GROWING CHASM 

Osric's POV

"We needed to cool down," Alaric replied, his voice calm and steady, like nothing in the world was wrong.

That calm was the final straw.

"We?" I let out a harsh, humorless laugh and finally turned around to face him. "Could have fooled me. With the way you've been acting all night, I could have sworn you were a rock or a fucking robot."

He was standing in the shadows near the door, his jacket discarded somewhere inside and his tie pulled loose. To anyone else, he would have looked perfectly composed, cool and collected and completely unaffected. 

But I wasn't anyone else. 

I could see the faint golden glow burning in his eyes, and through the twin bond humming between us, I could feel his wolf pacing just as restlessly as mine.

"How the hell are you keeping your cool," I snarled, my voice cracking, "when our mate is in another man's arms?"

He ignored the question completely. "I came to check on you," he said quietly.

I rolled my eyes so hard it almost hurt. "You mean you came to make sure I don't embarrass the family again," I shot back bitterly. "That's one of your main duties, isn't it? Make sure Osric doesn't do anything reckless."

His expression didn't change at all. "You were losing control," he said flatly.

"Well, watching another man put his hands all over my mate tends to do that to me," I growled.

A muscle ticked in his jaw. "You're letting your emotions drive you," he said in that infuriatingly reasonable voice. "She doesn't want this, Osric. You saw the fear in her eyes."

"And whose fault is that?" I roared, the words ripping out of me before I could stop them. "You kept it from her! You kept it from me! You decided all on your own that she couldn't handle the truth, that she wasn't ready—"

"She wasn't!" Alaric snapped, and for the first time tonight, his voice cracked straight through its calm. "She was fifteen, Osric, fifteen and wolfless and still having nightmares about watching her father die. The pack would have torn her apart if they knew." 

His eyes blazed. "Do you think I enjoyed pretending she was nothing to us? Do you think it was easy?"

"You had no right!" I snarled.

Then I made myself stop and take a long, shaky breath, because I knew if I didn't, one of us was going to end up through a wall again.

"Fine," I said, a little quieter. "Let's say I understand that she was young back then. What about all the years after that? It's been ten years, Alaric. You had ten whole years to tell me."

"By then, she had built a whole life," he replied quietly, his shoulders stiff. "She didn't want anything to do with us or with this world. I didn't want to tear her life apart." His worry for her flickered across his face for just a second. "And look at her now, Osric. She's been back barely a week, and she's already collapsed from distress."

He hesitated, then dragged a hand down his face.

"And I was trying to protect you too," he admitted, his voice dropping. "From wanting something you might never get to have."

The words hit me harder than any punch could have, and for a moment, I couldn't say anything at all.

"She needs her mates more than ever right now," I finally said, letting out a tired sigh as the fight drained out of me. "You know how the pack can be. A few days ago, I walked in on someone cornering her in the back corridor."

Alaric's head snapped up, and his fists clenched at his sides. "Who?" he demanded.

I raised a brow at him, a sneer curling my lips. "Who else do you think?" I asked bitterly. "Your queen bee."

Alaric didn't answer. The silence between us stretched long and heavy, filled only by the laughter and music drifting out from the ballroom. It was a celebration of our coming of age, and right now, it felt almost cruel in its normality.

"So tell your bestie to stay the hell away from my mate," I growled, stepping closer to him. "And from now on, you don't get to decide what either of us can handle. You don't get to play god with people's lives just because you're scared."

He met my eyes, his gaze hard and unflinching. "I would rather she hate me and be happy," he said quietly, "than love us and be destroyed."

I stared at him, then slowly shook my head.

"You really think you can protect her from what's inside her?" I asked softly. "From this?" I pressed my palm flat against my chest, where the bond was burning faintly beneath my ribs. "It's only going to get stronger with her this close, Alaric. You feel it too. And when it finally surfaces, all those walls you've built won't mean a damn thing."

His silence was answer enough.

I let out a humorless laugh. "You've spent your whole life in control, being the perfect twin and the responsible one," I said. "But you can't control destiny, brother."

I looked him right in the eye.

"And you need to stop thinking of her as weak just because she doesn't have a wolf," I added firmly. "It's insulting. She's one of the most brilliant minds in the country. And you should have seen her with Valentina. She didn't. She looked that viper dead in the eye and took her apart without even raising her voice. That's who she is now. So stop seeing the fragile teenager you left behind and start seeing the woman standing in front of you."

For a heartbeat, his mask cracked.

Guilt and longing flickered across his face, so raw and so human that it made my chest ache. Then he looked away, and I watched him lock it all back down.

"We should go back inside before people start to notice," he said stiffly. "It's rude for the two people this ceremony is for to be missing."

"Don't tell me what to do," I muttered.

He turned toward the doors anyway.

I grabbed his arm before he could take a step. "If you try to keep us apart again, brother, I swear to the Goddess—"

Alaric's eyes flashed gold, and the growl that tore out of him was pure Alpha, low and dangerous enough to make the hair on my arms stand up.

"You think I don't want this as much as you do?" he snarled, rounding on me. "You think I don't feel it every single time she walks into a room?" 

He shoved my hand off his arm, his breath coming rough and uneven. "But we have a responsibility to this pack, Osric."

I stared at him, my shock slowly giving way to something colder.

"Fuck our responsibilities," I said quietly. "I'm not going to deny myself my mate just to keep a bunch of old men happy."

His expression shuttered again, and he turned toward the door. "You don't understand what you're saying," he muttered.

"Maybe you're the one who doesn't understand," I replied softly, my voice tight. "You can't keep fighting what's fated to be yours because of some stupid sense of duty. Why would you put this pack above your own happiness?"

"Go cool your head, Osric," he said tiredly, pausing at the threshold with his shoulders tense. "And remember that we have to show a united front during this ceremony. Not everyone in that ballroom is an ally. Some of them are here specifically to find a weakness they can exploit." 

He looked back at me over his shoulder, and his eyes were hard. "You may not care about this pack as its Alpha, but I do. And I'll be damned if I give anyone a chance to strike just because of this drama between us."

Then the door shut behind him.

I stood there alone for a long time, my hands shaking with rage.

The moonlight caught the glass panes of the terrace doors, and they reflected my own eyes back at me. They were burning gold, feral and desperate and absolutely determined.

I let out a slow breath.

"You can hide behind your responsibilities all you want, Alaric," I whispered into the night. "But she's ours. And this time, I'm not letting her slip away."