Chapter 170 Before We Go
Maya fidgeted with the hem of her sleeve.
It was a small movement, barely noticeable, but Aria caught it. She had learned to read Maya in the months since everything changed, the way she held herself when she was uncertain, the way her hands gave her away before her words did.
Marcus stood beside her, his posture composed, but there was something different in it today. Lighter, somehow.
They were all four of them in the main sitting room, the morning still early, the house quieter than it had been in weeks.
“We have something to tell you,” Maya said.
Kane looked up from the table.
Marcus spoke before the silence could stretch.
“We’re eloping,” he said.
A beat passed.
Kane set down what he was holding.
“When?” he asked.
“This weekend,” Marcus replied.
Kane looked at him for a long moment.
Then he exhaled.
“Why not a real wedding?” Kane asked.
Maya shook her head immediately.
“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”
Kane’s gaze shifted to her.
“Why not?”
“Because I am still figuring out how to exist as what I am now,” Maya said, her voice steady but firm. “I am not standing in front of a crowd while I am still learning how to be in my own body.”
The room was quiet for a moment.
Kane looked at Marcus.
Marcus looked back at him with the particular expression of a man who had already had this conversation and lost it thoroughly.
Kane nodded once.
“Fine,” he said.
Maya blinked.
“That’s it?”
“You want a longer argument?”
“I want to make sure you’re actually fine with it,” she said.
Kane’s expression shifted, just slightly.
“Marcus has been beside me for a long time,” he said. “Longer than most. If this is what he wants, then it is what I want for him.”
He paused.
“But I am buying you a gift whether you like it or not.”
Maya laughed.
It was sudden and genuine and it broke the last of the tension in the room completely.
Aria smiled beside her.
“Congratulations,” she said quietly. “Both of you.”
Maya reached for her hand and squeezed once, quick and firm, the way people do when words are not quite enough.
Marcus caught Kane’s eye across the room.
Something passed between them that did not need to be said.
Kane nodded once.
Marcus nodded back.
That was enough.
After Maya and Marcus left, the room settled into a quieter kind of stillness.
Aria stayed where she was, her hands loose in her lap, her gaze moving toward the window.
Kane watched her.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
Aria was quiet for a moment.
“That things are moving forward,” she said. “Marcus and Maya. Emma settling in. The territories stable.” She paused. “It feels different now.”
“Different how,” Kane said.
“Like we can breathe,” she said.
Kane moved to sit beside her.
“Then breathe,” he said.
Aria smiled faintly.
“I am trying.”
A quiet moment passed between them.
Then Kane spoke.
“We should plan the honeymoon,” he said.
Aria turned to look at him.
“Now?”
“We have been putting it off,” he said. “There has always been something.” He held her gaze. “I want to take you somewhere. Somewhere that has nothing to do with any of this.”
Aria considered that.
“Where?” she asked.
“Anywhere,” Kane said. “Everywhere, if you want.”
Aria’s expression shifted.
“Everywhere,” she repeated.
“We could travel,” he said. “Take our time. See what we want to see.”
Aria looked at him for a long moment.
Something in her expression softened in a way it did not always do in rooms full of other people.
“I would like that,” she said.
Kane nodded.
“Then we will.”
A brief silence followed.
Then Aria’s gaze moved away from him, toward somewhere he could not quite follow.
“I keep thinking about Elder Morgana,” she said.
Her voice was quieter now.
Kane did not rush to fill the space.
“She would have loved this,” Aria said. “All of it. The mating ceremony. Emma. Maya and Marcus.” She paused. “She would have had something to say about every single part of it.”
Kane reached for her hand.
“She knew,” he said. “Before any of it happened, she knew.”
Aria looked at him.
“You think so?”
“I know so,” he said. “She was not the kind of woman who missed things.”
Aria let out a quiet breath.
“No,” she said. “She was not.”
The moment held for a little while longer.
Then Aria straightened slightly.
“There’s something you need to do before we go,” she said.
Kane met her gaze.
“Victoria,” he said.
“Victoria,” she confirmed.
Kane nodded once.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “We deal with it tomorrow. And then we leave.”
Aria held his gaze.
“Agreed,” she said.
They headed to the facility the next day.
When the door to Victoria’s room opened, Aria was not fully prepared for what she saw.
Victoria sat in the center of the room, her knees drawn up, her arms wrapped around herself. Her hair was unwashed, her clothes plain and institutional. The composed, calculating woman who had stood in the arena and watched Devon fight for her future was gone.
What remained was something rawer than that.
But her eyes were clear.
That was the part Aria had not expected.
Victoria looked up the moment they entered and her gaze sharpened instantly, cutting through whatever else had taken hold of her.
She knew exactly who had walked through her door.
“You,” she said.
Her voice came out uneven, cracked at the edges.
Kane stepped forward.
“Victoria,” he said.
She was on her feet before he finished saying her name.
“You did this,” she said, her voice rising immediately, the clarity in her eyes twisting into something fractured and furious. “You took everything. You have always taken everything.”
Kane did not step back.
“Devon made his choices,” he said. “As did you.”
“He is dead,” she said. The words came out jagged. “You killed him and my father too and you are standing here and that is all you have to say to me.”
“I came to deliver a verdict,” Kane said.
Victoria laughed.
It was not a stable sound.
“A verdict,” she repeated.
“You are a traitor to this territory,” Kane said. His voice did not rise. It did not need to. “You conspired against this pack. You fabricated claims before the elders. You attempted to interfere with a sanctioned challenge. You watched your father infect innocent people with moon fever and even helped him at some point.”
Victoria’s breathing grew sharper.
“Everything I did,” she said, “I did because you left me no choice.”
“You had choices,” Aria said.
Victoria’s gaze snapped to her.
Something darker moved across her face.
“Do not speak to me,” she growled. “Do not stand there beside him and speak to me.”
Aria held her gaze and said nothing further.
Kane spoke again.
“Victoria Blackstone, daughter of Alpha Alexander Blackstone. You are hereby banished from this territory, and any other territory I own,” he said. “Effective immediately. You will be released from this facility and removed from these lands. You will not return.”
Victoria stared at him.
For one moment, she was completely still.
Then she broke.
“You cannot do this,” she said, her voice climbing. “This is all I have left. You cannot take this too.”
“It is done,” Kane said.
He turned toward the door.
Aria turned with him.
“Kane.”
His name came out of her like something torn.
He did not stop.
“Kane, look at me. Look at me.”
The door opened.
They walked through it.
Behind them, Victoria’s voice rose into something that was no longer words. It filled the corridor and pressed against the walls and followed them all the way to the exit.
Kane did not look back.
Neither did Aria.
They stepped outside into the cold air and kept walking, side by side, until the sound finally faded behind them.