Chapter 78 Old Wounds

Chapter 78 Old Wounds
Alexandria POV
I do not run. 
I walk. 
Because I have run before—down echoing corridors of marble, past servants who pretended not to see, past doors that closed too softly to ever be called slammed. I have fled whispers sharpened into judgments, fled the quiet shift in loyalty when a name loses favor. I have learned what it is to reach for a hand that once held firm—only to find it loosened. Withdrawn. Gone. 
I will not run now. 
But the image burns. My eyes sting with tears unshed. 
Moyrah close to him. 
Their heads inclined toward one another, voices low, shaped for each other and no one else. The softness in her expression—not weakness, but familiarity. The kind that comes from years, from shared history, from standing beside someone before they became what they are. 
The kind I cannot compete with. 
You are Roman. 
Blood does not change so easily. 
Carr’s words echo now with cruel precision, threading through thoughts I would rather dismiss. I had stood steady before him. Certain. 
Now all certainty fractures. 
When I enter the house, the hearth is low, its glow reduced to embers that pulse faintly in the dim. The air feels smaller than it did this morning, as though the walls have drawn closer without my noticing. 
I remove my cloak slowly, deliberately, giving my hands something to do. Something to anchor to. 
The door opens moments later. 
I do not turn immediately. I hear him step inside—the weight of his presence unmistakable, familiar in a way that should steady me. 
“Alexandria.” 
I face him then. 
“I didn’t mean to interrupt.” 
“You were not interrupting.” 
“It appeared otherwise.” 
His brow furrows, confusion flickering across his expression. 
“You think I—” 
“I don’t know what to think,” trying to calm my voice. 
That is the truth. 
And it terrifies me more than any certainty could. 
He steps closer, measured, as though approaching a scared animal that might shift if handled too roughly. 
“She spoke of change.” 
“I heard enough.” 
“Then you heard concern, not betrayal.” 
“Concern about me,” I say quietly. 
He exhales sharply, a thread of frustration slipping through. 
“This is not about you.” 
“It always becomes about me.” 
The words come softer than I intend, but they carry weight all the same. 
His gaze sharpens. “You assume too much.” 
“And you assume I do not see.” 
Silence thickens between us, heavy and pressing. 
I should stop. I know I should. 
But something old and jagged has already risen, and it does not retreat easily. 
“I have been replaced before,” I say before I can stop myself. 
The words taste like iron. 
“In Rome, loyalty lasted only until it was inconvenient. I will not be convenient here.” 
His expression shifts—not anger. Not yet. Something closer to confusion, as though he cannot quite grasp how we arrived here. 
“You are not convenient.” 
“That is not comfort.” 
“I chose you.  And I keep choosing you.” 
“And what if one day you choose differently?” 
His jaw tightens. 
“I am not Rome.” 
“I know that,” I whisper. “But fear does not reason.” 
He runs a hand through his hair, turning away for a moment, pacing once toward the hearth as though he needs distance to contain what is building. 
“You stand here questioning what I have shown every day.” 
“I question what I saw.” 
“You saw a conversation.” 
“I saw intimacy.” 
“There was none.” 
“Not to you.” 
The words land harder than I intend. 
His eyes flash, the first real spark of anger breaking through. 
“You doubt my loyalty?” 
“I doubt my security.” 
“That is not the same.” 
“It feels the same.” 
He exhales again—louder now, sharper, his restraint thinning. 
“I cannot keep proving what has already been proven.” 
“I did not ask you to.” 
“You imply it!” 
The room tightens further, the space between us no longer measured but strained. Words begin to collide instead of land, each one pushing rather than reaching. 
“You will not speak plainly,” I say, frustration rising despite my effort to contain it. “You shut down when it matters.” 
“And you assume when you fear.” 
“Yes,” I snap, the admission breaking free before I can soften it. “Because I have learned that if I do not prepare for abandonment, I am crushed by it.” 
The silence that follows is raw. 
Unshielded. 
He looks at me then as though seeing something he does not know how to mend—not a problem to solve, not a conflict to command, but a fracture that does not obey logic. 
“I am not the men who discarded you,” he says, voice low. 
“I know.” 
“But you speak as though I might be.” 
“I speak as though I have survived being wrong before.” 
The words fall quieter now, but they do not lose their weight. 
Silence stretches. 
Heavy. 
Unresolved. 
He turns away abruptly, jaw rigid, something in him closing just as something in me has opened too far. 
“I cannot argue with ghosts,” he says tightly. 
“That is not what this is.” 
“It is exactly what this is!” he snaps, turning back, his voice harder, louder than before. 
I step back reflexively. 
The movement is small—but it lands. 
Hurt flashes behind his eyes, sharp and immediate, and he turns away again before it can settle into something else. 
He strides to the door. 
“Where are you going?” 
“To breathe,” he mutters. 
“And leave me here thinking?” 
“I will say something I regret if I stay.” 
The door opens. 
Cold air floods in, biting and sudden, carrying the scent of salt and wind. 
And then he is gone. 
The quiet that follows is worse than shouting. 
It presses in from all sides, filled only by the uneven sound of my breathing.   
 And the voices start to flood in. 
Temporary. 
Replacable. 
Worthless. 
I stand beside the hearth, unmoving, as though any shift might unbalance something already fragile. My heart races, too fast, too loud, as old memories press forward—uninvited, unrelenting—layering themselves over the present until I can no longer separate them cleanly. 
I inhale deeply through my nose trying to ground myself. 
He chose you, I try to remind myself. 
The words echo. 
But fear does not dissolve because it is told to. 
It lingers. It reshapes. It waits for moments like this to take hold. 
Outside, the wind rises over the sea, its distant roar threading through the cracks in the walls. 
Inside, I press my hands flat against the table, grounding myself in its solidness, forcing breath back into something steady. 
I did not fight for this home to lose it to ghosts. 
I did not carve a place here, piece by piece, only to watch it fracture under shadows from a life I left behind. 
And yet— 
Ghosts are skilled adversaries. 
They do not need truth. 
Only doubt.