Chapter 123 A Knock on the Door
ADRIANA
“You’re not leaving now, are you. Not with all of this happening.”
Yara said it the way she said things she already knew the answer to less a question than an observation dressed up as one. And she was right. There was nothing to argue with. How was I supposed to leave now?
After Leo had come downstairs and seen his mother, something in him had simply shut. His face had gone very still, how he usually was when he was processing something too large for his body to hold. He had looked at her for a long moment and then he had turned around and walked back upstairs without signing a single word to anyone, and by the time Elijah and I reached his door it was locked.
We stood in that hallway for a long time. Taking turns. Talking quietly through the wood, telling him he didn’t have to come out, that we were right here, that nothing had to happen tonight that he didn’t want. No sound came back.
Leo’s silence was always louder than other people’s noise.
Elijah’s anger by that point had reached a temperature I recognized as dangerous, the cold, controlled kind. In him, that had always been more final than the loud kind. He was already forming the words to send Jane out of the house entirely. I could see it happening before he opened his mouth.
I pulled him into my room and closed the door.
“I know,” I said before he could start. “I know everything you’re feeling is completely justified. I’m not asking you to forgive her or to pretend what she did was anything other than what it was. I’m just asking you not to send her away tonight.”
“He is in that room right now, on the other side of a locked door, breaking apart, because of her.” His body was almost shaking.
“Yes. And she knows that. She came here knowing exactly how you would receive her, yet, she came anyway.” I kept my voice level. “She has a few weeks, Elijah. She didn’t come here to take anything from him. She came to give him the chance to say whatever he needs to say to her before she’s gone. If that door closes tonight and never opens again, he will carry that for the rest of his life. You know he will.”
He looked at the wall. The muscle in his jaw moved twice.
“He’s already carrying too much.” His voice didn’t break, but the effect was still the same.
“I know. That’s exactly why she needs to stay.”
He didn’t agree out loud. But when I left the room he didn’t follow me to find Jane and tell her to go.
She was still downstairs with Hazel and Aiden. All of them were quiet. She looked up when she heard me on the stairs.
“Come with me,” I said. “I’ll show you to a room.”
Confusion moved across her face. “A room? No, I didn’t intend to stay overnight. I only wanted to speak to him and then leave. I don’t want to make things harder than they already are.”
“He’s not ready to come out yet and you’ve traveled a long way.” I kept my voice calm and steady. “You need to rest. You can speak to him tomorrow when things have settled a little.”
She looked at Hazel and then at Aiden, clearly hoping one of them would intervene or object. They said nothing. She turned back to me.
“The Alpha doesn’t want me here. If I stay—”
“I’ve spoken to him. It’s handled. Nothing will happen to you in this house, I promise.”
Hazel caught my eye over Jane’s shoulder and gave me a single small nod.
I led Jane upstairs and settled her in a room two doors down from Leo’s. It was clean and quiet with a window that looked out over the grounds. I set her bag at the foot of the bed and straightened up.
“Rest for now. I’ll come get you when dinner is ready. Is there anything you can’t eat? Anything that’s been difficult for your stomach?”
She was quiet for a moment. She looked at me, like she was trying to understand what she was seeing. It went on long enough that I tilted my head slightly.
“Is something wrong?”
A small smile came and went on her face.
“No. I’m sorry. You’re just being very kind to me and I wasn’t expecting it.” She looked down at her hands. “I don’t deserve it, if I’m honest with myself. Thank you. Truly.”
“Rest,” I said simply. “I’ll knock when it’s time.”
I pulled her door shut behind me and stood in the hallway for a moment, just holding the quiet. My mind was already moving ahead to tomorrow, to how this conversation between Leo and his mother was going to happen and what shape it needed to take and who needed to be present for it.
Then I heard a sound. Soft but distinct. The click of a door opening very slowly.
I turned. Leo was standing in his doorway in his socks, door pulled barely halfway open, face swollen and still tracked with the evidence of everything he’d been holding in his room. His eyes moved past me down the hallway toward Jane’s door, then came back to my face.
I walked to him.
“Is my mum still here?” His hands moved carefully, close to his chest, like the question itself was fragile. “Did she leave again?”
I crouched down to his level and pulled him in gently.
“No. She’s here. She’s resting just down the hall. She’s not leaving tonight.”
He stayed very still against me for a moment, processing that.
When he pulled back his eyes were searching mine.
“I don’t know if I want to see her yet.”
“You don’t have to. Not tonight. Only when you’re ready, and not a moment before.”
He nodded. Then his hands moved again: “Where’s my dad?”
“Downstairs. Do you want him to come up?”
His response was immediate, a firm, quick shake of his head.
I understood without needing him to explain it. Elijah’s feelings about all of this were written clearly on him and Leo had always been able to read his father better than most adults could. He didn’t want to sit inside that energy tonight.
“Stay with me?” The signs were small and tucked close to his body. “I don’t want to be alone.”
I didn’t think about it at all. I stood up and followed him into his room and he climbed onto his bed and I sat beside him and we stayed there together without any need to fill the silence.
But I was thinking, very quietly to myself, that at some point Leo was going to need to walk down that hallway and knock on that door. Not for Jane’s sake, though perhaps for that too. For his own. He had things living inside him that had never had anywhere to go — questions, griefs, an anger too large for a child’s body but entirely real — and his mother was the only person alive who could receive them properly.
Whatever she had done, she was here now.
And she wasn’t going to be here for long.
I looked at the side of his face and I thought about how we were going to help him find his way to that door, and whether he would be able to forgive her, and what it would do to him if he couldn’t.
I didn’t have answers to any of it yet.
What I knew was that I was staying. Whatever came next, I was not leaving this boy to face it without me.