did with anyone else. I had been watching it for weeks before I knew everything, and I knew I just had to ask him about it when the time was right.

The time was apparently this particular Tuesday morning.

I found him in the kitchen before anyone else was awake. I made two coffees, walked over to where he was leaning against the counter, and handed him one with that particular expression I had been told by multiple people was very hard to argue with.

He looked at me, and immediately looked like he wanted to be somewhere else.

"Tell me where you're at with her," I said.

"Sera."

"Zane."

He took the coffee. He was quiet for a moment, looking at it, and I let him have the moment because I wasn't trying to catch him off guard. I just wanted the truth, and I knew he'd give it to me if I waited long enough.

"She's my mate," he said.

He said it simply, as if he'd been thinking about it long enough that the shock of it had worn off and now it was just a fact he knew.

"I knew it early on," he said. "I didn't want to know it." He looked at the cup. "Everything else happened and I still know it."

I wrapped my hands around my own mug and let that settle.

"Does she know?" I asked.

"She knows what she feels." He set his coffee down. "I don't think she knows or understands the rest of it yet."

I thought about that. I thought about a woman who had spent twenty-six years being handed a version of herself that someone else had decided on. Who was only right now, in the last few weeks, starting to find out who and what she actually was. 

Telling that person she was also someone's fated mate felt like a lot to pile on top of everything else.

"Give her time," I said.

Zane looked at me like I'd stated something completely obvious. "I know that."

"I know you know." I bumped my shoulder against his arm. "I'm just saying it so you know I know you know."

He smiled a little at that. 

"She's staying," he said.

I nodded. "I know that too."

And I did. I had known it before he said it, before things had fully blown open, maybe even before Nadia herself had fully committed to the idea. I was good at reading people. 

I had been reading Nadia from the beginning, from the first day she had walked into the facility with her hair pulled back tightly and her expression giving absolutely nothing away, and even then—even under all of it—there had been something in her that was tired. Not of the work, but because of carrying something heavy for a very long time.

Nadia had been pointed in the wrong direction for the longest time. She was only now turning around.

I had decided we were going to be friends approximately forty-eight hours after meeting her. I made that decision before I found out the truth, and the truth hadn't changed it. If anything the truth had made it clearer, had made me feel something fiercely protective that I recognized from the way I felt about Zane on his worst days. It felt just like I was saying, “I’m not letting you be alone in this.

I knew the friendship made things more complicated. I knew that when all of this was done, when Marcus and Ferguson were handled and the dust was settling, the fact that Nadia had walked in here as a hunter's asset was going to sit differently with different people. 

Some of them would hold it against her. Some of them were already holding it against her, quietly, even though they hadn't said it out loud yet. I was not going to be one of those people.

I'd made my decision and I was sticking to it.

"She's going to be okay," I said.

Zane didn't answer, but the way he looked at the counter said everything. He was thinking about it. He had been thinking about it. He was the kind of person who stayed up late turning worst-case scenarios over in his head so he was never caught off guard by them, and right now there were a lot of worst-case scenarios available.

"Zane," I said.

He looked at me.

"She picked us," I said. "She could have left. She could have handed Marcus everything he needed and walked out the door before any of us figured it out. She didn't. She picked us." I held his gaze. "Give yourself permission to trust that."

He was quiet for a moment. Then he asked, "When did you get like this?"

"I've always been like this," I said. "You just don't pay attention."

This time he smiled even wider. It was a real smile, the kind that made him look younger.

I turned back toward the window with my coffee.

Across the street, a man in a grey coat was standing on the corner with a phone to his ear, not moving. I glanced at him once. He didn't look up. He just stood there like he was waiting for something and wasn’t in a hurry about it.

I kept my voice calm. "You see him?"

"I’m already texting Dex," Zane said, phone in hand.

I looked down at my coffee and didn't say anything else.

Neither of us did.