chapter 12

~ Rowan’s POV ~

I had a plan.

It wasn’t a complicated plan, In fact, it was the same plan that had worked on Mira so many times during our marriage…. a combination of charm, vulnerability, and just enough remorse to make her feel like she was the one saving me.

She had always loved saving me.

That was the thing about Mira, the old Mira, she had loved feeling needed. Loved thinking that underneath all my coldness there was a man worth staying for. I had used that, shamelessly. Every time she had caught me with someone else, every time she had threatened to stop trying, I had turned it on. The softer voice, the almost-apology, the hand on her face and the look in my eyes that said you’re the only one who understands me and watched her fold like paper every single time.

She would fold again, I’m so sure.

She was still Mira underneath all of this charade. She still had the mate bond in her veins whether she acknowledged it or not. And she had loved me, moon goddess, she had loved me with everything she had and that kind of love didn’t just disappear, It couldn’t.

I straightened my tie in the elevator mirror and watched my own reflection with the confidence of a man who had never once failed to get what he wanted when he really tried.

My company’s debt figures flashed behind my eyes. Forty-seven million to the Halverson creditors alone. Another thirty-two million in outstanding pack loans. My account managers had stopped returning calls, My Beta had started looking at me the way subordinates looked at Alphas they were mentally preparing to leave.

I needed NightCore back, I needed the contracts restored and I needed Mira to fix what she…. what someone had broken.

And I needed her to do it because she still cared about me. She did, I mean she has to.

The elevator doors opened.

Zara, the sharp-eyed PA, looked up from her desk with an expression that could have stripped paint.

“Mr. Blackwood,” she said. No warmth nor smile. “Ms. Wyrmblood is in a meeting.”

“I’ll wait,” I said, already moving toward the seating area.

“She’s aware you’re here,” Zara said, in a tone that suggested Mira was aware and entirely unbothered. “She said to let you know she’ll be with you when she’s finished.”

I sat and waited twenty-six minutes, I counted every single one of them.

When the office doors finally opened, two men in suits walked out carrying the particular expression of people who had just survived something rigorous. One of them glanced at me with something that looked like pity.

I didn’t know why until I walked in, Mira was standing at the window back straight, phone in hand, reading something on the screen with focused attention. She didn’t look up when I entered.

She let me stand there for thirty seconds.

Then she set the phone down, turned, and looked at me with eyes that contained the same warmth as a February morning.

“Rowan,” she said. “Sit down.”

Something about the way she said it, not inviting, just instructing, the way you told a junior employee to take a seat made something prickle at the back of my neck.

I sat and she sat across from me, crossed one leg over the other, and folded her hands in her lap with the patience of someone who had already decided how this conversation would end.

“I guess you've thought about my offer,” she said.

“I’ve thought about it,” I said, letting my voice drop slightly. The voice I used when I wanted her to lean in. “Mira, before we talk business, I want to talk about us.”

Silence.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” I continued, holding her gaze. “About what I did. About how I treated you.” I leaned forward slightly, elbows on knees, the posture of a man unburdening himself. “I was wrong, I know that now, I was stupid and arrogant and I threw away the best thing I ever had because I was too proud to admit I needed you.”

Nothing happens, not a flicker nor a softening Neither the slight parting of lips that used to tell me I was getting through.

I pushed further.

“You have every right to be angry,” I said, putting the right amount of roughness in my voice, the sound of a man genuinely struggling. “I’m not asking you to forgive me overnight. I just……” I exhaled, running a hand through my hair. “I miss you, Mira, I miss us. And I think if you’re honest with yourself, somewhere underneath all of this….” I gestured between us, “…..you do too.”

The office was very quiet.

Mira looked at me for a long moment.

Then she uncrossed her legs, reached for the coffee cup on her desk, took a slow sip, and set it back down with the energy of someone who had just listened to a child blabbing.

“Are you finished?” she asked.

I blinked.

“I….”

“Because I want to make sure I give you adequate time to complete the performance before I respond,” she said pleasantly. “Was there more? The hair-running was a nice touch, very authentic.”

The prickling at my neck spread.

“Mira….”

“You miss us,” she said, her voice tilting into mockery. “That’s interesting, Rowan, because I don’t remember there being an us to miss. There was you, doing whatever you wanted, with whoever you wanted and there was me, cleaning your packhouse, running your company’s backend systems, training your female warriors, and begging for scraps of basic human decency.” She tilted her head. “Which part exactly are you nostalgic for?”

My jaw tightened.

“I know I hurt you….”

“You framed me for infidelity,” she said, each word pierced hardly. “You had men drug me in a hotel room. You rejected me in front of the pack council, stripped my shares, bound my wrists, and had me dumped at the edge of the forbidden lands.” She paused. “You thought I would die there.”

“Mira…..”

“And now NightCore is on its edge of bankruptcy,” she continued, her voice never once rising above conversational, “your creditors are circling, your pack financials are in freefall, and you have walked into my office, the office I built, with the skills I developed, in the time you gave me by exiling me to tell me you miss us.”

She looked at me with those dark, level eyes.

“Did I miss anything?” she asked.

The man I had been thirty seconds ago, confident, charming, certain had quietly left the building.

I stared at her across the desk and felt something I had not felt in a very long time.

Fear, not of a rival Alpha but the specific, cold fear of a man who had badly miscalculated the nature of the thing in front of him.

This was not the woman I had married.

That woman had trembled when I raised my voice. Had followed me through the packhouse with apologies ready before I even found fault. Had looked at me with eyes full of love so earnest it had embarrassed me.

This woman looked at me like I was a problem she was deciding whether to solve or simply step over.

“I need the company restored,” I said. The charm was gone, My voice came out flat and stripped. “I need the contracts back, I have debts, Mira. Pack debts, People depending on NightCore’s recovery.”

“I know,” she said.

“Then help me,” I said. “Not as….. not for us. Just….” My pride ground against itself like broken glass. “As a business arrangement, name your price.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she opened the laptop on her desk and turned it to face me.

On the screen was a single document, a contract actually.

My eyes moved over the terms and my stomach dropped floor by floor like a failing elevator.

“That’s my offer,” she said. “Take it or leave it. But Rowan….” she closed the laptop gently, “….I’d decide quickly, Distressed assets depreciate fast.”

She picked up her phone, already moving on.

I sat there looking at the closed laptop.

At the closed door of every option I had walked in thinking I still had.

She hadn’t folded, She hadn’t even wobbled.

And somewhere in the wreckage of my plan, one thought surfaced cold and clear and too late….

She was never the problem.

I was and I regret it.