Chapter 4

Ian’s pov

She looked so beautiful.

I felt like I've been pushed in the gut the moment I laid my eyes on her, standing behind that trolley like she didn't belong. Like she was trying to disappear into the shadows even while being in the same room as us.

Irina.

Five years. It had been five years since I had been this close to her, since I had the chance to really look at her without guards and servants and my own self-loathing getting in the way. And somehow, impossibly, she was even more beautiful than the last time I saw her.

Her hair was pulled back in a simple style, the way all the maids wore it, but a few strands had escaped to frame her face. Her glasses sat perched on her nose, making her look smart and sweet and utterly adorable. And her eyes—those green eyes that had haunted my dreams for more than half a decade—were fixed firmly on the floor. On the trolley. On anything but me.

It was obvious she didn't want to be here. Didn't want to serve me. Didn't want to serve Lindsey.

I didn't blame her.

My chest ached with the need to have her look at me. Just once. Just for a second. I wanted to see those green eyes again, even if they held nothing but hatred. Even hatred would be better than this careful, calculated avoidance.

"Pass me the jar," I said, my voice coming out rougher than I intended.

It was a stupid ploy. I didn't need water. The glass in front of me wasn’t too empty. But I needed her to look at me, and this was the only excuse I could think of in the moment.

She reached for the jar, her movements mechanical and professional. Still not looking at me. Still keeping her eyes down.

Then she yelped.

The sound was sharp, pained, genuine. Her body jerked, the water spilled from the jar, and suddenly ice-cold water was drenching my shirt, dripping down my chest, soaking into fabric that cost more than she probably made in a year.

The table went silent.

I stared at her. She stared at the spreading stain on my shirt, her face pale, her lips parted in shock. And then, finally, finally, her eyes lifted to mine.

Fear.

That's what I saw. She tried to hide it—I could see her forcing her expression into something blank, something controlled—but it was there, flickering in those green depths.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry. It was an accident. I didn't mean to—"

The words tumbled out, and each one felt like a small knife twisting in my chest.

I didn't want this. I didn't want her to look at me with fear. I wanted—I wanted—

I wanted those days back. The days before the rejection, when she was sixteen and I was eighteen, when I used to catch her watching me from across the rooms. She would  look away quickly, blushing, but not before I saw it. Admiration. Interest. Something warm and hopeful that made my wolf sit up and pay attention.

She would looked at me like I was something special back then. Like I was worth looking at.

Now she looked at me like I was a monster.

I glared at her, but it wasn't because I was angry about the water. It was because I was angry at myself, at my father, at the whole twisted situation that had led us here. And I didn't know how to express any of that, so I did what I always did. I hid behind fury.

But inside, beneath the glare and the silence, I was screaming.

You want to know why I rejected her? The real reason?

It wasn't because I didn't want her. Goddess knows, I wanted her from the moment I first saw her.

I was eighteen years old when she turned sixteen. I was already twenty on that day. It was her eighteenth birthday, not mine. The age she finally became my legal mate.

The first time I ever saw Irina, she was sixteen. I was eighteen, home for a brief visit between training sessions. I was walking through the back garden, not paying attention to much of anything, when a scent hit me.

Vanilla. Warm, sweet, intoxicating vanilla, with something underneath it that was uniquely, unmistakably hers.

I followed that scent like a man possessed. It led me to the garden's edge, to a quiet spot tucked behind the old rose bushes. And there she was.

Irina, at sixteen, lying on her back in the grass and staring up at the stars. She was so young. So small. So utterly beautiful in the moonlight that my heart literally stopped for a second.

My wolf went crazy inside me. Mate. Mate. Mate. The word echoed through my soul, and I knew, with absolute certainty, that this girl—this tiny, stargazing girl—was the other half of me.

I wanted to go to her. I wanted to lie down beside her and watch the stars together. I wanted to hold her hand, to breathe in that vanilla scent, to tell her that everything was going to be okay because we had found each other.

But she was sixteen. Too young. I had to wait. I had to be patient.

So I waited. I watched over her from afar. I made sure the other servants weren't too cruel, that the older wolves didn't pick on her. When someone called her a rogue—a stray with no pack, no family, no worth—I found that person later and made sure they understood, very clearly, that such language was unacceptable. No one ever said it again within my hearing.

I waited two years. Two long years of watching her, wanting her, dreaming of the day she would turn eighteen and I could finally claim her.

Then, three days before her birthday, my father found me in that same garden.

"Your mate?" he asked. It wasn't really a question. He knew. He had been watching me, just as I’ve been watching her.

I was too excited to be cautious. Too full of hope and happiness to see the trap. "Yes," I howled, my wolf practically bursting with pride. "Father, she's perfect. She's—"

"You will reject her when she comes of age."

The words hit me like ice water. I stared at him, uncomprehending. "What? No. Father, you don't understand, she's my mate. She's—"

"I understand perfectly." His voice was cold, final. "You cannot rule this kingdom with a known weakness. A Luna must be strong. Fit. From a good bloodline. That girl is none of those things. She is nothing. A stray. A servant with a wolf the size of a rat. The pack would never accept her, and more importantly, your enemies would use her against you."

"I don't care about any of that. She's my mate!"

"And I am your Alpha." He turned away from me, his back a wall of uncompromising authority. "If you do not reject her, I will name your younger cousin as my heir. You know what he is. You know what he'll do to this pack, to these people. Is one girl worth their suffering?"

He left me there, shattered, in the same garden where I first found my mate watching the stars.

I had three days. Three days to choose between my soulmate and my people. Three days to decide if my happiness was worth the destruction my cousin would bring.

I made my choice. I've been paying for it every day since.

