WHY HE'S AFRAID

CHAPTER 34

"I wasn't there when Lyra died," Roman said, staring at nothing. "I was three rooms away, and I still didn't get there in time. That's what I'm afraid of, Mira. Not losing someone. Failing to save them."

I didn't move. I didn't reach for him. He had only just started talking, and something told me that touching him now might make him retreat behind the walls he had spent years building.

"Where were you?" I asked quietly.

"My study."

"What were you doing?"

"Signing off on a boundary report." He let out a short, humorless breath. "She said she'd be in the garden. I told her I'd join her in ten minutes."

"And then?"

"I thought I had ten minutes."

The words hung between us. Somewhere in the hedges, a night bird shifted.

"What happened next?"

"I was at my desk when I heard something."

"What kind of sound?"

"Breaking." His brow furrowed. "Glass, maybe. Or ceramic. Something shattering."

"Was it loud?"

"Not loud enough to alarm me. It sounded like someone had dropped a dish. I almost didn't look up."

"But you did."

"I did." His fingers tightened against his knee. "I stood, and then I heard the second sound."

"What was it?"

"A click. Small. Metallic."

"Like a latch or a lock?"

"I don't know. I've gone over it a thousand times. It could have been a latch. It could have been nothing."

"Where did it come from?"

"The garden, I thought." He hesitated. "I've always thought that."

"Always?"

"I was already moving. I wasn't listening anymore."

"How much time passed between the two sounds?"

"Seconds." He shook his head. "I can't give you an exact number. I've tried."

"How long before you reached her?"

"Too long."

"That isn't a number either."

"It's the only one I've got."

His voice cracked on the last word. He stopped, his jaw working as though he were forcing something back.

I waited.

"I ran," he continued. "Three rooms. I took the stairs like a boy. By the time I reached the doorway, she was already"

He broke off.

"I was an Alpha. Thirty wolves would have followed my voice anywhere, and I couldn't get down a hallway fast enough to keep one person alive."

"Roman."

"I knelt beside her. I said her name over and over."

"Did she answer?"

"No."

I let the silence settle between us.

I didn't tell him I was sorry. I didn't tell him it wasn't his fault. He had probably heard those words more times than he could count, and none of them had managed to reach the place where he was hurting.

"Do you replay it?" I asked instead.

"Every night."

"What do you change?"

His eyes flicked toward me. "What?"

"When you replay that day, what do you change?"

For a moment, he said nothing.

"I don't look up from the report," he finally answered. "I leave my study when she leaves. I never let her walk into that garden alone."

"And in your version, she lives?"

"Yes."

"Do you know that?"

His expression tightened. "Mira"

"Do you know she'd have survived if you'd been there sooner? Or is that the version you've been punishing yourself with?"

"That's not fair."

"I'm not trying to be fair. I'm trying to understand."

"I should have been faster."

"Maybe."

"Don't say maybe."

"I don't know, Roman. Neither do you." I kept my voice steady. "You know you arrived too late. You don't know whether arriving sooner would have changed what happened."

"Everyone said that."

"I'm not everyone. I'm asking you to separate what you know from what you blame yourself for."

He rubbed both hands over his face.

"I know I should have protected her."

"Is that what love means to you? Being able to stop anything bad from happening?"

"It's what being an Alpha means."

"That's not the same thing."

"I'm responsible for the people I love."

"Yes, you are." I held his gaze. "But being responsible for someone doesn't make you all-powerful."

"It should."

"It can't. And somewhere, you know that."

His hands fell away from his face.

"Then what's the point?" he asked hoarsely. "What's the good in caring about someone if I can't keep them alive?"

The question hurt more than I expected.

"Is that why you've been keeping your distance from me?"

He didn't answer.

"Roman."

"If I let myself care about you the way I want to..." He swallowed hard. "If something happened to you, and I was standing three rooms away again"

"Then you'd be devastated," I said softly. "But that wouldn't automatically mean you'd failed me."

"You don't know that."

"No. But neither do you, and you've built your entire life around believing the worst of yourself." I leaned forward. "I'm not asking you to stop grieving Lyra. I'm not asking you to forget her. I'm asking you not to use what happened to her to decide what I'm allowed to risk."

