Chapter 182
Kieran
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“What does love have to do with any of this?” I said.
Trevor looked at me.
“Do you not know what love is?” he said.
“I know what love is,” I said. “Love is not what this is. Love is
not in the picture.”
Trevor and Jenna looked at each other. I said nothing.
“Serena is my luna,” I said. “She’s my mate. I have a duty to
this pack, to the stability of this family and this alliance, and
that’s why I’m fighting for us. That’s the full reason.”
The words came out and I heard them. Something in me
shut against them as they landed. My heart raced to the knowledge that my whole words could possibly be a lie.
The confidence these words had carried before were no
more.
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I swallowed.
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because it’s become inconvenient. That’s not how this works.”
Jenna and Trevor looked at me with their chins level and their
mouths closed, both of them waiting for me to stop.
“And you,” I said to Jenna. “Stop. I need you to stop what you’re doing with Sophie.”
Jenna’s brow dropped. “Excuse me?”
“Every time you go after Sophie, every time you make it your mission to embarrass her or make her pay for something she didn’t personally do, you pull her further into the centre of my life. Now I have a text about stitches. Now instead of focusing on my wife I’m standing here having a conversation about Sophie.” I looked at Jenna. “You want to help me? Stop making Sophie relevant. Let her exist somewhere far outside this marriage and leave her there.”
Jenna opened her mouth.
“And stop bringing her name to me,” I said. “I want to focus.
on Serena. Let me focus on Serena.”
A sound came from behind me. It was the sound of laughter.
Hurned.
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My grandfather stood at the far end of the hall, his walking
stick in one hand, his chin forward.
“Working things out,” he said. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?”
I looked at him.
“Yes,” I said.
“Tell me something.” He walked forward one step at a time. “At the summit, when everyone watched you walk a woman
who is not your wife through your own event while your pregnant luna stood in the corridor, is that what working things out looked like?”
“Grandfather.”
“I have been watching alphas for fifty years,” he said. “I
have watched them build packs and lose packs and hold
families together under conditions you have not experienced. And I have never seen one who could not keep his own house without broadcasting the chaos to every pack in the territory.” He stopped. He looked at me. “They are watching us. Every alliance we have, every neighbouring pack with something to gain from a crack in Crimson, they’re watching. And what they’re seeing is a luna who doesn’t attend events ahẳ a married alpha who escorted another woman to a
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confident that you cannot keep a pack any more than you
can keep a home?”
The back of my neck went cold.
The rogues were at the Ashvale border with a scouting pattern and a timing that landed while I was distracted. I thought about who benefited from Crimson looking fractured, who knew this territory well enough to identify the
weak points.
I thought about Elan Cartridge, his pack, the treatment Serena was giving him, and the fact that his family and mine
were enemies.
“No one would try something like that,” I said. The words went out steadier than the thought behind them.
“The Cartridge pack has been rebuilding for years,” my grandfather said. “Elan has resources and capability and a long memory. He is not an ally of this family and he never will be. And your wife is treating him.” He held my gaze. “That is a thread I would watch very carefully.”
“Serena is a doctor,” I said. “Her patients are her own
business.”
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handled. I will protect this pack and these people and I’ll give them the best leadership I have. But I will not, under
any circumstances, divorce Serena to look stable.” I looked at
him. “That is the one thing I will not do.”
My grandfather looked at me for a long moment. Then he exhaled through his nose and turned and walked back down
the hall.
I drove to the hospital with the windows down.
I wasn’t going to bring up Jenna and Sophie. None of it served the evening. What the evening needed was simple: go to the hospital, find my wife, take her home, be present and
consistent.
I went straight to her department when I arrived and
knocked on her office door.
“Come in.”
She was at her desk, a chart of the day open in front of her,
her coat folded over the back of the chair. She looked up
when I came through the door, and for a moment her brow
came forward slightly and then settled.
What are you doing here?” she said.
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She looked at me for a moment. Then she closed the chart.
“Okay,” she said. “Give me two minutes.”
I waited.
She packed her bag, put on her coat, and came around the desk. She didn’t argue. She didn’t ask why I’d come or tell me she didn’t need the escort. She just said okay and two
minutes and then she was ready.
I liked it.
And then I didn’t.l.
She didn’t argue because she didn’t care enough to. She said okay to me the same way she said okay to the waiter and the housekeeper and anyone neutral who offered something
she’d accept without cost. The okay meant nothing. I was a
man she shared a building with and she was managing it.
Did she even remember what it felt like to want me in a
room?
I watched her walk beside me. She checked her phone, put it away, adjusted the strap on her bag. I looked at the side of Rép face, the clean line of her jaw, her shoulders level, and 125
< Chapter 182
I didn’t know which was worse: that she didn’t love me, or
that the only thing in my head was hope.
We walked in silence, and just then, voice cut through the
corridor.
“Daddy!”
I turned.
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Ethan was running. He came across the lobby at full speed with his arms already out and hit me at the knees and grabbed on. I caught him, one arm going under him to lift him up, his weight settling against my chest.
Cora went still.
I looked over Ethan’s head.
Serena had stopped two steps behind me. Her arms were
at her sides. Her face was turned toward us, her jaw set, her
eyes moving across the scene without settling anywhere.
Sophie quickly came forward.
“Kieran, I’m so sorry,” she said. “We were just leaving. I didn’t 7/8 expect this.”
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“It’s fine,” I said.
Ethan’s hand was around my collar. My eyes steered to Serena, who had stepped further to the side and held her bag with both hands, her eyes on the entrance doors.
A man pushed through the doors at once his hands entangled with a child’s.
I knew him at once: Callum Halcyom, Alpha of Healmsworth, the man who sat beside me in that principal’s office after
Ethan bullied his son.
He looked at me, at Ethan in my arms, at Sophie beside us, at
Serena to the side with both hands on her bag and her gaze
on the floor.
His chin moved. He turned to Sophie.
“Mr and Mrs. Thawthorne, your boy looks well,” he said. “You and Alpha Thawthorne must be proud.”
Nobody in the lobby moved.
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