CHAPTER 4: The Confrontation

"I'm tired, Iris."

The words hit the bedroom air like a door closing. Final. Dismissive. The same tone he uses when I ask too many questions or take up too much of his time.

I wait until the house is silent. Until the last guest has left and Clarissa has finally gone to her room—the guest room that's become permanent. Until the sound of Damon pouring another drink downstairs fades into quiet footsteps on the stairs.

Midnight. The clock on the nightstand glows green in the darkness. I've been sitting on the edge of our bed for two hours in that awful beige dress, watching the door, listening to the house settle around me.

I've rehearsed this conversation so many times that the words have worn grooves in my mind. I know exactly what I want to say. I know exactly how I want to say it. Calm. Clear. Direct.

But the moment the bedroom door swings open and Damon walks in, every rehearsed word evaporates.

He doesn't look at me. Doesn't acknowledge me sitting here in the lamplight. Just walks in, smelling of whiskey and her perfume, and starts loosening his tie like I'm furniture. Like I'm part of the room he moves through without seeing.

Clarissa's perfume clings to his collar. That same floral, expensive scent from dinner. It's stronger now. Like he's been close to her again after the guests left. Like sitting beside her at the table wasn't enough contact for one evening.

I stand up.

"We need to talk."

"I'm tired, Iris." He pulls the tie free, tosses it at the chair in the corner. Misses. Doesn't pick it up.

"I know. This won't take long."

"It never takes long." He moves toward the closet, unbuttoning his shirt. "And then somehow an hour passes."

The unfairness of that stings. I don't ask for his time. I have never demanded enough of his time. I've spent three years shrinking myself down to take up as little of it as possible.

"Damon." My voice comes out steadier than I expected. "Please look at me."

He stops. Turns his head slightly without fully turning around. The lamp catches the line of his jaw, the tension there.

"What is it?"

I reach into my pocket. My fingers find the test, warm from being pressed against my body all day through dinner and the drive home and two hours of sitting in the dark waiting. I pull it out and hold it up.

"I'm pregnant."

The words drop into the silence of the room.

Damon goes completely still. His shirt half-unbuttoned, one hand still raised. He stays like that for a full three seconds. Four.

Then he turns around.

He looks at the test in my hand. At the two pink lines that have been burning a hole in my pocket since six this morning. His face cycles through expressions too quickly to catch all of them. Shock opens his features wide and young-looking. Then confusion draws his brows together. Then something hardens behind his eyes, cold and deliberate, sliding into place like a bolt being thrown.

He crosses the room in slow, measured steps. Takes the test from my hand and holds it up to the light. Studies it like it might be lying to him.

Then he sets it down on the nightstand. Steps back. His arms cross over his chest.

"How?"

The question is so absurd that for a moment I think I've misheard him.

"The usual way, Damon. You're my husband."

"We barely..." He stops. Starts over. His jaw works like he's chewing on words that won't come out right. "I don't remember..."

He can't finish the sentence. Can't acknowledge out loud that we've had sex. That he touched me. That I am his wife in anything beyond legal paperwork.

"Last month." I keep my voice flat and even. "After the full moon run. You came home drunk and you..."

"I was DRUNK."

The words come out hard and fast. His eyes are sharp now, focused, and what's in them when he looks at me makes the back of my throat ache.

Disgust. Not at himself. At me.

"You got pregnant from a pity fuck?"

The phrase hits me like an open palm. I actually take a small step back, absorbing the impact of it. Pity. That's what that night was to him. Enduring me. Tolerating the inconvenience of a wife he never wanted.

I had hoped it meant something. I lay awake afterward listening to him sleep and let myself imagine, just for one night, that things might change. That something in him had remembered why he chose me. That we might find our way back to something real.

"It wasn't..." My voice cracks on the first word. I press past it. "I thought maybe you wanted to..."

"Wanted what?" He steps closer. Not threatening exactly, but filling the space between us in a way that makes me want to step back again. "Wanted YOU?"

The emphasis on that last word. The way he says it. Like the idea is so far outside the realm of possibility that it barely deserves the breath to speak it.

I stop moving backward. Plant my feet on the floor.

"You love Clarissa."

It comes out quiet. Certain. Not an accusation, just a statement of fact, spoken aloud for the first time after three years of knowing it and refusing to say it.

He doesn't deny it. Doesn't even flinch.

The silence that follows is its own answer. The loudest thing he's ever said to me.

