Chapter 179 Don’t Let It Hurt You

Chapter 179 Don’t Let It Hurt You

Soren

The cemetery was cold even though the sun was shining, and I stood beside Felix with Hope in my arms, wondering if he felt the cold the same way I did. He hadn’t spoken since we left the house—not during the drive, not during the ceremony, not even when the elders laid their hands on his shoulders and offered words that were meant to comfort but landed like stones on hard ground.

Donovan Dimitri was in the earth now, beside his ancestors, beside the woman who had died before Felix was old enough to remember her face. The grave was fresh and the soil dark, and the flowers on top of it were already beginning to wilt in the afternoon heat.

Felix stood at the edge of the grave with his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the headstone, and I watched him drift further away with every breath. He was right there, close enough to touch, but he felt miles distant.

Hope stirred in my arms and made a small whimpering sound, and I rocked her gently and whispered that everything was fine, that we would go home soon, that she didn’t have to understand any of this yet. She was too young to grasp that she would never meet her grandfather, that the man in the ground had been complicated and difficult and maybe incapable of love. I would tell her one day, when she was old enough to ask, but not now. Not today.

The ceremony ended, and the pack members filed past Felix to offer their condolences and their pledges of loyalty. He shook hands and nodded and said thank you in a voice that didn’t sound like his own. I stood behind him with Hope on my hip and watched the mask he wore when he was pretending to be strong.

Morrison was the last to leave. He shook Felix’s hand and looked at me with those old, tired eyes.

“Take care of him,” Morrison said. “He’s going to need you.”

“I know.”

But as we walked back to the car, with Felix’s silence stretching like a wall between us, I wasn’t sure I knew how.

\---

The drive home was quiet in the worst way. Felix stared out the window, and Hope slept in her car seat, and I watched the trees slide past and tried to remember the last time we had talked about something that wasn’t pack business or baby schedules or the next crisis waiting somewhere in the wings.

“Felix,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“Talk to me.”

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“You always have something to say.”

He was silent for a long moment, and when he finally spoke his voice was flat.

“He’s gone. My father is gone. And I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about that.”

“You don’t have to know yet.”

“I’m the Alpha now. I have to know everything now.”

I reached across the center console and laid my hand on his knee. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t lean into the touch either.

“You’re allowed to grieve. Even if you didn’t have a perfect relationship with him. Even if he hurt you. You’re allowed to miss him.”

Felix didn’t answer, and I pulled my hand back because it felt like I was touching a stranger.

\---

The house felt different when we came home. Bigger and colder and somehow emptier, even though nothing had changed except the absence of his father from the world. I put Hope down for a nap and went into the bedroom to take off the black dress I had worn to the funeral.

Felix stood at the window, still in his suit, still staring at nothing.

“Are you going to change?” I asked.

“Later.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him.

“You haven’t eaten all day.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Felix.”

He turned to face me, and I saw the exhaustion in his expression, the grief he was trying to hide, the fear he wouldn’t say out loud.

“What if I’m not good at this?” he asked. “What if I’m a terrible Alpha and the pack falls apart and everyone blames me?”

“Then you figure it out. You ask for help. You learn.”

“What if I turn into him?”

The question hung in the air between us, heavy and sharp.

“You won’t.”

“How do you know?”

I stood up and walked over to him, took his face in my hands, and forced him to look at me.

“Because you’re asking the question. He never did.”

Felix closed his eyes, and I felt his shoulders sink. I pulled him into a hug, and he held me so tightly I could barely breathe.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he said into my hair.

“You’re not going to lose me.”

But even as I said it, I could feel the distance that had grown between us—the small spaces he was filling with duty and silence and the weight of a crown he had never wanted to wear.

\---

That night Felix stayed up late in his study, going through papers and making calls and doing whatever Alphas did when they were trying to hold a pack together. I sat on the couch in the living room with Hope in my arms, watching the light under the door and waiting for him to come to bed.

He didn’t.

I fell asleep on the couch and woke at three in the morning to find him still in the study, the lamp still on, his head in his hands. I went to the door and watched him for a moment, and he looked up and noticed me.

“You should sleep,” he said.

“So should you.”

“I can’t.”

I walked into the room and sat on the edge of the desk, looking down at the papers in front of him. Council reports and budget proposals and letters from pack members who wanted things he wasn’t sure he could give them.

“Come to bed,” I said. “Even if you don’t sleep. Just lie down with me.”

Felix looked at me for a long moment, and something in his expression shifted.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“For being distant. For not talking to you. For letting all of this get between us.”

“Nothing is between us. We’re right here.”

He stood up and pulled me into his arms, and I rested my head against his chest and listened to his heartbeat.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you too.”