Chapter 45 A man I can’t hate
The car ride stretched longer than it should have.
Or maybe it was just the weight of everything pressing in on me, making every second feel heavier than the last. The SUV glided smoothly along the road, too quiet, too polished, as if designed to insulate its occupants from reality. Outside, the city blurred past, steel, glass, ancient stone layered with modern excess, but inside, the air felt tight, charged.
Darius drove with one hand on the wheel, relaxed in a way that irritated me as if nothing had changed. As if the world hadn’t cracked open and rearranged itself around secrets and blood and lies.
I kept my gaze fixed out the window.
After a while, he spoke.
“You should know,” he said calmly, “everyone is excited.”
I frowned slightly but didn’t look at him.
“They’ve been preparing for days,” he continued. “The pack believes you were on a private retreat. Time away to adjust. To recover.”
I let out a short, humorless laugh before I could stop myself. “A retreat,” I echoed. “Is that what you’re calling it now?”
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t rise to the bait.
“They’re planning a welcome celebration,” he went on, as if this was all perfectly reasonable. “A formal gathering. You’ll meet everyone properly this time, elders, the pack leaders, and the inner circle. It’s important.”
That did it.
I turned sharply in my seat to face him, the words burning my tongue. “Important to who?”
He glanced at me briefly, then back to the road. “To them. To the pack. To you.”
I laughed again, louder this time. Bitter. “You really don’t hear yourself, do you?”
The car remained steady, but something shifted between us, an invisible tightening, like a rope pulled too far.
“I’m not staying,” I said flatly. I hated this bond and how it made me feel towards the person I should hate the most, I hated how it wanted so much for me to forget my hatred.
His fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “Lyra—”
“No,” I cut in. My voice shook despite my effort to keep it steady. “Listen to me. I will not stay in your pack willingly. I will not attend your celebrations. I will not stand beside you and smile like some obedient Luna while everyone bows and pretends this is a fairytale.”
Silence filled the car, thick and heavy.
“And you shouldn’t expect me to carry out any duties,” I added, each word sharp and deliberate. “I’m not your Luna. Not now. Not ever.”
He exhaled slowly, like he was bracing himself. “You don’t understand what that title means.”
I scoffed. “Oh, I understand perfectly. It means power. Control. Expectations I never agreed to.”
“It also means protection,” he said, his voice lower now. “It means belonging.”
I turned fully toward him, my heart hammering. “Belonging to the man who killed my father?”
The words landed like a blow.
The car slowed, not abruptly, but enough that I noticed. His shoulders stiffened, and for a brief moment, something raw flashed across his face. Pain. Anger. Regret. All tangled together.
To anyone else, it might have looked like remorse.
To me, it wasn’t enough.
“You can dress it up however you like,” I went on, my chest tight, my vision blurring with unshed tears. “You can throw parties and tell lies and pretend I was meditating on a mountain somewhere. But when I look at you, that’s all I see.”
My voice cracked despite myself. I hated that.
“You will always be the man who took my father from me,” I whispered.
He pulled the car to the side of the road.
Not suddenly. Not violently. Just enough to stop.
When he turned to face me fully, the Alpha King was gone. What remained was something more dangerous, a man stripped bare by truth.
“I didn’t murder your father in cold blood, one day I will tell you the truth” he said quietly.
I laughed, shaky and hollow. “Is that supposed to make it better? He was all I had he was an amazing father, I lost my mother the day I was born, he was everything to me just because it was forbidden for werewolves and vampires to ever fall in love much worse have an abomination like me! He didn’t deserve to die for it. But you decided he deserved to die so it doesn’t matter right?”
“No,” he admitted. “But it matters.”
“Not to me,” I snapped. “He’s still dead.”
“Yes,” he said, his voice rougher now. “And I live with that every day.”
I stared at him, stunned by the admission.
“You think I don’t hear his name in my head?” he continued. “You think I don’t remember the way you screamed when you saw me take him down? You think that doesn’t haunt me?”
My hands clenched in my lap. “Then why do you act like this?” I demanded. “Like you deserve me standing at your side? Like I should be grateful?”
“Because the bond doesn’t care about guilt,” he said softly. “Or hatred. Or grief. It exists whether we like it or not.”
I shook my head violently. “Don’t blame the bond. Don’t you dare.”
He went still.
“I can’t hate you because of the bond,” I said, my voice trembling but resolute. “But I still carry with me this anger. This is me. This is my choice. And my choice is that I will never forgive you.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Finally, he nodded once. “Then I won’t force forgiveness. As long as you’re with me it’s enough for me.”
That surprised me.
“But the pack will meet you,” he added. “The celebration will happen.”
My nails dug into my palms. “And if I refuse to attend?”
His eyes met mine, steady and unyielding. “Then they’ll see exactly how fractured this bond truly is, even if it wants nothing but to bring us closer, even if I want that”
I swallowed hard.
“I won’t parade you,” he said, softer now. “But I won’t hide you either. You are already part of this world, Lyra. You’re part of me. Running from it won’t undo what’s been done.”
I turned back to the window, tears finally slipping free. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“No,” he agreed quietly. “But neither do you alone.”
The car started moving again.
As the estate loomed closer, its gates opening like the jaws of some ancient beast, I felt the truth settle painfully in my chest.
I wasn’t just trapped by walls or guards or politics.
I was trapped by a bond tied to a man I hated.
And worse—
A man I didn’t fully know how to hate.