"She's carrying my child too," he says finally. The way someone might mention the weather. Casual. Inevitable.

"She's your sister."

"Half-sister." The correction is immediate and sharp, like he's been waiting to make it. "Different mothers. Completely different situation."

"That's what you're focused on? The technicality?"

"She's twice the woman you'll ever be." His voice is calm. Almost gentle. Which makes it worse somehow. Anger would be easier to stand against than this cold, measured certainty. "I know that's hard to hear."

"Don't." My hands curl into fists at my sides.

"She's strong, Iris. She's an Alpha's daughter. She walks into a room and people notice her. She understands pack life, pack politics, what it means to lead." He picks up his pajamas from the dresser drawer with quiet, deliberate movements. Like we're having a normal conversation. "She was born for the role you've been failing at for three years."

Each sentence lands with surgical precision. He knows exactly where to cut.

"And I wasn't?" My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. "Born for it?"

"No." He says it simply. Without cruelty and without kindness, which is somehow worse than either. "You weren't. I made a mistake when I chose you. I was young and I thought different meant something. It didn't."

I stare at him. At this man I stood in front of and said I do to. This man I made meals for and excused bruises for and convinced myself loved me in ways I just couldn't see.

"You chose me." The words feel strange in my mouth. Important somehow, even now. "You pursued me. You proposed."

"I know what I did." He doesn't look away. Doesn't have the grace to look ashamed. "I'm telling you it was a mistake."

My hand moves to my stomach. Covers it. I don't decide to do it. My body just moves on its own, the way it has been all day, protective and certain even when the rest of me is falling apart.

He watches the gesture. Something shifts in his expression. Gets harder.

"Get rid of it."

The words are so quiet that for a moment I think I've imagined them.

"What?"

"The baby." He sets his folded pajamas on the bed. Still calm. Still reasonable. Like he's suggesting I return something to a store. "Get rid of it, Iris."

The room feels like it's contracting around me. The walls pressing in from all sides.

"You can't be serious."

"I am completely serious." He meets my eyes without any hesitation whatsoever. "I won't raise two children at the same time. Clarissa's child comes first. That's not negotiable."

"That's my baby." My voice comes out raw. Stripped of the careful control I've been maintaining. "That's our baby."

"That's a problem." He says it without blinking. "One that needs to be handled before it becomes public."

"Handled." The word tastes like poison. "You're talking about our child like it's a scheduling conflict."

"I'm talking about reality." He picks up his pajamas again, moves toward the bathroom. Done with this. Done with me. "Make an appointment with the pack doctor. This week. He'll take care of it quietly, no one needs to know."

"No." The word comes out of me before I've fully decided to say it. But once it's out, I find I mean it completely. "No, Damon. I won't."

He stops walking. The stillness that moves through him is different from before. Cooler. More dangerous.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm keeping my baby." My hands are shaking again, but my voice has steadied into something I barely recognize. "You don't get to make that decision."

He turns back to face me slowly. Studies me with an expression that's almost curious. Like I'm an animal that's done something unexpected.

"You're refusing a direct order from your Alpha."

"I'm refusing an order from my husband that has nothing to do with pack business and everything to do with covering up an affair." My voice shakes on the last word but holds. "You don't have authority over my body."

Something moves through his eyes. For one fraction of a second, I see something that might be uncertainty. Might even be guilt.

Then it closes off.

"You'll regret this." His voice drops low. Quiet. The kind of quiet that has always made me careful before now. "I can make things very difficult for you here, Iris. You know I can."

"I already regret marrying you." The words come out before I can stop them. First time I've ever said it. First time I've ever let myself think it out loud.

His hand lifts. A short, sharp movement.

I flinch. My whole body pulling backward, arms coming up slightly, muscle memory taking over before my mind can intervene.

He sees it. Sees the flinch and what it means. What it says about who we've become in three years.

His hand drops.

Something crosses his face that I can't name. Something that's gone before I can look at it directly.

"Fine." His voice is quiet now. Flat. "Keep it. But don't expect me to claim it. Don't expect anything from me."

He walks toward the bedroom door.

"Damon."

He doesn't slow down. Doesn't turn.

"That's not a request, Iris." His hand closes around the doorknob. "It's an order. You have one week to change your mind."

The door swings shut behind him.

I stand in the middle of our bedroom, in the dress he chose for me, staring at the space he just left.

Then I hear it.

Small. Mechanical. Final.

The lock clicking into place.

He locked me in.