LOGINChapter 154Dorian stayed for dinner.Not planned, it happened the way things happened when a conversation had more in it than one sitting could hold gradually, without announcement, the afternoon becoming evening and nobody suggesting he leave because the things still unsaid outnumbered the things that had been said.My mother had left food at the secondary property for my father. Matthias's kitchen had enough for three more. Dante ate standing in the corridor, which was simply how Dante ate at events he hadn't planned for.We sat at the kitchen table.Dorian and Matthias had not spoken directly yet. They had occupied the same room for two hours with me between them and had managed it with the particular careful respect of two men who understood they were important to the same person in entirely different ways and were still working out what that meant.Over food, that changed."Cassius," Matthias said.Not preamble. Just the name, placed in the space between them like something to b
Chapter 153We went to the small sitting room off the main entrance.Not Matthias's office that felt too formal, too much like a meeting with stakes being managed. Not the library, which was mine in a way I wasn't ready to share yet. The small sitting room had chairs that faced each other and a window that looked out onto the garden and nothing on the walls that meant anything to anyone.Neutral ground.Dorian sat across from me.Matthias took the chair to my left, slightly back from the conversation, present without inserting himself. I had asked him to stay and he had said yes without asking why, which was one of the thousand small ways he had learned how to love me correctly.Dante was outside the door."Start from the night of the fire," I said.No preamble. No small talk. I had spent two lifetimes learning that preamble was usually fear of the main thing, and I was done being afraid of information that belonged to me.Dorian looked at his hands for a moment.Then he looked at me.
Chapter 152We stood on the same side of the gate.Neither of us moved immediately. The evening air was cool and the estate lights were beginning to come on along the perimeter path and somewhere behind me Matthias was a steady, quiet presence, and none of that was what I was aware of most.What I was aware of most was his eyes.I had been trying, since the moment he stepped through the gate, to locate the familiarity I felt when I looked at him. It wasn't his hair, turned mostly silver now, or the line of his jaw, or the careful way he held his shoulders. It wasn't anything I could point to as a specific physical feature.It was the eyes.Not their colour. Not their shape. Something in the quality of them. The particular way they received what they were looking at fully, carefully, with the patience of someone who had learned that looking properly the first time mattered because you might not get a second chance.I looked at people that way.I had always looked at people that way. I
Chapter 151The note was still in Matthias's hand when I stood up.He hadn't put it down. I noticed that, the way he was holding it not as something to be filed or acted on but as something he was still deciding how to give me. Like he understood that the piece of paper wasn't operational intelligence. It was personal. And personal things needed to be handed over differently."Dorian Voss," I said again, out loud, to hear what it sounded like in the room."Yes," Matthias said.I looked at the window. At the late afternoon light coming through it, ordinary and unhurried, entirely indifferent to what was happening inside."He's still at the gate," I said."Dante confirmed two minutes ago. He hasn't moved. Hasn't asked again." Matthias held my gaze. "Just waiting."I thought about patience. About what it took to stand at someone else's iron gate for forty minutes without demanding anything. Without pushing. Just standing on the other side of the bars and waiting to be let in or turned aw
Chapter 150The week had no incidents to report.That was how I'd started measuring time without quite noticing, counting days by what hadn't gone wrong rather than what had. Seven mornings without an emergency. Seven evenings of ordinary dinners. My father, fully cleared by his doctor, back at the estate working light hours in maintenance, joking with the younger staff like nothing had ever happened to him. Elena, on campus and off it, texting me about seminars and nothing else, because nothing else needed managing anymore.I let myself believe it.Not foolishly. I knew Cassius was still out there, patient, regrouping somewhere across an ocean. I knew the danger hadn't resolved so much as paused. But a week of genuine peace, after everything, felt like something worth letting myself have without constantly bracing for its end.The message came on a Wednesday afternoon.I was in the library with Matthias, both of us reading in companionable silence, when Dante knocked and entered with
Chapter 149The dining room was decorated simply.No grand display. Matthias had asked me what I wanted and I'd told him honestly, nothing elaborate, just the people who mattered and a table they could all sit around together. He'd taken that instruction seriously, in the particular way he took everything I said seriously.I stood in the doorway for a moment before going in, looking at the small gathering already settling into chairs.My parents, side by side. Elena, already deep in conversation with Dante, who was standing slightly apart from the table with his hands in his pockets and the specific discomfort of a man who understood social gatherings about as well as he understood emotional small talk, which was to say, not very well, but who had come anyway because I'd asked him to.Kane, by contrast, looked completely at home. He'd arrived an hour early, inspected the kitchen with open curiosity, and was now sitting with a glass of wine, entirely unbothered by being the largest and
Chapter 5 Aria's POV I barely slept. By the time morning came I was already awake, staring at my phone as the notifications kept rolling in. Messages from people I didn't even know. Comments on the fake photos that kept getting worse. ...slut ...bet she fucked him for money ...daddy issues m
Chapter 4Aria's POV That night I stood in front of my closet trying to figure out what the hell to wear to an interview with a billionaire Lycan Alpha.Nothing too flashy. Nothing that screamed "I'm trying to seduce you." I needed to look professional. Capable. Like a normal eighteen-year-old who
Chapter 3: Aria's POV I woke up staring at the ceiling of my dorm room. Elena was asleep in the other bed, snoring softly. The clock on my nightstand said 5:47 AM. Way too early for a Sunday, but I couldn't sleep anymore. My mind wouldn't stop. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the crash.
Chapter 2 Aria's POV I jerked upright, heart slamming against my ribs. The music was too loud. People were everywhere, laughing, drinking, pressed together in groups. The smell of beer and perfume was overwhelming. Caden was standing over me, looking annoyed. "Finally," he groaned. "You sle







