CHAPTER 6: THE WALLS OF THIS HOUSE

I was still sitting with Cassius's words circling my mind, it can't be, when a knock cut through the silence, sharp and formal, nothing like comfort.

"Helena." Damian's voice came in through the door, controlled and distant. "I need to talk to you for a moment."

"Come in," I said, pulling the borrowed robe tighter around myself.

He stepped inside and shut the door behind him with the same careful precision he seemed to bring to everything, still in his suit, though the tie had been loosened, the only sign that tonight had cost him anything at all.

"My father's behavior tonight," he said, without preamble, "was inappropriate, and I won't pretend otherwise. I wanted you to hear that from me directly."

"Then he looked at my scar like he'd seen a ghost."

"I noticed." His jaw was tight, gray eyes giving away nothing. "Whatever he thought he recognized, he did not explain it."

"And I do not have an answer for you yet," he continued.

"Do you have a guess?" I asked.

"I don't deal in guesses." He responded flatly, though something in the way his eyes held mine a beat too long told me the answer was not as simple as he wanted it to sound. "I deal in facts, and right now I have none worth giving you."

"That's not very comforting for a wedding night."

Something almost like the ghost of amusement passed over his face before it vanished. "I never promised comfort. Only protection, for as long as you're under this roof."

The room felt smaller than it had a moment ago. I did not move, and neither did he, the space between us charged with something neither of us seemed willing to name, the same current that had passed between us in the dark by the water before six men had torn the night apart.

"Why does it matter to you," I asked quietly, "what he thinks he saw?"

"Because my father does not react to anything less important and without a reason," Damian said, his voice lower now. "And I would rather understand what unsettled him before it becomes a problem I can't control."

"Am I a problem to control?" I asked.

His gray eyes flickered, something sharp and unreadable moving behind them. "You're my wife," he said, like the word itself was still strange in his mouth. "So whatever you are, it's mine to manage now."

The coldness in it should have stung more than it did. Instead, I found myself watching his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, wondering how a man built entirely out of walls could still make my pulse climb just by standing three feet away and saying nothing warm at all.

Then a brisk knock rattled on the door before either of us could say anything else.

"If you two are done being tragic in there," a voice called through the wooden door, "some of us would like to actually meet the bride before midnight."

Damian's jaw tightened, though something almost like reluctant fondness moved behind his eyes. "My brother," he said, already stepping back and putting distance between us that felt deliberate.

The door swung open, and a young man strolled in like he owned the room, messy dark blond hair, an easy grin, a scar cutting through one eyebrow that only made his face more striking. Behind him were two other men, one tall and quiet with dark, watchful eyes that swept the room and landed on me like he was trying to read every detail about me at once, the other sharp-dressed and smiling, twirling a pen between his fingers like it was an extension of his hand.

"Kade," the blond one said, offering a hand I shook on reflex. "Damian's much better-looking brother, in case nobody has told you yet."

"Nobody has told me anything," I said honestly, and it surprised a real laugh out of him.

"Fair, this family is terrible at introductions." He nodded to the quiet one first. "Ryder, our War General. And Xavier, resident genius and professional smart mouth."

"Pleasure," Xavier said smoothly, though his eyes lingered on me a beat too long, calculating something I had not yet permitted him to work out.

Ryder said nothing at all. He simply looked at me, dark eyes steady, and something about his stillness made the back of my neck prickle, not exactly with fear, but with the certain, unsettling feeling that he was searching for something specific in my face and had not yet decided whether he had found it.

"It's very rare for all four of us to be in the same room," Kade said, oblivious to the tension humming just beneath the pleasantries. "Guess that's what a wedding does."

"Rare, and apparently significant," Xavier murmured, still watching me. "Don't you feel that?"

"Feel what?" I asked.

His easy smile did not waver, but something behind his eyes sharpened, the same way Cassius's had right before he touched my scar. "Nothing," he said, and I hated how much that single word scared me the second time I heard it tonight.

Across the room, Ryder had gone very still, his gaze fixed somewhere just past my shoulder, and when I turned to see what had caught his attention, there was nothing there at all. His jaw was tight, his breathing careful and controlled, the exact way a person breathes when they are trying not to let something show.

"Ryder," Damian said in a low voice, watching his War General with open concern. "What is it?"

Ryder blinked, and whatever had gripped him released just as suddenly, leaving only careful blankness behind. "Nothing," he said, his voice rougher than before. "Just a scent I didn't expect."

He turned and walked out without saying another word, and I stood there in a room gone silent, watching the door swing shut behind him, with the cold, growing certainty that in this house full of strangers, I had just watched a second man come dangerously close to recognising something about me that even I did not understand yet.