Chapter Five: Three People, One Corridor

I have a rule about crying in front of people.

I do not do it.

Not in front of Mara, who would hold me and mean well and somehow make it worse. Not in front of the pack members who whisper when I pass.

Certainly not in front of Lucian Blackthorn, who forfeited the right to my tears the moment he stood in that clearing and made his choice.

And not now. Not here. Not with Caden Voss looking at my face like he can read every word written on it and Lucian’s footsteps growing closer at the other end of this corridor.

I pull myself together the way I always do. Quietly. Quickly. The way you learn to when falling apart is not an option you can afford.

“I am fine,” I say.

Caden’s expression does not change. He has very steady eyes, I have noticed. The kind that do not dart around looking for somewhere easier to land. He just looks at you and stays there, which is either a comfort or an interrogation depending on the moment.

“You do not have to be,” he says.

“Alpha Voss.” My voice is even. Professional. “Is there something you need this morning? I can have breakfast brought to your room if the dining room is not convenient.”

He studies me for one long moment. Then something in his expression shifts, just slightly, and he takes the out I have offered him with a grace that surprises me.

“Breakfast would be welcome,” he says. “Thank you.”

I nod and turn and that is when I see him.

Lucian is ten feet away.

He has stopped walking. He is standing in the middle of the corridor with his eyes moving between me and Caden and back to me, and I watch him do the math of what he is looking at, the two of us standing close in a quiet hallway, my face not entirely composed, Caden looking at me like I am someone worth looking at.

The silence lasts about three seconds. It feels considerably longer.

“Alpha Voss.” Lucian’s voice is perfectly controlled. “I trust the room is satisfactory.”

“Very.” Caden does not look away from Lucian’s face. There is something between them, old and layered, the specific tension of two men who know each other well enough to know exactly where the edges are. “Selene was just seeing to breakfast. Your staff runs an excellent house.”

The way he says my name. Easy and familiar, like he has been saying it for years.

Something happens in Lucian’s jaw. A tightening, barely visible, the kind you would miss if you were not already familiar with the architecture of his face against your will.

“I need the morning correspondence before the council meeting,” he says, and it takes me a full beat to realise he is speaking to me.

“I will have it on your desk within the hour.”

“Now,” he says. “Please.”

The please is an afterthought. A thin layer of courtesy over something that is not courteous at all, and we both know it and Caden probably knows it too and the corridor is suddenly very small and very full of things nobody is saying out loud.

I look at Lucian for just a moment. One moment where I let him see that I know exactly what he is doing and I find it neither flattering nor acceptable.

Then I turn and walk toward the staircase without hurrying.

I refuse to hurry for him. I stopped doing that three months ago.

The morning correspondence takes me forty minutes to compile.

I do it thoroughly because I do everything thoroughly. Letters from the southern border. A request from the Aldren pack regarding trade routes. Two internal memos from the council. I organise them by priority, clip them, and carry them up to the study with the second cup of coffee he will want by now but never asks for because asking would mean acknowledging that I know him and he is not ready to do that yet.

I set everything on the desk.

He is already seated this time, reading something, and he reaches for the correspondence without looking up. I am almost at the door when he speaks.

“How long have you been speaking with him.”

Not a question. A sentence with no room for deflection built into it.

I turn around. “Since he arrived.”

“That is not what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.” I keep my voice calm. Calm is the only weapon I have in this room and I have learned to hold it carefully. “He introduced himself. I responded appropriately. That is the entirety of it.”

Lucian sets the letter down. He looks at me directly, fully, in a way he has been carefully avoiding for three months, and I feel the full weight of it land somewhere in my chest and spread.

“He is not here by accident,” Lucian says.

“No one ever is.”

Something shifts in his expression. “Selene.”

“Alpha.” I hold his gaze. “Is there anything else you need, or may I get back to work.”

It is not really a question. He hears that. I watch him hear it, watch something move through his face that looks uncomfortable and deserved.

“That will be all,” he says quietly.

I leave.

I eat lunch alone on the stone bench behind the east wing, the one that sits against the outer wall where the sun reaches it in the afternoon. Mara brought me a sandwich and did not push for information, which means Bowen spoke to her before he came to me and told her to give me space. I eat half of it and watch the mountains and try to locate the place inside me where I keep the stillness.

It is harder to find today.

I am still sitting there when I hear footsteps on the path and look up expecting Mara.

It is not Mara.

Caden walks toward me with his hands in his coat pockets and a calmness about him that does not feel performed. He stops a few feet away.

“May I?” He nods at the bench.

I should say no. Everything practical and self-preserving in me lines up behind that answer immediately.

“Yes,” I hear myself say instead.

He sits. Not too close. He leaves a deliberate distance between us and looks out at the mountains the same way I was and for a while neither of us says anything at all.

Then he says, “I know about the rejection.”

The sandwich wrapper in my hands goes still.

“I know what he did,” Caden continues, his voice low and even. “And I know you have been carrying it inside this house every single day since. I am not here to make that harder.” A pause. “I am here because someone who has known you longer than I have believes you deserve more than what you have been given. And after two days, Selene, I am beginning to think he was not wrong.”

I turn and look at him.

And across the courtyard, in the window of the study on the second floor, Lucian Blackthorn is standing completely still.

Watching.