Chapter 2 - Bron

Bron

My father finds me in the west study eleven minutes after the music stops.

Eleven minutes. That's how long it took the band to fumble back into a song, how long it took Adrien to smile at the cameras and say something smooth about "overwhelming emotion" like I'd just teared up over a toast. That's how long the security team took to clear the ballroom and get me out of three hundred pairs of eyes. Eleven minutes, and my father still walks in like he's been standing outside the whole time, arms crossed, face like a closed door.

"Sit down," he says. I don't sit down. "Bron."

"I'm fine standing.” I let out.

He looks at me the way he's looked at me my whole life, like I'm a project that keeps almost working. He's still in his tux, tie loosened, one hand braced on the back of the leather chair like he's deciding whether to throw it at me or sit in it.

"Do you have any idea," he says, low, "what you just did to this family?"

"I didn't do anything. It happened to me.” I reply.

"That's not how anyone out there is going to see it." He steps closer. My wolf, still raw from the bond snapping, wants to bare teeth at him for it, and I have to physically shove that reaction down.

"You had one job tonight. Say four sentences, shake a hand, smile for a camera. Instead you go glassy-eyed in front of the entire pack and half our business partners, and now Adrien Conrad is sitting in my dining room asking me if his daughter just got humiliated on video."

"I couldn't stop it,” I say, but he interrupts me.

"You didn't even try.” That one lands harder than I want it to. My jaw locks. The burn under my ribs hasn't gone away; if anything, it's worse now, a low, steady ache like something's missing, like I left a limb somewhere in that ballroom. I press the palm of my hand flat against my sternum without meaning to. My father watches me do it, and his mouth goes thin.

"That's the bond," he says. Not a question.

“Yeah." I let out.

"For who?” I don't answer right away, and that's an answer enough. His eyes narrow. "Bron."

"I don't know," I say, which is true. "I saw her for half a second. Gray hoodie. Kitchen hallway. That's it."

Something moves across my father's face, fast, there and gone, something I don't have a name for. Not surprise exactly. Something closer to alarm, the kind he doesn't usually let anyone see. He turns away from me and walks to the window like he needs a second before he says whatever he's about to say.

"Staff," he says finally, quietly.

"Looks like it,” I say.

"You understand what that means.” He says, and I nod slightly.

"It means the goddess doesn't care about our rank system, apparently.” I let out.

"It means," he says, turning back around, and his voice has dropped into the register he uses on the council, the one that makes grown Alphas shut up, "that you have a bond mark on a servant, in front of the Conrad family, on the same night you were supposed to announce a treaty marriage. Do you understand how that looks? Do you understand what that costs us?"

"I understand you care more about how it looks than what it is,” I say to my own father. The man who is supposed to want my happiness above anything else.

"What it is," he snaps, "is a liability. Bonds break packs, Bron. I've told you that since you were a child. Your grandmother's bond nearly bankrupted this family. Mine nearly did worse. You think I'm telling you this to be cruel? I'm telling you because I watched it happen and you didn't."

"Then tell me what to do instead of standing here yelling at me,” I shout at him. I don’t think I have ever raised my voice at my father the way I did just now.

"Reject it.” The words land like a slap. For a second I don't even understand what he said, and then I do, and something in my chest goes cold in a completely different way than the burn.

"You want me to reject the bond. Before I even know her name.” I let out incredulously.

"I want you to fix the mess you made tonight before it becomes something none of us can fix." He steps closer again, and for the first time all night, his voice actually softens, which is somehow worse than the yelling. "Son. Listen to me. A bond isn't destiny. It's biology throwing a wrench into a life you've spent years building. You reject it now, quick, clean, before it roots any deeper, and it heals. You wait, you let it take hold, and it doesn't just hurt you when it breaks. It breaks both of you."

"You don't know that,” I say.

"I watched your mother live it.” He tells me, and that shuts me up. He doesn't talk about my mother, not really, not like this, and for one second I see something underneath the tux and the control, something old and furious and scared, and then it's gone, folded back behind his face like it was never there.

"Fix this," he says. "Quietly. Before Conrad decides to fix it for you."

He leaves without waiting for me to answer. The door clicks shut behind him, soft, which somehow lands worse than if he'd slammed it.

I stand there for a long minute with my hand still pressed against my ribs, breathing through the ache, before Ronan pushes the door open without knocking, because Ronan's never knocked on anything in his life.

"Okay," he says, taking one look at my face. "That bad?"

"He wants me to reject her,” I say.

Ronan's eyebrows go up. He shuts the door behind him, quiet for once, which tells me how seriously he's taking this. "Before you even know her name?"

I nod.

"And what'd you say back?” He asks, his interest growing.

I don't answer that either, because the honest answer is I didn't say anything back, and standing here now, twenty minutes later, with the burn still sitting under my ribs like a hot coal, I don't think I could reject this bond even if I tried. My wolf's been silent since she disappeared through that door, not calm, silent, the way a held breath is silent. Waiting.

"I need you to find her," I say.

"Find who? The hoodie girl?"

"Don't call her that.” I let out, in annoyance.

"I don't know her name, man. What am I supposed to call her?” He drops into the chair my father wouldn't sit in, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "Bron. You realize what you're asking. If this gets out, if Conrad finds her before we do…”

"That's exactly why I need you to find her first,” I tell him.

"And do what with her once I do?” He asks me.

I don't have an answer for that either. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with a girl I've seen for half a second, whose name I don't know, whose face I can barely picture except for a pair of eyes that looked right through me like she already knew exactly how much danger she was in. I just know the alternative, doing nothing, letting my father or Adrien Conrad find her first, makes something in my chest go tight and violent in a way I don't examine too closely.

"She works catering," I say. "Or she was dressed like it, close enough to blend in. Kitchen staff, probably. Young. She can't have been on payroll long, or I'd have seen her before tonight."

"You've never noticed a girl in your own house before tonight; that's not exactly a small list.” He says jokingly.

“Ronan." I glare at him.

"I'm going, I'm going." He stands, but he doesn't leave yet, watching me with an expression I don't like, something careful, something worried. "You know this isn't nothing, right? Whatever this is. You've never once looked like this. Not for Selene, not for anybody."

"I know,” I say.

"And you know your dad's not going to let this go. Not with Conrad sitting downstairs right now doing math on how much this is going to cost him,” Ronan says, and I let out an exasperated breath.

"I know that too."

He nods slowly, like he's filing that away for later, and heads for the door. He stops with his hand on the handle. "Bron. For what it's worth, I don't think you should reject it either."

"You don't know anything about it,” I tell him.

"I know you almost went down on the stairs tonight in front of the entire Conrad family rather than let go of something you hadn't even found yet." He shrugs, easy, but his eyes aren't easy at all. "That's not nothing. Whatever she is to you, that's not nothing."

He leaves. I stand alone in my father's study with the ache still sitting under my ribs, worse now, deeper, spreading slowly through my chest like something taking root.

I press my hand flat against it again and think about silver-gray eyes staring at me through a crowd for half a second before they vanished.

I don't even know her name. But some part of me, low and certain and completely unlike anything I've ever felt before, already knows I'm not letting her go.