Look Closely

I followed Alaric in silence as we deviated from the well-trod path, the jungle closing around us grows denser, wilder. The ground was soft, littered with leaves, and the rich scent of soil. The late afternoon sunlight dapples from the canopy above, lighting Alaric's broad back in shifting light and casting long shadows over the path.

I don't even ask where we are going. Something in the way he moves, with a stillness, and measured steps holds me back and bids me to just follow.

The sound of the crashing waves become fainter with each step forward as we travel deeper into the island, our steps drowned out by the endless hum of sea breeze. The further we go, the more untamed the land appears, as though we have travelled through time to a forgotten world.

And suddenly, just when I imagine that we will never get to the end of this path, the trees part. There is a small wooden structure, half-overgrown with creeping ivy. 

It is not exactly a ruin, but tipping the scales at that. And from the weathered state of it, it looks to be long abandoned. The roof sags just a bit inward, the wooden shutters have rotted and all that is left is hollow windows like empty eyes.

It is a crumbling wooden cabin, and the structure of it is eerily familiar. My mind shifts back to the cabin in the woods, where I found Alaric during the wildfire and I realise why it looks so familiar. It is because I have truly seen it before...or an exact, much more well maintained version of it, until it was claimed by the fire.

Sera had told me, that Alaric built that cabin for Carla as a reminder of a precious memory... only now do I understand what she meant.

I hesitate.

I am not sure what I had expected. Some hidden wonders of nature, maybe some relics of the Element Games, but certainly not this. 

Not something so... personal.

Alaric steps forward to stand before the cabin. He traces some writings etched into one of the few wooden pillars left standing.

There is a shift in the air, a change in his breathing, Alaric's shoulders hunch, suddenly seeming to bear a hidden weight. 

I follow his gaze and I see it, a name. It is nearly concealed by the moss and the years. The letters are shallow but intentional, etched out by a patient hand.

I don't need to say it aloud. I know... that name.

My chest tightens.

"We used to come here often. She said it was the only place that felt like home." Alaric's tone is even, but something in it is so removed, as if he is speaking from a very distant place.

I stare at him, waiting for him to go on, but he doesn't. Instead, his fingers lightly rest on the name before he takes a slow, measured breath and turns away.

I don't move.

It feels wrong to leave so soon, like walking away from a whisper you weren’t meant to hear but couldn’t un-hear. 

I turn my gaze back to the stone, to the faint impression of a life once here, and something cold trails along my spine.

"What happened to her?"

The words slip out before I can stop them.

Alaric stiffens.

For an instant, I pray he won't answer. That he'd just brush it aside the way he always has, leave the past locked behind whatever iron-barricaded fortress he'd built for himself.

But then, with a tone even lower than I can recall ever hearing from him, he replies:

"She was murdered."

I swallow...hard, fists clenched at my sides.

"How?"

He doesn't look at me. Instead, he crouches down, picking up a small rock on the ground. His thumb strokes it absently, eyes fixed at some point far in the distance.

"By someone who wanted my bloodline to end with me."

My breath catches.

I feel it before I even fully understand it. The way the air seems thinner, the space between us heavier.

"She…" The words are stuck in my throat. "Alaric, I..."

"I wasn't there." He speaks like he is in confession, as if the words themselves were as heavy as the rock he clenches in his fist.

"If I had been..."

His jaw tenses, anything else he might have said was left to silence. He doesn't need to continue. The heavy silence between us is charged with his grief, and something heavier hangs there: Guilt.

My heart thuds in my ears.

I have experienced loss. I lost both parents in one night under circumstances that remain unknown to this day. I know what it is to have something stripped from me, and be unable to stop it. But this...this is not like that.

This is a hurt that never did heal. A blame he has carried all these years.

I want to do something, say something... anything, but everything seems wrong. 

And for the first time, I truly look at him. Not just the stubborn Alpha Supreme, not just the unyielding, cold man who had once detested me.

I look closer at him.

The man who had loved once. The man who had dreamed once. The man who had lost all.

And the worst of it?

The murderer had never been apprehended.

A chill runs down my spine, the weight of that realization crashing down on me like a wave. Someone had taken them from him, his mate, his child yet to be born, and they were still roaming free.

Watching.

Waiting.

I shiver.

"I won't make the same mistake twice." Alaric finally looks at me, his eyes firm, unreadable. He is done with words. He'd said far more than he'd meant to already.

But I wasn't done feeling it.

And I understood, without needing him to speak, that this was why he was so cautious... first of me, and now, with me. Why he watches me like a shadow. Why every risk I take, every danger that comes too close, sets his blood boiling.

It is not just me.

It is about what he has already lost.

And now, in the middle of a place that had been forgotten, gazing at the past he never speaks of, I see myself from his perspective.

Not just as Kyra.

But as the ghost of something he never got to save.