TESSA'S WARNING

CHAPTER 16

"Be careful with him."

Tessa said it quietly as she folded linens, but there was something in her voice that made me stop what I was doing.

I looked at her.

"Why?"

She smoothed the edge of a towel with far more attention than necessary.

"It's not that he'd hurt you." She hesitated. "It's that he doesn't know how to want something without it becoming dangerous to him first."

My fingers tightened around the linen in my hands.

"I don't understand."

Tessa finally looked at me.

"I think you do."

I set the linen down.

"What are you talking about?"

"You and Roman."

My stomach gave a small, uncomfortable twist.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Mira."

One look from her told me she wasn't buying that for a second.

I exhaled.

"Something happened at the gathering."

"I noticed."

"Roman was jealous."

Tessa's eyebrows lifted slightly.

"He admitted it?"

"Not exactly."

"Then how do you know?"

"Because he looked at Kase like he wanted him gone."

A faint smile touched her mouth.

"That sounds like Roman."

"That's not all."

The smile disappeared.

I looked down at the folded linen between us.

"He said it wasn't about politics."

Tessa became very still.

"What did he say?"

"That it was about me."

She didn't respond immediately.

And somehow, that silence told me more than words would have.

"What happened to him?" I asked.

Tessa's expression changed.

"Before all of this?"

"You know what happened."

"Lyra died. I know that part."

Something flickered across her face quick and carefully controlled.

"It's more than that."

My attention sharpened.

"Then tell me."

She hesitated.

For several seconds, she simply refolded the same towel.

Finally, she said, "He used to laugh more."

I blinked.

"Roman?"

"Yes."

I couldn't quite picture it.

Tessa gave a faint, almost sad smile.

"He trusted people more easily, too. This house used to feel different. The staff spoke freely around him. He didn't spend every waking hour watching everything and everyone."

"And after Lyra died?"

Her hands stilled.

"Everything changed."

"Overnight?"

"Almost."

She looked toward the windows.

"He blamed himself."

My chest tightened.

"Because he couldn't save her?"

Tessa's expression became guarded.

"Not exactly."

The words settled heavily between us.

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know."

She met my eyes.

"And I want you to understand that, Mira. I don't know everything."

"Then tell me what you do know."

Tessa lowered her voice.

"He believed he had failed to protect her from something."

"Something?"

"Someone. A situation. I don't know."

"You said he blamed himself."

"He did."

"Why?"

"I never heard him explain it."

That answer only made my questions multiply.

"What happened after her death?"

Tessa glanced toward the door before continuing.

"Lyra's death was ruled an accident."

"By the council?"

"Yes."

I frowned.

"An accident."

"That's the official story."

Her voice dropped.

"Roman never accepted it."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

She looked uncomfortable now.

"I only know what I saw."

"Which was?"

"He started requesting old records. Investigation reports. Medical notes. Anything connected to Lyra's final days."

My pulse quickened.

"How long?"

"He kept looking."

"For how long?"

Tessa's eyes held mine.

"Two years."

Two years.

The number settled somewhere deep inside me.

The same two years the garden had been left untouched.

The same two years Roman had apparently kept everyone at a distance.

I thought of the gathering.

His reaction to Kase.

The way he'd gone rigid when Kase mentioned unusual symptoms.

Sable's strange silence.

Old blood.

Corvin asking about my mother's family.

My grandmother's locket.

And now this.

The pieces were beginning to form a pattern.

"Don't."

Tessa's voice stopped me.

"Don't what?"

"Build a story out of things you don't understand yet."

Her tone was gentle, but firm.

"I've watched you do it already."

I frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"You've started connecting everything."

She folded another towel.

"Maybe some of it belongs together. Maybe none of it does."

I hated how reasonable she sounded.

"I'm not trying to fix Roman."

"I didn't say you were."

"You were thinking it."

Tessa allowed herself the smallest smile.

"Maybe."

Despite myself, I almost smiled back.

Then the expression faded.

"Roman has spent two years looking for answers," she said. "Don't assume you know what those answers are."

I nodded slowly.

"I won't."

But even as I said it, I knew I wanted to know.

We worked in silence for a while.

Then I glanced at her.

"This house was different for you too, wasn't it?"

Tessa's hands paused.

"After Lyra died."

She took a slow breath.

"We all learned what not to ask."

Her voice was softer now.

"When to leave a room. When to keep our heads down. How to disappear when Roman needed space."

"You stayed."

"Someone had to."

There was no bitterness in the words.

Just quiet exhaustion.

"I stayed because I cared about the people here."

She looked down at the linens.

"Not because it was easy."

I reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

"You've been lonely."

Tessa looked at me as though the words had surprised her.

"Something like that."

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Just two women who understood, in different ways, what it meant to carry things nobody else noticed.

Finally, I asked the question I'd been avoiding.

"Are you telling me to stay away from Roman?"

Tessa held my gaze.

"No."

The answer surprised me.

"I'm telling you to understand what you're walking toward."

My heart tightened.

"He doesn't know how to want something without making it complicated."

I thought of the terrace.

His hand beside my face.

His voice when he'd said you.

Tessa continued.

"I don't want you caught in something you don't understand."

"I've seen a different side of him."

Her expression softened.

"Not the Alpha everyone else sees."

"No."

I looked down.

"The man I've seen is..."

I searched for the right word.

"Lonely."

Tessa didn't disagree.

"I believe you."

Then she squeezed my hand.

"Just make sure you see all of him before you decide what that means."

The mansion was quiet by the time I passed Roman's study that night.

Most of the household had gone to sleep.

A thin line of light spilled beneath the door.

I slowed.

Then I heard it.

Paper moving.

The soft, deliberate sound of someone turning pages.

I should have kept walking.

Instead, I stopped.

The door was open a few inches.

I looked through the gap.

Roman sat behind his desk.

His sleeves were pushed to his forearms, and several stacks of documents surrounded him.

Old papers.

Reports.

Photographs.

He looked exhausted.

There were shadows beneath his eyes, and his jaw was tight with concentration.

But he wasn't stopping.

He turned another page.

Then another.

Like a man who had been searching for the same answer for so long that stopping had become impossible.

My gaze moved across the desk.

One photograph caught my attention.

A woman I had never met was smiling toward the camera.

Lyra.

Beside the photograph was a worn folder.

I couldn't read most of the writing from where I stood.

But one word was visible at the top of a page.

Accident.

A thick line had been drawn through it.

Then another.

I held my breath.

Roman hadn't noticed me.

He kept reading.

Searching.

Relentless.

I stepped backward before he could look up.

The corridor suddenly felt colder.

For the first time, I wasn't seeing the Alpha of Blackthorn.

I wasn't seeing the man from the terrace.

I wasn't even thinking about the contract.

I was seeing someone who had spent two years refusing to accept that the woman he loved had simply died and moving on.

And as I walked away, one thought followed me.

Roman wasn't searching for a way to change the past.

He was searching for the truth about what had happened to Lyra.

And if Tessa was right about one thing, it was this:

I had no idea what he would do when he finally found it.