Chapter 8: His Jealousy

POV: Evana

I’d learned something about myself over the last few days.

I was tired of being afraid.

Not entirely, fear doesn’t disappear just because you decide you’re finished with it. But something in me had shifted. Maybe it was the strength that had surged through me in the training yard. Maybe it was the book, or the dreams, or simply exhaustion with letting everyone around me decide how small I was allowed to be.

Whatever it was, I wasn’t giving it back.

Visiting warriors arrived that morning from a neighboring territory, here to discuss some border dispute I hadn’t been told the details of. I barely noticed them until one broke away from the group and crossed the courtyard toward me, tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair, an easy smile that didn’t ask permission before showing up.

“You’re Evana, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Darius.” He offered it simply, like a name didn’t need to come with credentials attached.

“Nice to meet you.”

“I heard about what happened during training.”

My stomach tightened. Of course he had. Everyone had, by now. “I wasn’t trying to show off.”

He laughed, easy. “I didn’t think you were.” His eyes drifted toward the training grounds. “You moved faster than most warriors I’ve trained with. That wasn’t luck.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

No mockery in it. No hidden insult waiting under the compliment the way there always was in this house. Just something that sounded like respect, plain and unearned by anything except what he’d actually seen.

It felt strange. Almost uncomfortable, the way kindness sometimes does when you’ve gone a long time without expecting it.

“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me for telling the truth.”

I smiled before I could stop myself.

Across the courtyard, someone was watching. Arthur. His face gave away nothing, the way it never did in public, but his wolf wasn’t nearly as disciplined as the rest of him. I could feel it from here, tension rolling off him like heat off stone.

Darius didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t care. “Do you train every morning?”

“I used to.”

“You should start again.”

“Why?”

“Because whatever woke up in you isn’t going to go back to sleep just because you ignore it.”

I went still.

“You felt it too,” I said, quieter now.

“Something’s happening to me,” I admitted, before I’d decided to say it out loud.

Darius studied my face like he was actually looking for the answer instead of performing concern. “Then don’t be afraid of it.”

Arthur’s voice cut across the courtyard before I could respond. “Darius.”

Darius turned. “Alpha.”

“Council meeting.”

“I’ll see you later, Evana.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Arthur said.

Darius raised an eyebrow, unbothered, and walked off toward the manor. I stared at Arthur.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

He walked away too, and I stood there watching him go, turning it over. He’d never once cared who I spoke to before. Not in eleven months. So why now?

He’s jealous, something in me whispered, low and certain.

I almost laughed at the thought. Arthur didn’t want me. He’d made that painfully clear from the very first week. So why would another man talking to me matter to him at all?

Dinner was worse.

Darius had been seated with the visiting warriors, directly across from me. Arthur sat at the head of the table, same as always. For the first fifteen minutes, everything was ordinary, pack business, quiet conversation, the usual careful distance the staff kept around me.

Then Darius asked about training.

“You really threw him that far?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You should’ve seen your face.”

“What was wrong with my face?”

“You looked more shocked than everyone else in that yard.”

I laughed. A real laugh, the kind I hadn’t let out at this table in longer than I could remember.

The room went quiet.

I looked up. Arthur was staring at us, fork resting untouched beside his plate.

Darius kept going, oblivious or unbothered. “You should train with me sometime.”

Arthur’s chair scraped back hard enough to turn every head at the table.

“No.”

Darius blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I said no.”

“Arthur,” I said.

He ignored me entirely. “You’ve finished your meal, Darius.”

Darius glanced down at his half-full plate. “Apparently.”

“Leave.”

“Arthur!” My voice came out sharper than I meant it to.

Darius stood, unhurried, no offense in his face, if anything, something close to amusement. “Goodnight, Evana.”

“Goodnight.”

He walked out, and the moment the doors closed behind him I rounded on Arthur.

“What was that?”

He picked up his glass, calm on the surface, nothing calm underneath it. “Nothing.”

“You ordered him out because he was talking to me.”

“He was distracting you.”

I laughed, and there was nothing warm in it. “You’re unbelievable.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re my mate.”

I froze. “You remembered that?”

“What?”

“You remembered I’m your mate.”

He said nothing, and that silence told me everything his words wouldn’t.

I stood. “You stopped acting like my mate a long time ago, Arthur.”

His jaw clenched. “You don’t understand.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I understand perfectly.”

I walked away. I didn’t see his fingers tighten around the glass behind me. I didn’t see whatever war was happening behind his eyes. And I definitely didn’t see the way his wolf fought every instinct telling it to follow me out of that room.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I sat by the window, watching the moon, turning the evening over in my mind. Not because of Darius.

Because of Arthur.

For the first time since this marriage began, I’d seen something in his eyes that looked dangerously close to feeling.

I got up to shut my door and found him already standing in the hallway.

My heart jumped. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. Just looked at me, eyes moving over my face like he was reading something he couldn’t quite decide whether to believe.

Then he looked away.

“Arthur?”

His expression hardened. “Go to sleep.”

“You came all the way here to tell me that?”

He turned without answering and walked off. “Goodnight, Evana.”

I stood there confused, then closed my door.

He didn’t go far. On the other side of it, his back met the wall, and his eyes shut, and his wolf paced somewhere just under his skin, restless in a way it hadn’t been in years.

Mate, it said.

He clenched his fists. “Stop.”

She laughed with him.

“I know.”

She smiled at him.

“I know.”

The wolf growled, low, at nothing and everything. Another male.

He opened his eyes, breathing harder than the moment warranted, staring at her closed door like it might give him an answer he didn’t have.

He didn’t understand what was happening to him. He’d spent eleven months rejecting me, deliberately, coldly, at every turn. So why did the thought of another man’s hand near me make something ancient and savage claw up from somewhere he thought he’d buried for good?

“Why,” he whispered to the empty hallway, “does the thought of another man touching her make my wolf want to kill?”