Chapter 581

“Validation,” he said. “From who? He didn’t care about you – he wanted to own you. Aria. He wanted to keep you as his secret omega and when you stopped being useful to him he tried to destroy you and then when he needed something he pulled you back in. That’s not someone you seek validation from. That’s someon you run from.”

The words landed harder than I expected because they weren’t wrong.

“It wasn’t better here,” I said, and my voice came out smaller than I intended. “I had to compete with Ivory

Уфи constantly. Everything I did was compared to her. The pack resented me for being here instead of her. compared me–”

“I never compared you,” he said.

“The pack did,” I said. “And you let it happen.”

He was quiet.

“I told you not to compare yourself to her,” he said. “I told you multiple times. You’re different people.”

“Telling me not to compare myself isn’t the same as making the space feel like it’s actually mine.” I said. “She was everywhere, Kael. In the pack’s loyalty, in the inner circle, in your eyes every time she was in the room. I was the interloper who’d taken something that was supposed to be hers.”

“She never treated you that way,” he said.

“No.” I said. “She didn’t. She attacked me with a knife.”

He blinked.

“She came after me in the Ghost Hunt chamber,” I said. “After her memories came back. She attacked me.”

“She’d just had everything restored in a single overwhelming event,” he said, “and everything in her mind. was jumbled together and the memories were barely-” he stopped. “I’m defending her again.”

“You are.” I said.

“I’m just stating what happened.” he said. “I’m not-” he stopped again. Looked at his hands. “God, I am defending her.”

“I know you don’t mean to,” I said. “That’s the thing. You’re not doing it deliberately. It’s just where your instinct goes. Someone mentions Ivory and your instinct is to explain, to contextualize, to make sure she’s understood correctly.” I held his gaze. “Your instinct for me is different. You’re careful with me. Respectful. You give me space, But careful and respectful and space are not the same thing as the reflex that makes you want to protect her understanding in every room she enters.”

He was very still.

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“Ivory saved your life,” he said. “And the pack’s. She found the evidence that exonerated you. Without Ker you would have been-”

“I pow,” I said. “I know that. And I’m grateful. Genuinely. I don’t resent what she did for me, I resent what it means that she had to do it. That the standard for trusting me was so low that she had to bet her life to meet

it.”

“The bond was damaged,” he said. “You were barely a month in. The evidence—”

“As my mate,” I said, “you were supposed to believe me.”

He looked at me.

“On a damaged bond,” he said, “in a pack full of humans who’d been through three years of a curse that nearly destroyed them, with evidence that clearly pointed to you being the last person with Damon, with ample reason for you to want to hurt Ivory–you wanted me to override all of that because you said so. His voice wasn’t cruel. It was honest. “What was I supposed to do, Aria? Tell the pack – ignore the evidence, ignore the timeline, ignore everything you can see, because she’s the Luna and she says she didn’t do it? I’ll denounced fated bonds before you arrived. Everyone here had trauma from what bonds had cost them. I couldn’t ask them to take that on faith without evidence.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes?” he said.

“Yes, that’s what I needed,” I said. “I know it wasn’t reasonable. I know it wasn’t rational. But that’s what I needed from my mate. Not reason. Faith. Even before we had the history to justify it.”

He was quiet for a long time.

“I failed that,” he said, eventually.

“Yes,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “And I can’t undo it. I can’t go back and be the person who had the faith before the evidence existed. That wasn’t who I was then.” He paused. “I’m still not sure I’d do it differently, with everything considered. And I know that’s not what you want to hear.”

“It’s honest,” I said.

“I’m trying honest,” he said. “It’s what Ivory-” he stopped. Made a face that was almost self–aware. “It’s what the book club established as the general approach.

“The book club,” I said, and something in me that had been very tight loosened slightly.

“The window,” he said.

“The window,” I confirmed.

We sat with the silence.

“I can’t compare to her,” I said, and I said it quietly because it was the actual thing, the one underneath all the other things. “I’ve been here nine months. I don’t have twelve years. I didn’t go through the curse with you. I don’t have the history or the shared everything or the specific knowledge of exactly how you’re built.”

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Chapter 581

I looked at the window. “She knows where all your edges are because she helped shape them. I’m still finding them.

“That’s not a deficit,” he said.

“It feels like one,” I said.

“It’s nine months,” he said. “Nine months against twelve years isti’t a competition. It’s just a difference in timeline.”

“You kept seeing her,” I said. “Every day. And I saw Damon once and got house arrest.”

“Those are different,” he said, and his voice went flat.

“I know they’re different-”

“They’re completely different,” he said. “Ivory lives here. Her family is here. She’s part of my inner circle, she has been since before the curse, what would you have me do- ban her from the pack? Have Jordan pass notes between us? Refuse to speak to her in her own home?” He looked at me. “Ivory didn’t attack this pack. Ivory didn’t hurt anyone. Ivory has given up more for this pack than most people will be asked to give in a lifetime.”

“I know,” I said.

“Then what,” he said.

“I’m not asking you to choose,” I said. “That’s not what this is. I’m just–I need you to understand that it’s hard. Watching you with her. Seeing how it is between you. Understanding that the love is real and it’s not going away and it’s not wrong and I can’t even be angry at the right things. I looked at him. “You get to grieve the future you lost with her. You’ve been grieving it for nine months. I’ve watch

don’t I get to grieve that I arrived here and my mate’s heart was already fully occup

ou do it. Why.