Some of it wasn't a lie

LYRA'S POV 

Footsteps sound in the hallway, closer than they should be this soon.

I don't put the phone back where I found it. I drop it instead, half-panicked, somewhere near the base of the bed, almost knocking the bed lamp over.

The door opens. A guard steps in, eyes already scanning the room.

"Everything all right in here?"

"Fine." My voice comes out steadier than I feel.

"Couldn't sleep." I add.

He finds it within seconds, crouching to pick it up off the floor, turning it over once in his hand before his gaze lifts to me, narrow and unconvinced.

"Didn't you say you couldn't sleep?"

"I couldn't."

His eyes flick briefly to my hands before returning to my face. He doesn't look convinced, but he doesn't press either. He just pockets the phone.

"I'll let Ashford know."

He backs out and pulls the door shut behind him. I count to twenty before I let myself breathe again, certain for one fragile moment that I've actually gotten away with it.

Ashford arrives less than ten minutes later, and the ease he usually carries into a room is gone entirely, replaced by something cold enough to make the air itself feel different.

"My man tells me you had a phone in your hands tonight."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He crosses the room fast, faster than I expect, and his hand closes around my chin before I can flinch away from it, tilting my face up the same way he did years ago, the same casual ownership, like my resistance is an inconvenience rather than a warning.

"Don't," he says quietly. "Don't insult both of us by pretending. You think I didn't already know the moment he told me?"

I don't answer. I can't, not with his fingers pressing into my jaw, not with every instinct in my body screaming to pull away and knowing exactly how that would end.

"You think I'm cruel now?" His voice stays low, almost gentle, which is somehow worse than if he'd shouted. "You have no idea what cruel actually costs until you give me a reason to show you."

He releases me, and I draw back as far as the space allows, my pulse hammering in my throat.

"I put the phone back. I didn't even get a message out." I don't deny it anymore.

"That's not the point, and you know it."

"You can check it yourself."

"I already did." He studies my face the way he studies everything, like he's deciding how much of it he believes. "Which is the only reason you're still sitting here instead of somewhere far less comfortable."

My stomach twists. "Then what do you want?"

"Insurance,"  he says, pulling out his phone and propping it against a stack of books on the table, angling the camera until it's pointed squarely at my face. "Smile for it if you can manage. Though I doubt you will. You're going to tell that Alpha to stop looking for you. That you chose this. That the bond was a mistake, and you want nothing more to do with him."

"No."

"You'll say it," he says, "or I'll let him keep dying slowly instead of quickly, and you'll spend every day of it knowing you had one chance to end his suffering and refused out of pride."

The room tilts slightly, the way it did the first time I understood exactly what the mark had done to him.

"He won't believe it."

"He doesn't have to believe every word. He only has to believe enough to stop coming." Ashford's smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Men do strange things when they think the person they love doesn't want to be saved."

I think of Kael searching for me, refusing to stop even as the bond tears him apart. I imagine what Ashford might do to him if that search continues, and the thought steals what little fight I have left.

I can endure Ashford's hatred. I can endure whatever he does to me.

But the thought of becoming the reason Kael suffers is almost more than I can bear.

"Fine." My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. "Turn it on."

He does.

I look into the lens like it's Kael's actual face, and I let my voice shake, because it isn't hard to fake what's already true.

"Kael." My voice cracks on his name, which I don't have to force. "I need you to stop looking for me. This was a mistake, all of it, since the night at the gate. I don't want this bond. I never wanted it. Please, just let me go. Let's pretend I never crossed Northridge."

Ashford taps the screen to stop recording, visibly pleased, turning the phone over once in his hand like he's admiring something he made.

I sit there afterward, shaking.

The worst part isn't what I said. It's that some of it wasn't a lie at all. There's a version of me, small and exhausted and terrified past reasoning, that meant every word about wanting this to stop, about wishing I'd never crossed into North Ridge land at all. I don't know anymore where the performance ends and the truth begins, and that frightens me more than Ashford ever has.

He pauses at the door and looks back at me, amusement settling into something colder.

"You thought you could hide a phone from me. Sneak around behind my back and get away with it."

He opens the door, then glances over his shoulder.

"I've been patient with you, Lyra. Don't mistake that for weakness."

His gaze holds mine.

"Try this again, and I'll put you somewhere you won't survive."