CHAPTER 5 – The Talk She Never Wanted

The memories of that graduation night finally faded, leaving Maya in the cold, clinical reality of the present. The word Ivy had spoken didn't dissipate with the memory; it remained anchored in the room, heavy and impossible.

Alec was still slumped in the plastic chair beside the bed, his chin tucked to his chest. Even in his uneasy sleep, his hand remained wrapped around Ivy's, his knuckles pale from the strength of his grip. It was as if he believed that letting go would allow her to vanish back into the shadows she'd lived in for seven years.

Maya sat on the opposite side of the bed, her spine aching against the unforgiving chair. Her fingers were curled around a cold cup of coffee she couldn't bring herself to drink. She watched Ivy breathe, the rhythm steady for the first time all night, and felt the familiar tightness settle under her ribs.

She had spent years keeping their world narrow. She had trimmed away every sharp edge, every hint of the supernatural, trying to build something safe and small. She had known it was precarious, but tonight proved just how easily it could split open.

One small word had been enough to tilt the world on its axis.

Maya looked down at the coffee cup still clutched in her hands—cold now, forgotten. She set it down. The plastic tap sounded like a gunshot in the quiet room.

"Alec," she said softly.

He didn't move.

She stepped closer, the scent of him hitting her—sandlewood soap layered over the things she'd tried to forget. Pine, winter air, and that strange, radiated heat he carried in his skin.

"Alec." She touched his shoulder.

His eyes snapped open. For a heartbeat, gold flared in his irises—that otherworldly flash she'd seen in her daughters eyes, —before softening into the grey-green she knew. He didn't look at her first; he checked Ivy. He watched for the rise and fall of her chest, his own breath hitching until he was sure she was stable. Only then did he look at Maya.

"Is she okay?" His voice was a rough rasp.

"She's fine." She swallowed hard. "We need to talk."

He slowly untangled his fingers from Ivy's. As his warmth left her, Ivy's hand fell limp against the blanket.

"She should sleep," he murmured.

"I know."

He followed her into the hallway. After the dimness of the room, the lights were punishingly bright. The air felt too clean, filtered and sterile. Outside the large window at the end of the hall, fog pressed against the glass like a living thing, trying to hide the world from view.

Alec stopped behind her. Neither of them spoke, the weight of seven years of silence standing between them.

"You disappeared," he said finally. "Seven years, Maya. Nothing. No explanation."

Maya closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against the cool glass of the window. "I know."

"I tried to understand," he said, his voice tight with a pain he wasn't trying to hide. "I still try."

"You weren't supposed to," she replied. "You were supposed to forget about me. You were supposed to live the life your parents carved out for you."

He let out a bitter laugh. "Is that what you think happened?"

"You didn't find me," she said quietly.

"Not for lack of trying." His voice went rough, edged with something that sounded like grief. "I looked for you everywhere, Maya. Every town your mother ever mentioned. Every place you might've run if you were scared enough. I searched for months. Years."

She turned toward him slowly.

"I went to every hospital within two hundred miles," he continued, the words spilling out like a confession he'd been holding onto for too long. "Every shelter. Every clinic. I called in favors. I threatened people. I broke every rule my father ever set because I thought—" His voice cracked. "I thought maybe you were hurt. Maybe you needed me and I just wasn't looking in the right place."

Her throat tightened.

"And I found nothing," he said. "It was like you'd vanished into smoke. My mother finally told me to stop. Said you were probably dead. That someone like you—" He stopped, jaw clenching. "She said you wouldn't have survived on your own."

Maya's chest ached at the pain in his voice.

"I didn't want to believe it," he continued. "But months went by. A year. Two. And there was nothing. No trace. Eventually I had to accept that either you were gone, or you'd hidden yourself so well that you never wanted to be found." His eyes met hers, and the devastation in them was raw. "And the worst part? I understood. My pack had never been kind. My parents treated you like you were nothing. You had every reason to run and make damn sure I never found you."

The silence that followed felt heavy with all the years they'd lost.

"I wasn't hurt," she said quietly. "I was just very, very careful."

"You succeeded." There was no bitterness in it, just exhausted acceptance. "You disappeared so completely that even I couldn't find you. And now I know why." He looked away, his hand coming up to rub his face. "You were protecting her. Our daughter. From my world. From the people who should have—" He cut himself off, his voice going hard. "From the people who would have destroyed her."

The silence that followed felt like the ghost of the life they almost had. Alec rubbed his jaw, his eyes dimming. "I never stopped wondering if I'd ruined your life just by loving you."

"You didn't," she said. "I left because I was pregnant. And I knew exactly what the Council and your pack would do to a half-blood child. I knew they would take her, or worse."

His breath caught. The quiet stretched again, dense and unsettled.

"I won't let them have her," Alec said suddenly, the Alpha in his voice vibrating through the floorboards. "Not the pack. Not my family. No one. I'll stand in front of all of them if I have to."

