015: tension

Dax POV

“Ronon, may I speak with you in private?” I asked quietly, trying to steer him away from Lyra, who stood like a cornered animal—rigid, silent, yet daring anyone to come closer.

But he didn’t move. He didn’t even blink.

Instead, he turned those storm-filled eyes on me, jaw clenched so tight I could hear his teeth grind. “Do not try to talk me out of this. Dax,” he muttered, voice low. strAined, but edged with unfiltered rage. “That bitch could never be half the woman Stasia was. I’d be giving up everything if I accepted the bond with her.”

I flinched inwardly. That wasn’t grief speaking anymore—it was fury fermented into cruelty.

So I linked him silently, hoping I could reach him that way. “She’s afraid of you, Ronon.”

His mental response came sharp and cold: “Good. She better know her place.”

My stomach turned.

Then he stepPed forward, squaring his shoulders, and Unleashed all that poison he had been bottling up.

“You ungrateful bitch. I buy you things you don’t deserve, and you can’t even say thank you. You sit there with that miserable scowl on your ugly face, acting like it’s your right, like you earned it. Like it was your money that paid for any of this!”

Lyra didn’t move. Not an inch. But her eyes flickered, just briefly. And that single flicker said more than a hundred words. It was pain. raw and familiar, swallowed and buried in a heartbeat.

Ronon wasn’t done.

“You were a thief, Lyra. You and your precious Malrevok stole the East. You took everything from the other Lycan Alphas and left them with nothing. You flaunted that blood money like it belonged to you—like you were anything but his whore. But it’s not yours. It never was. It belongs to Kael and Dax’s families. You’re nothing but a walking debt we’re forced to protect. A burden. And the only reason Malrevok’s enemies haven’t hunted you down is because we’re keeping you alive. But I’m done. I’m done playing guardian to a fucking snake—”

“Ronon!” I snapped, cutting him off before the words carved into her any deeper.

But the damage was done.

Her face didn’t crumble. It didn’t twist or break. She simply turned and walked away without a single word, her steps slow, heavy—but full of dignity.

“Come back here!” Ronon barked, but she did not stop. She vanished down the hall like a ghost fleeing a battlefield.

I turned to him, fury bubbling inside me. “That was too much. man.”

“She deserved it,” he growled, but his voice had lost some of its venom.

“No, she didn’t. We all heard her story, Ronon. She’s been through more than you can even imagine.”

Kael, silent until now, looked away, his jaw tight and eyes misty with unspoken pain.

“I want her to feel it,” Ronon muttered. “All of it. My pain. My loss. Everything.”

His voice cracked, just slightly, and in that moment I saw the shadow of the man I once knew—the one buried under all the grief and guilt. Stasia. Her children. The ruins of what once was. His fury had become armor, his cruelty a crutch.

“She already knows pain, Ronon. She knows every damn letter of it—in capital letters. And you think punishing her is justice? All you’re doing is trying to drown your own guilt by making her suffer.”

He didn’t answer.

Suddenly. Footsteps echoed. Lyra reappeared.

She was dressed in the same tight, off-shoulder black drEss she’d once claimed to have stolen. Her hair was brushed. Her chin high, and in her arms she held the shopping bags, the clothes, the shoes, the essentials Ronon had bought her.

She walked in with a grace that did not belong to the broken, and I swear for a moment, even Ronon forgot how to breathe.

Without a word, she held the bag out to him.

“I don’t need your charity,” she said, voice strong but void of emotion. “You’ll wash what I was wearing and give it back when it’s dry. Find someone else worth it. And from now on, I demand payment for the maid work I’m doing. I’ll buy my own things.”

Ronon’s expression twisted—stunned, almost affronted.

“I wouldn’t touch anything you’ve tainted,” he spat.

“Then throw it away. Or I will.”

She turned to leave.

But he reached out, grabbinG her wrist, his grip hard and possessive. The silence in the room grew heavy. Suffocating.

“Don’t you ever” he started, but she yanked her arm free with enough force to make him stumble back half a step.

She stepped closer. She looked him straight in the eye—smaller than him, thinner, bruised by life—but in that moment, she was a storm.

“Or else what?” she said coldly. “What are you going to do, Ronon? Kill me? Starve me? Humiliate me? Beat me?”

Each question hit like a punch.

“What, Alpha?” she mocked, the title like poison on her tongue. “Or else what?”

He didn’t answer.

Her voice lowered, tight and trembling with fury. “Just go ahead and reject me already, Ronon. Please. I’m begging you. End it. Let me have peace.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Ronon’s expression fell, the rage draining from his face as quickly as it had arrived.

“Get the fuck out,” he finally muttered.

She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink. She simply turned and walked out of his room.

But she didn’t go far.

She settled on the floor in the living room. Back straight, knees pulled to her chest, eyes trained on the glass window. Beyond the glass. Snowflakes danced in the wind, quiet, relentless.

Ronon stood still, breathing hard. As if each inhale cost him a piece of himself.

“Leave me, Dax,” he said quietly, his voice nearly breaking.

I didn’t argue. I stepped out and returned a moment later with a thick sweater and a warmer blanket for Lyra. Her shoulders tensed as I approached.

“I already have a blanket,” she said, eyes still fixed on the snowfall.

“These clothes are for summer,” I said gently, crouching beside her. “You’ll freeze tonight.”

She looked at me then—really looked at me.

And what I saw scared me more than anything Ronon had done. Her gaze wasn’t angry anymore. It wasn’t even guarded. It was empty. Like she’d bled out all her hope and let herself hollow.

“Maybe that would be for the best,” she whispered. “Please, Dax. Don’t try to keep me warm this time.”

Her voice cracked at the edges, but her expression remained eerily calm. She meant it.

That hit me harder than any insult ever could.

She wasn’t threatening to run. She wasn’t lashing out. She was surrendering—not to us, but to despair.

I sat beside her, placing the sweater gently across her lap. I didn’t speak. What could I say? What comfort could I offer when we were the ones who had driven her to this edge?

We were so busy punishing her, we never stopped to ask if she’d already paid a thousand times over.

For the first time in days, I didn’t feel like an Alpha. I just felt like a man watching a girl fade right in front of him—and knowing I’d helped dim her light.

Ronon might’ve wanted her to suffer, but all I could see now was how much she had already endured.

And it was killing her.

And maybe us too.