Chapter 2: Iron in My Hands

"My mate isn't going anywhere," Ronan said again, like repeating it made it true.

"Let go of my wrist."

"Not until you tell me the truth. Do you actually want to leave him, or are you just trying to hurt me?"

"You rejected me two hours ago, Ronan. I don't need a reason to leave. You gave me one."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then explain what you meant."

He opened his mouth. I watched him get halfway to an actual answer, something real trying to surface behind his eyes, and then I watched him shut it down before a single word came out.

"I can't," he said.

"You can't, or you won't?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to me. You stood in front of the entire pack and told everyone I was too much of everything to stand beside a throne. Now you're gripping my wrist hard enough to bruise it, refusing to explain yourself, acting like I owe you patience I don't have left to give."

"I never said you owed me anything."

"You're acting like it. You reject me in public, then you chase me down and grab me like I'm something you still get to control."

"That's not what this is."

"Then what is it? Because I'm done guessing."

"It's complicated."

"Everything with you is complicated. Funny how it's never complicated enough to actually explain."

"Then what is it, Ronan? Because from where I'm standing, you want it both ways. You want the freedom of rejecting me and the right to still tell me what to do."

"You don't understand the position I'm in."

"I don't care about your position. I care about my wrist."

"You have no idea what tonight actually cost me."

"Then tell me. Make me understand instead of just gripping harder every time I try to leave."

"I wish I could."

"Wishing isn't an explanation, Ronan. It's just another way of saying nothing at all."

"You saw the mark. You know it hasn't faded."

"I saw it. I don't understand it any more than you do."

"That's convenient."

"None of this is convenient for me, Briar."

"If I could tell you everything right now, I would."

"That's not an answer, that's an excuse with better posture."

"You're making this harder than it needs to be."

"I'm not making anything harder. You're the one holding my wrist while refusing to explain a single thing."

"There's more going on here than you realize."

"Then let me realize it. Stop deciding for me what I'm allowed to understand."

"Briar, please."

"Don't say please to me. You didn't say please two hours ago when you humiliated me in front of everyone I've ever known."

"That was different."

"You keep saying that like it means something. Different how, exactly? Different because you got to choose the moment, and now I'm the one being inconvenienced by choosing mine?"

"You're twisting this."

"I'm not twisting anything. I'm standing in a room with a man who rejected me publicly and is now refusing to let go of my wrist. If anyone's twisting something, it's you, and it's my arm."

"Let go."

"Not yet."

"Ronan."

"I need you to stay still for one second."

"I don't take orders from you anymore. You made sure of that yourself."

Something in me went very still and very hot at the same time. My wolf had spent the entire night clawing to get closer to him, desperate for a bond that made no sense anymore, and for one full second I let her win. I let the ache take over instead of fighting it.

Then his grip tightened again, harder this time, and pain shot straight up through my elbow into my shoulder.

"You're hurting me."

"Then stop pulling away."

"I'm not the one who needs to stop."

"Briar, just listen to me for one second."

"I listened to you plenty tonight. In front of three hundred witnesses. That's more listening than you've earned for a lifetime."

"This is different."

"Everything is always different with you. Let go of my wrist."

"No."

"Ronan, I mean it. Let go."

"I can't."

"You can. You're choosing not to."

Something snapped.

One second his hand was locked around my wrist like a manacle. Next, my body moved without asking my brain for permission. I shoved him, both hands flat against his chest, and he went backward like I'd hit him with a truck instead of my palms.

He hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster behind him.

For a moment neither of us moved. My hands were still raised in front of me, fingers spread, like I didn't quite believe they belonged to me. My arms were shaking, not from fear this time, but from something closer to shock. I had never in my life put that kind of force into anything.

"How did you," Ronan started, then stopped, staring at the crack running through the wall behind his shoulder.

"I don't know."

"That wasn't normal wolf strength."

"I said I don't know, Ronan."

"You threw me across a room without even bracing."

"I didn't plan it. It just happened."

"Ironbacks don't just develop strength like that overnight."

"Maybe I've been holding all of this back my whole life and never had a reason to let it out until tonight."

"Or maybe there's something about tonight specifically that triggered it."

"Don't stand there analyzing me like I'm a puzzle you get to solve. You lost that right two hours ago."

He pushed himself off the wall slowly, testing his own footing like he wasn't fully sure his legs would hold him. His eyes moved from the crack to my hands, then back to my face, like he was trying to reconcile the woman he rejected with whatever had just thrown him across a room.

"Briar, that shouldn't be possible for someone your size."

"Maybe you should have thought about that before you called me too heavy for a throne."

"That's not what I meant by any of this."

"I don't care what you meant anymore. I care what you said."

Footsteps pounded up the stairs before he could answer. The door was still hanging open from when he'd kicked it in earlier, and Asher filled the frame a second later, breathing hard, eyes sharp with the kind of alertness that meant he'd heard the impact from outside.

"What happened in here," Asher said, looking at the crack in the wall, then at Ronan, then at me.

"Nothing that concerns you," Ronan said.

"It concerns me the second it's this loud in a room she's standing in."

"She's not yours to worry about."

"She left with me an hour ago. That makes her exactly my concern."

"You don't get to walk into my territory and decide what's yours."

"I didn't walk in uninvited. I heard a wall crack and came to check on a woman I offered protection to, still standing in the same room as the man who put a bruise on her wrist."

"This stopped being your territory the moment you dragged her into a room and cracked the wall behind her."

"Watch your mouth, Kade."

"Or what."

Ronan's shoulders squared. Something dangerous moved behind his eyes, gold bleeding into brown the way it did right before a wolf stopped being careful.

"You don't want to do this," Ronan said.

"I really think I do," Asher answered, stepping fully into the room.

"Last warning, Kade."

"I don't take warnings from Princes who reject their mates and then break into her room two hours later."

"You don't know the first thing about what happened tonight."

"I know what I watched happen. I know what her wrist looks like right now."

"This isn't your fight."

"She made it my fight the moment she asked me for a home and I said yes."

"Get out of this room, Kade."

"Make me."

"You're outnumbered on my land."

"I'm not counting numbers right now. I'm counting how many times you've put your hands on her tonight."

"That's none of your business."

"It became my business the second I heard that wall crack."

Neither of them looked away from the other. The air in the room went thick and sharp, the kind of pressure that builds right before two Alphas stop using words entirely, and I realized with a cold drop in my stomach that both of them were about to do something neither pack could afford to let happen under this roof.