Chapter 301
That answered questions I hadn’t realized I’d been asking for years.
“I don’t want her to think she has to disappear so the rest of us can live,” I said. My voice came out rougher than intended. “I won’t accept that. She deserves better than that.”
Alaric stepped closer, the weight of his presence pressing into the room like a physical thing. I didn’t realize that my hands had started to shake until he placed his warm palm over my trembling fist.
“You won’t face this alone,” he said quietly. “Not as long as I’m alive.”
The words settled deep, heavier than any oath spoken before a council.
I met his gaze. “You don’t owe me that.”
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t.” A pause. “But I do owe Ellie. She was unlucky in life. She endured so much that I couldn’t protect her from, so much more than ever should have befallen her. I won’t let her suffer alone again. Never again.
Something in my chest loosened at that.
“I’m grateful,” I said. My voice dropped lower, unsteady. “For everything. For trusting me with her. With them.”
Alaric’s expression shifted then, something softer surfacing beneath the formidable alpha I’d come to respect. The only word for it was paternal. He was looking at me like he looked at Cassian, with a raw affection that I didn’t know how to process.
“The goddess may have brought you together too soon,” he said. “Under too much pressure. With too many eyes watching. The two of you hurt each other for years.”
“I hurt her,” I corrected automatically. I had been unbearably cruel to Ellie. There was thing that she could do to me that would compare.
“She hid them from you,” he said softly. “Regardless of her intentions, that hurt you.”
I stiffened instinctively.
“But,” he continued, “the pain that you’ve caused one another, that doesn’t mean it was all a mistake.”
I waited.
“You’ve grown. Both of you. You’ve overcome the fear that you bore out of your awful childhoods, and somehow you learned to trust one another. You steady her,” Alaric said. “You don’t diminish her light. You give it something solid to rest against. And she-” A faint huff of something like dry amusement. “She makes you human in ways no crown ever could.”
That hit closer than I expected. I found myself smiling despite the shame that the topic provoked in me.
“I’ve spent most of my life being told what I was,” I said quietly. “Monster. Weapon. Curse.”
“And yet,” Alaric replied, “here you are. A father. A mate. Full of love and gentleness for those who require it most of you.”
I nodded once, accepting the truth of it.
“You have my blessing,” he said simply. “As Ellie’s father. And as an alpha who understands what it means to build a life in the shadow of violence.”
The words carried weight beyond formality. Beyond politics. Beyond anything that I ever could have hoped to hear from Alaric.
He would be well justified to hate me. All of the mistakes I’d made, all of the ways I had failed Ellie, were more than enough to earn his hatred. Yet here he was, offering me comfort in this uncertainty.
Offering me his blessing as I stood beside his only daughter on the eve of a storm, a battle that we still couldn’t see the shape of.
I bowed my head slightly. The weight of it all felt too heavy for me to even stand straight. “I won’t fail her.”
“I know,” he said. “Just as I know that she will not fail. You must have faith in her, Nolan. More than your fear and your urge to protect. You have to trust her.”
We locked eyes for a moment. I felt the uncertain knot in my chest loosen, just a fraction. Just enough to take a full breath.
Outside, a patrol passed beneath the windows, their footsteps fading into the night. The wards flared faintly in response, then settled again.
The storm was coming.
But for the first time since it began to gather, I didn’t feel like I was standing at its edge alone.
I was standing at its center-
If the visions were right, I was the center. The center of this raging maelstrom of hatred and twisted love that threatened to steal every precious thing from my life. And I would not let it take my family.