The price of a lie

LYRA'S POV

"What are you and Kael really up to?" Mara asks, quiet and even. "I know when someone's lying to me."

I could deflect. I've had a lifetime of practice turning questions like this into nothing. But something about the way she asks it, steady, not cruel, like she actually wants the truth instead of a reason to hate me, makes me want to give her one honest thing.

"I don't know if it's real," I say. "The bond. I don't know if any of this is real, and I'm too scared to ask him again in case the answer changes."

That's not the truth. I already believe the bond is a lie Kael made up to protect me. I only said "I don't know" because Mara can sense an outright lie, and something built on uncertainty was the only version she might actually believe. I don't want Kael to sound like a liar to a woman who's already looking for a reason to think so of him. Better she doubts me than doubts him.

Mara doesn't move for a second. Whatever she expected me to say, it wasn't that.

She steps back and lets the door swing open, waving me inside without a word. Her room is smaller than Kael's, plainer, but there's a fire already going, like she knew she'd be bringing someone back there.

"You're not what I thought you'd be," she says, closing the door behind us.

"What did you think I'd be?"

"Someone who'd lie to my face about it. " 

She sits on the edge of a wooden chest, arms crossed, watching me the way you'd watch a fire you're not sure is out yet. "At least you're honest about not knowing."

I sit across from her, close enough to the flames that my skin starts to thaw for the first time all day.

Neither of us says anything for a while. The fire fills the silence instead, cracking and settling into itself. I wait for her to bring up something to taunt me. 

She doesn't.

"Why not leave? You still have a chance now, before this goes any further."

Her voice is careful, almost gentle. "You'd be putting yourself in real danger. And if it goes wrong, it's not just you who pays for it. Kael is the Alpha."

She says it like she's talking me out of something for my own good. But there's a flicker underneath it too, quick.

Like the thought of me staying costs her something that has nothing to do with pack law.

I don't ask what she means by that. Some doors close faster if you knock too hard.

"Can I ask you something?" I say.

She doesn't answer, which I take as permission.

"What happens if it isn't real? If the rite says there's no bond?"

Something shifts in her face. Not triumph. I expected triumph. I've been braced for it since the moment she opened the door.

"You really don't know," she says, more to herself than to me.

"Know what?"

She's quiet for a long moment, staring into the fire like she's deciding how much of this is hers to tell.

"A false mate claim isn't just embarrassing, Lyra. It's not something Kael apologizes for and moves past." Her voice drops lower. "There's a reason no Alpha's made one in North Ridge."

"What reason?"

Mara looks at me, and for the first time since the ravine, there's no hostility in her eyes at all. Just something that looks almost like pity.

"Because the last one who tried to prove a fake bond with the Alpha," she says, "didn't survive what came after."

My stomach drops.

It's Kael I think of first. His voice this afternoon, steady and stupid with hope. I'll handle it. Just trust me. He knew this the entire time and let me believe the only thing at risk was pride.

The fire cracks in the silence that follows. I wait for her to say more.

She doesn't.