Maya let out a breath that was half disbelief, half bitter memory.

"You're still that boy by the lake," she said. "Promising to burn the world down for me without thinking about what comes after."

He stepped closer. He didn't crowd her, but he was close enough that she could feel the radiating heat of his body.

"And you're still the girl who runs before I can prove I mean it."

The words settled between them—familiar, sharp, and entirely unguarded.

"I'm not running this time," she said, her voice gaining strength. "But I'm not surrendering, either. If you want to be in her life, Alec, we do this on my terms. We talk. We plan. You don't vanish behind pack doors and leave us in the dark. You don't make decisions for her without me. You don't treat me like a bystander because I'm human."

Something shifted in his expression. It was a look of profound respect, mixed with a lingering regret. "Agreed."

"You said that too easily."

"I've had seven years to realize everything I did wrong, Maya. I'm not losing you again."

"And now?"

"I know almost nothing," he said. "Except that she's mine. And you…" He stopped, the unspoken words heavy in the air.

She should have stepped back. Should have put distance between them before the air got any thinner. But she didn't move, and neither did he.

His hand came up slowly, palm settling against her cheek the way it had that night by the lake. His thumb brushed her jaw, and the familiarity of it made her chest ache.

"Maya," he said, and it wasn't a question. It was a surrender.

She closed the distance.

The kiss was nothing like graduation night—not tentative or sweet or full of promise. This was seven years of grief and anger and longing compressed into a single, desperate moment. His hand slid into her hair. Her fingers gripped his shirt. For a heartbeat, the hospital disappeared. The fear disappeared. It was just them, the way it used to be, the way it was never supposed to be again.

And then reality crashed back in.

Maya pulled away first, breathing hard. "We can't."

Alec's forehead dropped against hers, his breath ragged. His eyes full of fiece longing.

"I mean it, Alec. We can't do this." She stepped back, putting space between them that felt like a physical wound. "I don't have room for whatever this is. Ivy comes first."

"She comes first for me, too."

"Then we need to agree—this doesn't happen again."

He was quiet for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was low and honest. "I can't agree to that."

Her breath caught.

"I'll never stop wanting you, Maya." His eyes held hers, unflinching. "I've tried. I spent seven years trying. But I won't trap you. I won't push. If you need me to keep my distance, I will. But don't ask me to lie and say I don't feel this."

She didn't know what to say to that. To the raw honesty of it.

She closed her eyes, trying to find her footing in a situation that had no solid ground. "I need you to understand something."

"Okay."

"This scares me," she said quietly. "Not you. Never you. But this—us being pulled back together, Ivy in the middle, your world closing in. I spent seven years building walls to keep us safe, and in one night they're all coming down."

His expression softened. "Maya—"

"I trust you," she cut him off, needing him to hear it. "I always have. Even when I ran, it wasn't because I didn't trust you."

He stepped closer, not touching, but present. "And now?"

"Now I'm terrified," she admitted. "Because wanting you has never been the problem. It's everything that comes with you. The pack. The Council. All the eyes that will be on her the second they know she exists. I can't protect her from all of that."

"You won't have to do it alone anymore." Something fierce and unbreakable settled into his features. "The second I heard her call me 'Daddy,' everything else became background noise."

"The pack won't see it that way. The Council won't care what you want."

"They don't have to." His voice dropped, taking on that Alpha resonance that made the air feel heavier. "I'm not answering to them anymore. And they're going to learn that the hard way if they try to touch what's mine."

The certainty in his voice should have reassured her. Instead, it made her chest tighten with a different kind of fear—the kind that came from knowing he meant every word, and that the consequences would be brutal.

She drew in a slow, stabilizing breath. "Please… just go sit with her. I need a minute alone. Then you're going to tell me exactly what we're dealing with. No secrets."

He nodded once, his face set in grim determination. "And after that?"

"After that," she said, "we keep her alive."

He reached the doorway of the room, paused, and looked back. Something softened in his face, a glimpse of the boy from the greenhouse.

"For what it's worth," he said quietly, "I would've chosen you. Even if it destroyed everything."

Her breath caught, a sharp pain in her lungs. "That's exactly why I didn't let you."

He held her gaze for one more heartbeat, then slipped back into the room. The door clicked shut, muffling the sound of the monitors.

Maya stood alone in the too-bright hallway, her hands braced on the cold metal rail. Fog pressed against the window, thick and impenetrable. Somewhere below, another morning was beginning for people whose lives hadn't been cracked wide open.

She hated needing him. She hated that the safest place for her daughter might be tied to the very world she had nearly died to escape. But she wasn't giving up the life she had built.

If Alec wanted a place in it, he would learn to stand beside her—not in front of her.

And if the Stonehaven world came for them, it would learn a lesson it had never bothered to learn before.

Maid's daughters don't bow.

Not anymore.