As I unpacked, I tried to push thoughts of Dorian from my mind, but they crept back like smoke under a closed door. His voice. His hands. The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't watching, as though I were something precious and breakable. The way he looked at Ciara when everyone was watching, as though she were something he owed.
Just as I was smoothing a fitted sheet over the mattress, my crystal communicator hummed again on the den's nightstand. I hesitated before picking it up, certain it would be Ivar circling back for another round, or worse, Ciara calling to deliver some saccharine apology dipped in that honeysuckle-and-cold-ash sweetness she wore like a mask, designed to twist the knife. But when I saw the name pulsing across the crystal, my heart lurched against my ribs.
Dorian.
My breath came thin and shallow as I read the words.
"Neva, please. Can we talk? I need to see you."
I stared at the glowing crystal until the words blurred. Did he really think he could fix this with a handful of words on a stretch of cold quartz? After everything? After today?
My hands were shaking when I traced out my reply.
"I don't think that's a good idea right now."
Before I could set the communicator back down, it rang. Dorian's name filled the crystal, pulsing with each call like a heartbeat I knew too well. I hesitated, my finger hovering over the silence-rune, but something stopped me. Some stubborn, traitorous part of my heart that still wanted to hear his voice. Deep in my chest, my wolf lifted her head and went very still, ears straining toward a sound that wasn't even there yet. I took a deep breath and answered.
"What do you want, Dorian?" I kept my voice as steady as a blade balanced on its edge.
"Neva, it shouldn't have gone this far. Let's talk about this. Please." His voice carried that particular blend of desperation and warmth that had always undone me. The voice of an Alpha who could bring a hundred pack-warriors to their knees with a single look, yet could not command the one she-wolf the Moon Goddess had sworn to him.
"Why? So you can cancel again?" My voice climbed despite my efforts to hold it level. "So you can tell me how much you care while you keep putting Ciara first?"
"No. I wanted to explain." A pause. I could hear him breathing through the link, measured and deliberate, the way he breathed before a difficult border-talk with a rival pack. "I know you're hurt. I understand it. This isn't because of Ciara. I am the Alpha. I am responsible for the safety of every wolf under my mark. She is under my protection. That is an obligation my father swore with his dying breath, a Moon Oath sealed beneath the Goddess. You know this."
I scoffed, shaking my head even though he couldn't see me.
"Dorian, she is always injured. Every single time something important is about to happen for us, she collapses, weak from a heat that comes on cue, or some wound that never seems to scar. Don't you find that a little odd?"
"Come on, Neva." Irritation sharpened his tone, the Alpha bleeding through the lover, and I felt the faint pressure of his aura push down the link before he reined it back. "Anything can happen during a training run. You push yourself, you get hurt. Wounds are part of learning the fight. Any young warrior could understand that."
The words hit like a slap.
"Are you trying to say I'm childish? And Ciara getting injured every single time is not behaving like a child herself?"
"No, that's not what I meant." He caught himself, pulled back. "You have every right to be upset. We have been preparing for the Mating Ceremony for moons. But you know we can never predict what will happen. Ciara's injury wasn't even that serious. She'll heal in a day or two. We can reschedule the union. What is a day or two?"
What is a day or two. As though the night under the moon meant nothing. As though I hadn't spent weeks with Elder Lavinia choosing the bonding-flowers and the ceremony cloth. As though the whole pack hadn't gathered beneath the open sky. As though my heart hadn't been laid bare on a silver tray for every wolf to see, only to be pushed aside for a girl with a bruised ankle and a rehearsed whimper.
"I can't do this right now." My voice trembled despite every effort to hold it still. Inside me, my wolf had stopped pacing. She simply lay down, nose tucked away from his scent that wasn't even in the room, as if she could no longer bear to reach for it.
"Neva, please. I just need you to hear me out. Can we at least meet? Just to talk." He was pleading now, and the sound of it was almost worse than the anger. Dorian Blackthorn did not plead. Not with rival Alphas across a war-line. Not with the council of elders. Not with anyone. Only with me, and only when he knew he had lost ground he could not afford to lose.
"Talk? About what? About how you chose Ciara over me?" I pressed my free hand flat against the bare mattress, steadying myself. "You know what? I'm done hearing excuses."
"It's not an excuse. I just need a moment to explain everything. I thought you would understand my position. Being the Alpha, carrying the weight of the whole pack. This isn't just about us, Neva."
"Right. Because your obligations are clearly more important than what we have. I understand that, Dorian. I do. But that doesn't change how I feel."
He sighed, and even through the link I could hear the frustration in his breath, heavy and controlled, the exhale of an Alpha who was used to having the final word in every room he entered.
