GUARDED

CHAPTER 20

Two men I didn't recognize stood outside my door.

"Who assigned you?" I asked.

"Alpha Roman's orders."

"Why?"

Neither answered.

One shifted his weight. The other kept his eyes fixed somewhere over my shoulder.

I stared at them for another second before turning away.

If Roman wanted to surround me with guards, he could at least have the courage to explain why.

I found him in his study twenty minutes later, still surrounded by the reports from the night before.

"Why are there two guards outside my door?"

"Because you're not safe."

"That isn't an answer."

He set down the paper in his hand.

"After what happened in Lyra's study, I'm not taking chances."

"You told me to be careful. You never told me what I was supposed to be careful of. Now I have strangers standing outside my room, and I still don't know why."

"It's necessary."

"That's not a reason. That's an order."

I crossed my arms.

"I'm not a prisoner."

"I know."

"Then stop treating me like one."

He didn't answer immediately.

I pushed harder.

"What are you actually afraid of?"

"Mira"

"Is it the missing documents?"

His expression tightened.

"Partly."

"Is it whoever interfered with Lyra's investigation?"

Silence.

I watched him carefully.

"Then what?"

"I don't know who has access to this house." His voice had gone tight. "I don't know who accessed that room last night. I don't know who's been watching my investigation for two years."

He looked toward the window.

"And I can't guarantee you're safe simply because you weren't part of this before."

"Why does that matter so much to you?"

His eyes came back to mine.

"You're carrying my"

"Don't say the baby."

I stepped closer.

"Don't you dare say the baby."

Roman's jaw clenched.

For a moment, he looked like a man being pulled apart by two different instincts.

Then he said quietly,

"Because I can't lose you too."

The room went silent.

I stared at him.

"Too?"

He didn't move.

"Too like who, Roman?"

He looked away.

"Too like who?"

My voice was quieter this time.

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

I closed the distance between us.

"You don't get to say something like that and pretend it meant nothing."

"I didn't mean"

"You did."

He fell silent.

When he finally spoke, his voice had lost its usual control.

"I wasn't talking about the baby."

My heart stumbled.

"I was talking about you."

His eyes met mine.

"Just you."

Something inside my chest cracked open.

Warm.

Terrifying.

Real.

I forced myself to breathe.

"Are you protecting me because I'm carrying your heir?"

"No."

"Then why?"

He struggled with the answer.

I could see it in the way his jaw tightened, in the way his hands flexed at his sides.

"Because you're you," he said finally.

Four words.

They shouldn't have meant as much as they did.

But they landed harder than any grand declaration could have.

I swallowed.

"What aren't you telling me?"

His expression changed.

I knew immediately that I'd found the thing he was trying to keep buried.

His hand drifted unconsciously toward the folder still sitting on his desk.

The remaining pages from Lyra's study.

"There was a reference in one of the missing documents," he said carefully.

"To what?"

"Something unusual."

He hesitated.

"A bloodline anomaly."

My breath caught.

"Similar to something Sable found in your results."

I stared at him.

"Similar how?"

"I don't know yet."

He closed the folder before I could see what was inside.

"I won't give you half of a theory I can't prove."

"That's exactly what you've been doing."

His eyes narrowed slightly.

"With the guards. With Lyra. With everything."

I stepped closer.

"You keep deciding what I can handle."

"Because I don't know what I'm dealing with."

"Then let me decide what I can handle."

He looked at me.

For once, I didn't see the Alpha.

I saw the man beneath him.

Torn between the instinct to protect me and the growing realization that protecting me through silence wasn't protection at all.

"I'll tell you," he said finally, "when I know enough to be certain."

"That's not good enough."

"It's what I have."

I wanted to push harder.

I really did.

But something in his face stopped me.

It wasn't stubbornness.

It was fear.

Real fear.

The kind that lived beneath everything he had done since Lyra died.

"The guards stay," he said.

"Until when?"

"Until I know you're safe."

"And if you never know?"

He didn't answer.

Of course he didn't.

I studied him for another moment.

Then I asked the question I hadn't planned to ask.

"Do you regret saying it?"

His brow furrowed.

"Saying what?"

"That you can't lose me too."

His expression went completely still.

For a long moment, neither of us moved.

Something raw passed through his eyes.

Something he didn't seem ready to name.

He didn't answer.

He simply held my gaze until the silence became its own kind of confession.

Then he turned and walked out.

Leaving me alone with a folder I couldn't read...

and a sentence I couldn't stop hearing.

That night, the same two guards stood outside my door when I returned.

This time, they didn't make me feel like a prisoner.

They made me feel like something worth guarding.

I sat on the edge of my bed, replaying the conversation.

I can't lose you too.

It was the too that wouldn't leave me alone.

He hadn't explained it.

He hadn't denied what it might mean.

And I wasn't sure I wanted him to.

I was still his surrogate.

Still bound by a contract neither of us had expected to become this complicated.

Still living under his protection, with guards outside my door and secrets hidden in the study across the hall.

But something had changed.

Because for the first time, I understood that Roman's fear wasn't only about the child I carried.

It was about me.

If something happened to me, he wouldn't simply lose an heir.

He would lose me.

And somewhere in the last few weeks, without either of us choosing it, I had started to need that to be true.

That realization frightened me more than the locked drawer ever could.