And then there was Lindsey.

My father didn't just want me to reject Irina. He wanted me to choose someone else, someone "suitable." And who better than Irina's best friend? The girl who smiled at everyone, who knew how to play pack politics, who came from a decent enough family to be acceptable.

I never liked Lindsey. Not then, not now, not ever. There was something about her eyes, something calculating behind all that warmth. But I did what my father asked. I pretended. I let her hang on my arm, let her kiss me in public, let the pack believe she was my chosen mate.

The day of the rejection, when I saw the pain in Irina's eyes and watched her force that weak, painful smile, something in me died. And when Lindsey’s hand slipped into mine, when she squeezed it with barely concealed triumph, I realized what I did.  I had not only broken my own heart—I had delivered my true mate into the hands of a woman who would never stop hurting her.

I was right.

Over the years, I watched from afar as Lindsey systematically dismantled Irina's life. Demoted her from kitchen duty to cleaning halls. Made sure she got the worst shifts, the dirtiest work. Whispers and rumors and small cruelties that no one else noticed but that added up to a lifetime of misery.

When Irina escaped to Silverblue Pack, I was the one who ordered her brought back. Not to punish her—Goddess, no—but because the outside world is dangerous. More dangerous than she could imagine. Rogues aren't just stories to scare pups. They're real, and they're vicious, and they would love nothing more than to get their hands on a lone, unprotected she-wolf with no pack to defend her.

I told myself I was keeping her safe. That as long as she was here, within these walls, I could protect her.

Then my warriors brought her back.

They didn't bring her gently. They didn't treat her like someone precious. They threw her over their shoulders like a sack of grain, like she was nothing, like she was less than nothing. By the time I heard about it, by the time I got there, she was already being dragged through the gates, her face pale, her eyes wide with terror.

I wanted to kill them. Every single one. I wanted to rip them apart with my bare hands for touching her, for hurting her, for making her look at me with that fear I have come to dread.

But I couldn't. Because if I showed even a flicker of interest in Irina, my father would notice. And he would find ways to hurt her more.

So I played along. I acted cool on the surface, indifferent to the warriors' rough treatment. I let them believe she was just another runaway servant, nothing special, nothing worth caring about.

Then I found out about the fifty strokes.

Lindsey had ordered it. The park’s Luna, my "chosen mate," had ordered fifty lashes on the back of my true mate. For trying to escape. For daring to want freedom.

I've never been so furious in my entire life.

No one touches my woman and goes unpunished. No one.

That night, I summoned my beta, Michael, and had him bring me a bed of hot coals. Red-hot, glowing, capable of burning through flesh down to the bone. I walked into Lindsey chambers, not bothering to knock, not bothering with pleasantries. She was sitting at her vanity, brushing her hair, and she looked up with that fake smile—

And saw my face.

"What's wrong, my love?" she asked, her voice carefully sweet.

I didn't answer. I just gestured, and Michael laid the coals across the threshold of her room, a long, burning path from the door to where she sat.

"Walk," I said.

Her smile faltered. "What?"

"You heard me. Walk across the coals. From here to the door. Now."

She tried to argue. She tried to act vulnerable. She tried to play the wounded mate, to remind me of my duty to her, of what people would say. I didn't care. I stood there, arms crossed, watching, until she finally understood that there was no way out.

She walked.

She screamed with every step. The smell of burning flesh filled the room. By the time she reached the door, her feet were raw, blistered, destroyed. She collapsed, sobbing, and after Michael cleared the place up I left her there without a backward glance.

She couldn't walk for a month after that. The pack whispered and speculated. Some said she was pregnant, that she had complications. She probably started that rumor herself, to explain her absence. I didn't care. All I cared about was that she paid the price of touching Irina. A small price for what she had done to Irina, but a price nonetheless.

And now, five years later, here we are.

Lindsey is pregnant. Or so she says.

I don't remember that night. Any of it. She claims I got drunk at a small gathering, that we came back to our chambers, that one thing led to another. I woke up the next morning with a pounding headache and her naked body pressed against mine, a satisfied smile on her face.

Something was off. I knew it then, and I know it now. I've never mated her or marked her. Not once in all these years. I've played the part of devoted husband in public, but in private, I've kept my distance. I couldn't bring myself to touch her, to mark her, to give her that piece of me that still belonged to Irina.

So how is she pregnant?

I don't have answers. Every time I try to remember that night, there's nothing there. Just blankness. Just gaps. And Lindsey’s smile grows a little sharper, a little more certain. I was relief when I got to know I didn’t mark her.

But tonight, in this dining room, none of that matters.

Because Irina is here.

I watch her as she serves my parents, as she carefully avoids coming near me. I watch the way her steps falter when my mother announces the pregnancy. I see the flicker of pain cross her face before she hides it, before she kept that stoic face.

Does she still love me?

The question burns in my chest, desperate and foolish. How could she? After what I did to her, after the rejection, after five years of watching me with Lindsey? If she had any sense, she would hate me. She should hate me.

But that flicker of pain... that wasn't hatred. That was something else. Something that gives me hope I have no right to feel.

I need to talk to her. Alone. I need to explain, to make her understand why I did what I did, to tell her that every day without her has been a special kind of hell.

But how? With my parents watching, with the entire pack watching? How do I reach the one person I'm not allowed to want?

I don't know. But I have to find a way.

Because seeing her tonight, watching her force that brave face while her heart breaks all over again—I can't do this anymore. I can't pretend. I can't stay silent for long.

Irina Rosevelt is my mate. She always has been. And I will spend the rest of my life making up for the last five years, if she'll let me.

I just have to figure out how to tell her that before it's too late.