He stared at me, his expression unreadable.

"That's what Wren wants," I continued. "She wants your guilt to make the decision for you. It would be easier for her if you convinced yourself that keeping me at a distance was the only responsible choice."

"This isn't about Wren."

"No. It's about you. But she's found the place where it hurts, and she's pressing on it." I paused. "I'm not."

His breath left him slowly.

"No," he admitted. "You aren't."

For a while, neither of us spoke. The garden seemed to hold its breath around us.

Then the memory returned to me, catching on something I hadn't understood before.

"Roman?"

"Hm?"

"The two sounds you heard that day. The breaking and then the click."

His expression changed slightly.

"What about them?"

"Did you ever tell anyone about them?"

He frowned. "Tell them what?"

"The police. The pack. The council. Sable. Did anyone know you heard two separate sounds before you reached Lyra?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I assumed they meant nothing." He looked genuinely puzzled by the question. "A dropped dish. A latch. Grief does strange things to memory. I thought I was inventing details because I couldn't accept what had happened."

"Do you think you were?"

"I don't know."

"Describe the second sound again."

He closed his eyes, searching his memory.

"Faint. Small. Metallic." He paused. "It wasn't close. Not in the next room. It seemed farther away than that."

"Farther away than the garden?"

"Possibly."

A cold sensation crept down my spine.

"Where else could it have come from? A corridor? Another room? Somewhere beyond the garden walls?"

"I don't know, Mira."

"Okay."

He opened his eyes.

"Why are you asking me all this?"

"Because if Lyra's death wasn't exactly what everyone believed, then what you heard might matter."

He went completely still.

"I'm not saying it wasn't an accident," I added. "I don't know what happened. I wasn't there, and I'm not going to pretend I can solve a two-year-old mystery from a garden bench."

"But you're saying someone might have"

"I'm saying that a sound nobody ever asked about is still a sound."

He looked away, his jaw tightening.

"It was two years ago."

"And you've spent those two years telling yourself it meant nothing."

"Because it didn't matter."

"Or because nobody gave you a reason to believe it might."

He said nothing.

His hands, which had been restless throughout most of our conversation, were now completely still.

"I buried it," he said at last. "I convinced myself it was grief. If I'd told anyone, it would have sounded like I was making excuses."

"For what?"

"For being late."

"It doesn't sound like an excuse to me."

"What does it sound like?"

"A question."

He turned toward me.

For the first time since we'd started talking, I had the feeling he wasn't simply looking at me. He was trying to understand me, to figure out why I was willing to sit with the parts of himself he'd spent years hiding from everyone else.

"Why are you taking this seriously?" he asked. "I've spent two years believing it meant nothing."

"Because you remember hearing it. That's enough reason to ask what it was."

"What if it was nothing?"

"Then we'll have learned nothing." I held his gaze. "But what if it wasn't?"

He stared at me for a long moment.

"I've told people how guilty I feel," he said quietly. "I've told them what I wish I'd done differently. Everyone has an opinion about what I should have done, what I should feel, and how I should move on."

His voice softened.

"But nobody has ever asked me about the sounds."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"Not even Sable," he continued. "You keep noticing things everyone else seems to miss."

"Maybe they weren't looking at the same things I was."

A faint, strained smile touched his mouth.

"No," he murmured. "I don't think they were."

"Roman?"

"Hm?"

"I'm not promising to solve this. I'm not promising that the answers will make anything easier." I paused, choosing my words carefully. "But I won't pretend I didn't hear what you told me."

He nodded once.

His eyes glistened, and he looked away before I could acknowledge it. When he looked back, something in his expression had softened.

His hand moved across the stone bench, slowly enough to give me time to pull away.

It stopped beside mine.

I turned my palm upward and let him take it.

His fingers closed around mine, warm and unsteady.

For once, he didn't look like an Alpha trying to hold an entire world together.

He looked like a man who had finally allowed someone to see how much it hurt.

And I had the unsettling feeling that the sound he had spent two years trying to forget might be the first thing that finally helped him understand what had happened to Lyra.