Chapter 580

ARIA

Kael knocked on my door at seven in the morning.

I knew it was him before he spoke – the specific pattern of it, the knock of someone who’d decided to do something and was doing it without the usual architecture of preparation. Three knocks, evenly spaced o the hesitant version. Not the Alpha–announcing–himself version. Just Kael, at the door, on the other side of a conversation that needed to happen.

“Come in,” I said.

He came in.

I was sitting on the bed with the book Nina had given me at the book club, which I’d been staring at without reading for approximately forty minutes since I’d come back from the path. Killian had walked me back and then gone to the recovery room and I’d been in the quarters not sleeping with the book in my hands since then.

Kael looked at me. At the book. At the specific state of someone who’d been awake all night and had stopped pretending otherwise.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

–

He said it the way Ivory had told him to say things without the managed version, without the architecture. Directly, from the start.

“For what specifically.” I said.

“For what I said last night,” he said. “You told me to say it. That was- he stopped. That was wrong. It came out wrong and I knew it was wrong the moment I heard it and I should have come after you immediately rather than standing there.”

“You did come after me.” I said. “I saw you in the corridor.”

“You were with Killian,” he said.

“And you went to Ivory,” I said.

He looked at the window. The honest version of the look – not defensive, not organizing a response.

“Yes,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “I’m not – I’m not saying that as an accusation. I know you went to talk to her. I understand why.” I set the book down. “Sit down, Kael.”

He sat. On the chair by the window, which put some distance between us, which was probably the right distance for this particular conversation.

“I can’t lie to you,” he said. “About Ivory. About what I feel. I tried to – I was going to come in here and say

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everything you needed to hear and I was in the corridor outside the door and I couldn’t make myself do in the lying way.

“I don’t want you to lie,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “But I also cati’t tell you that I love you more than Ivory. That’s not–I can’t manufacture that. I love Ivory. I’ve loved her since before I had words for it, before I understood what loving someone actually meant, before the curse and before any of this. We have what we have is twelve years of shared everything, the kind of everything that cötries from building a life alongside someone’s life, and I can’t pretend that’s not what it is.” He held my gaze. “But I chose you. And I mean that. Not as a responsibility as an actual choice. And I’m going to keep choosing you. That’s not going to change.”

I sat with this.

“I know that,” I said.

“Then-” he started.

“Knowing it doesn’t make it not hurt,” I said. “I can know you chose me and understand why you love her and see that she’s not doing anything wrong and still feel the specific way I feel, which is that I’m your fated mate and you’re not fully in with me. Those things exist at the same time. I looked at him. “We’ve never talked about it. We’ve been building something I see that. I feel it. I’m not dismissing it – but we’ve been building it around the edges of everything we weren’t saying.”

He was quiet.

“So let’s say it,” I said. “All of it. Clear the air. Because we’ve been misunderstanding each other since I got here and we have a war coming and I’m not going into that with all of this sitting between us unaddressed.”

“Alright,” he said, with the quality of someone who’d decided. “What do you want to e

“The house arrest.” I said.

Something moved in his expression.

“I want to understand it,” I said. “Not relitigate it – understand it. You sentenced me and then you put me under investigation and you didn’t believe me.”

“I told you I was wrong about the sentencing,” he said. “I apologized. I tried to-”

“I know,” I said. “And I accept the apology. But I went to see Damon because of it. You need to understand that’s why. You sentenced me to die, Kael. In the first month. You looked at me and you decided I was going to be executed and I-“I stopped. “I went to Damon because I was looking for someone who felt like I understood where I stood with them. Even if where I stood was terrible, at least I knew what it was.”

His jaw tightened.

“I know,” he said. “That’s on me. The sentencing was–I’ve said it was wrong. It was wrong. The evidence was there and the pack’s safety was the priority and I made a decision that was the wrong decision and Ivory was the one who found another way because I wasn’t looking for one hard enough.” He paused. “But you confessed to going to see Damon behind the pack’s back. You had months to tell someone – me, Nina, anyone – and you didn’t. We were actively investigating who had helped him and you knew you’d been with him and you said nothing.”

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“Because I knew how it would look,” I said.

Because it looked exactly like what it looked like,” he said, and there was an edge in his voice now that was the honest version – not controlled, not managed. “You went to see the man who attacked this pack. Who sent wolves and witches against humans. Who tried to have Ivory killed. Who used you and discarded you and then tried to use you again. And you went alone, and you told nobody.”

“I was seeking-