Chapter Five

Alpha Kai 

The hallway is silent when I return, the kind of silence that presses into your ears and makes you hear your own heartbeat. But underneath it, underneath the stillness of my own damn house I hear her.

Soft, muffled, breaking.

Aliya is crying.

Not the kind of crying you can fake or hold back. No these are the harsh, gut deep sobs of someone finally realizing they have nowhere left to run.

I stand just outside her door, my hand gripping the frame so tightly the wood cracks under my fingers. 

I should walk away. I should let her grieve, get it out, sleep it off. This arrangement was never meant to be comfortable.

It was meant to be functional. Clean. Transactional.

At least that’s what I told myself.

But hearing her sob like that?

It twists something in my chest, something I buried so damn deep I thought it was gone forever.

I shut my eyes, dragging in a breath that tastes like iron and regret.

You don’t get to feel this, I remind myself.

You don’t get to want to walk in there and fix her.

You don’t get to pretend you are not the reason she ended up like this.

Not when you’re the reason her life derailed ten years ago.

A flash, just a flicker of that night cuts through my mind like a blade. The cold. The shouting. The blood. And her standing there, too small, too wide eyed, too broken.

My chest tightens.

I force the memory back. I always force it back. It’s easier to act like I don’t remember the details, to pretend the guilt doesn’t suffocate me some nights. 

But seeing her here again seeing her grow into the woman shaped by the consequences of my actions makes it impossible to ignore. 

I swallow hard. I should look away. I should walk away.

I should stay away and not complicate this any further. 

But something pulls me to the doorway anyway.

I don’t step inside. I don’t dare. I just stand there. Watching her. 

She is curled on the far side of the bed, a tight, trembling ball of pain. The moonlight cuts across her face, catching the shimmer of tears that won’t stop falling. Her hair clings to her damp cheeks. Her shoulders shake with every breath that she tries and fails to steady.

I can almost feel each sob against my own ribs.

I could tell myself I hate seeing her like this because it’s inconvenient. That her crying makes things messy. Complicated. That I need her strong for everything that’s coming.

But the truth is uglier.

It’s because I did this.

Not tonight.

Not with Nelima.

Not with the words I threw at her when I thought she wasn’t listening.

Ten years ago.

That's when I broke her world.

And now she’s lying there crying herself to sleep in my house, under my roof, because I have backed her into another corner she can’t escape.

Nelima’s voice still echoes sharply in my head, her anger, her hurt, her accusations.

Why her? Why bring her here? Who is she to you?

And my answer, spoken too quickly, too defensively:

She means nothing. She is a business transaction, nothing more.

It was a lie.

Gods, such a fucking lie.

Aliya shifts on the bed, curling in tighter, and a small sound escapes her, almost a whimper, like she is trying to smother it into the pillow so no one hears.

But I hear. I hear everything.

My wolf bristles beneath my skin, pacing, restless, agitated. He presses against me, urging me toward her, pushing me forward with instincts I’ve ignored for far too long.

Comfort her, he growls inside my head.

She is hurting. Go to her.

But I can’t.

I can’t go to her. I can’t touch her.

I can’t be what she needs.

Not when every time I look at her, I see that night.

Not when I know she would scream her lungs out if she ever learned the truth.

And she will.

One day she will.

Because secrets don’t stay buried forever, not even the ones we kill to protect.

I keep my feet planted, forcing myself not to move. Not an inch.

Her breathing hiccups again, sharp and painful. She wipes at her face in the darkness, probably thinking no one can see her. She thinks she’s alone.

She isn’t.

And that’s the problem.

My hand slides down the door frame until my fingers hover over the doorknob.

One moment of weakness. That’s all it would take.

To sit beside her.

To tell her she is safe here.

To wipe away those tears.

To admit I didn’t mean a single damn word I said to Nelima.

But then what?

What happens when she stops crying long enough to look at me?

What happens when our eyes meet and the truth I have spent a decade hiding spills out anyway?

What happens when she realizes I’m the monster who shaped her pain before she was even grown enough to understand it?

Her fingers clutch the blanket closer to her chest, knuckles pale, shoulders trembling.

My wolf snarls inside me, furious at my restraint.

She is ours to protect.

But I force him back, locking down the instinct that wants to wrap her in my arms until the shaking stops.

"You can’t," I whisper to myself, barely audible.

"You don’t get to do that. Not after what you took from her."

My throat feels raw.

I stay there longer than I should have, long enough to watch her breathing shift, slow, soften as exhaustion finally drags her under. But even then, she doesn’t stop crying. The tears still slip down her cheeks long after sleep claims her.

I can't stomach it anymore.

The weight of the past, the weight of her pain, presses down on me until I can’t breathe.

I turn away and slowly start walking away, careful not to make any noises. 

I will go to her.

I will hold her.

I will undo every lie I have told to keep her safe.

But I can’t right now, Atleast not yet.

Not until she is strong enough to learn the truth about what I did to her family, what I did to her ten years ago.

So I walk away, silent as a ghost, leaving her alone in the darkness.

It’s the only thing I can give her right now.

Distance.