04: The breakup

Layla POV

"What happened to your face?"

He was still holding my jaw, tilting it toward the light. His thumb wasn't quite touching my cheek. Just close enough that I could feel the warmth of his hand without the pressure.

He was looking at the slight bruise with that still, focused quality he brought to everything. Like he was solving something.

I freed my jaw from his gentle fingers. Or tried to.

"It's nothing."

"It's a handprint."

The flatness in his voice when he said it was new. Not anger exactly. Draven's anger didn't announce itself the way other people's did. It went in the opposite direction. It got quiet, settling into something low. I had only seen it once before, directed at someone else, and I had filed it away as something I never wanted aimed at me.

"Layla."

The way he said my name in that register was the thing that had undone me every time for four months. Like the name meant something specific in his mouth that it didn't mean anywhere else.

"Keep your voice down." I glanced toward the corner where George had been standing.

He'd melted back into the dark somewhere, giving us privacy and keeping watch at the same time. He was good at that.

I looked at the main house windows and the yellow-lit, curtained.

"Someone could see us."

"Who hit you?"

"You need to go. Coming here like this… if anyone sees you, if anyone looks out and sees us standing here–"

"George has the perimeter."

"This isn't one of your training exercises." My voice came out sharper than I intended.

"Who?"

He said, his voice growing firm. More absolute.

I looked at him. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't fully read in the low light. His jaw was set. His eyes hadn't moved from my face.

I considered blaming it on the accident at the hall, but it was no use. He'd seen the handprint.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "It won't happen again."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have. Please go. We can talk tomorrow. At the hideout, properly, when it's safer."

Something shifted in his face when I said tomorrow.

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he stepped back. Just slightly. Just enough for the cool evening air to replace the warmth of his closeness.

"Tomorrow," he said. An agreement that felt more like a question.

"Tomorrow," I repeated.

He held my gaze one beat longer. Then he turned and walked back toward the east entrance, unhurried. The dark folded around him the way it always had, like it had been waiting.

George appeared at the corner of the wall thirty seconds later. He looked at me. Then looked at the gate Draven had just walked through.

"You okay?"

"Fine," I said.

He nodded slowly, in the way that meant he didn't believe me but wasn't going to push. Then he followed Draven.

✶⋆🎀 ♡ 🎀⋆✶

Tomorrow came.

Draven was waiting when I reached our secret meeting place.

His gaze swept across my face the way it had moved across my cuts the evening before. Not dramatically or with visible alarm. Just that quiet inventory he did when he was deciding what something meant.

I began speaking before I lost my nerve.

"You shouldn't have come near the house last night. You're not the one who loses everything if we're seen. You're the Alpha heir. You'd get a lecture. Maybe a disappointed look from your father over dinner. Do you understand what happens to me if they find out?"

Something moved through his expression. It felt like he was already listening to what I hadn't said yet.

"Let's go inside first," he said quietly. "We'll talk in there."

"No."

"Layla."

"No." I stepped back. Put a foot of distance between us, then another. "I can't keep doing this. I can't keep being someone who sneaks around and waits for texts and counts the days until something changes. I can't."

My voice was threatening to break and I refused to let it. "We should stop."

He didn't move. Of course he didn't. He watched me with that annoying calm, and I could feel him doing the thing he always did. Reading between every word, locating the things I wasn't saying.

"Someone got to you," he said at last.

It wasn't a question.

I kept my face neutral. I had nothing to say that I was allowed to say.

"Tell me."

"There's nothing to tell. I've been thinking about this for a while. It was always going to end here, Draven. You know that. You've always known that."

He was silent for a long moment. A muscle moved in his jaw.

"You're asking me to believe," he said slowly, "that you went into that hall yesterday and decorated for a party while waiting for me. And today you've simply decided it's over. No reason. Just over."

"Yes."

"Look at me and say it."

I looked at him. I kept my eyes very steady and my hands very still at my sides. "We're done, Draven. You and Carla make sense. Everyone can see it. Even you can, if you're honest with yourself."

"I'm not letting you do this," he said.

"It's not yours to let or not let." The words cost me something but I kept going. "That's the problem, isn't it? You're used to deciding things. You're used to the world arranging itself around what you want. I'm not a pack decision. I'm not a training objective. You don't get to hold this open just because it suits you."

"That's not–"

"The Crescent," I said. "I'll meet you at the first sign of the Crescent for the rejection. We do it properly and it's done."

The word rejection landed between us like something dropped from a height. I watched it hit him. Watched him absorb it the way he absorbed everything. Not by flinching, but by going somewhere deep and unreachable behind his eyes.

He didn't say anything for a long moment.

"Did they threaten you."

Not a question. Just the shape his certainty took.

I opened my mouth and said the only thing I had left to say.

"Goodbye, Draven."