Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Lucas
The image of Sienna throwing herself into the arms of another man is seared into my memory. That smile on her face. The relief in her eyes. No matter how much I try, I can’t forget it. It hurts.
Probably the same way my actions hurt her.
She spent every free moment she had over the last two days with that man. I watched him cup her face and speak to her so gently that it made my beast want to rip him apart. How dare he touch her?
He’s silent now, my wolf. Unhappy, miserable.
And I’m no different. I miss the sound of Sienna’s laugh, the way her eyes gleam when she’s up to something.
There’s no shine in those beautiful eyes anymore.
Even when she pretends to be fine, all composed and professional, I can see the pain she’s concealing, the pain I’m inflicting on her.
My wolf is silent tonight. He has been since Sienna stood on the front steps of the estate house watching Ethan leave. She didn’t want him to go. It was obvious. And that hurt both me and my wolf. He sits behind my ribs somewhere, curled into a ball, and he does not answer when I look for him.
I sit on the edge of my bed, alone, my tie loosened. I haven’t managed to change out of my clothes yet.
A knock sounds on the door.
I look up and sigh. I don’t want to deal with whoever it is. But I am still the alpha. I cross the room, taking off my tie and throwing it aside before pulling the door open.
Lydia stands on the other side in a cream-colored silk robe belted at the waist. Her hair is loose over her shoulders. Her feet are bare on the stone floor.
“Is something wrong?” I ask, frowning.
“No.” She offers me a small, hesitating smile. “I was hoping we could spend some time together.”
I want to turn her away, but I can’t. “Okay,” I reply, because I don’t know what else to say. I step back and let her in.
She moves past me into the room, her steps making no sound on the rug. She stops near the armchair by the window, and the silk of her robe catches the lamplight.
“Do you have something to drink?” she asks, her voice nervous.
“Scotch?” I offer.
“Please.”
I turn to the sideboard. There is a decanter I almost never use. I pour two fingers into a crystal glass, my back to her, wondering how to tell her I don’t want company tonight. I turn with the glass in my hand, about to ask her to leave.
Lydia has dropped the robe.
It is pooled at her feet in a cream puddle. She is left wearing a negligée the color of champagne, with two thin straps and a length that stops high on her thigh. Her hair falls forward over one shoulder. She stands very still, watching me, and I understand at once what she has come here for.
For a long moment, I cannot react, shock filling me.
My wolf does not react. He does not snarl. He does not indicate that he wants her body at all. What he does instead is twist upward with a low, aching whine and direct every scrap of his attention elsewhere in the house: toward Sienna’s room, toward that closed door in the guest wing.
The human part of me feels no attraction to Lydia, either. I avert my gaze and focus on the glass in my hand. Looking at this woman feels like I’m being unfaithful.
The thought comes to me just like that, and it has me wincing.
I set the glass down and walk slowly over to her. Without looking at her, I bend down to pick up her robe from the floor. The silk is warm from her skin. As I put it around her shoulders, my voice is low.
“I’m sorry, Lydia.”
My hands do not linger. I find the ends of the belt and hand them to her, then step back so she can tie it herself.
She does not do or say anything for a moment except look at a point on the wall just past my shoulder. Then, her throat moves.
“I see.” She awkwardly ties the belt into a loose knot. The smile she puts on her face is too fast. “That was stupid of me.”
“Don’t.”
“No, it was.” She manages a low laugh despite the sad look in her eyes. “I thought, perhaps, if we just…if we started somewhere…I thought I could help us move this forward.”
I watch the blush creep up her neck.
A breath escapes me that I did not mean to release. “This is why I told you I was against the idea.”
She lifts her gaze. Tries to hold mine.
“I knew this would happen, Lydia.” My voice stays quiet. I cannot make it cruel. “I knew you would get hurt.”
She swallows. She tugs the belt tighter and wraps her arms over the front of the robe. When she speaks, her voice is even. Controlled.
“It’s fine. I just wanted to try.” She lifts her chin. “We have our whole lives ahead of us. I thought—I thought we could start now.”
I’m silent.
She walks past me to the door. Her drink sits untouched on the sideboard. She pulls the door closed behind her with care, almost no sound. I stand where she left me with the echo of one phrase going around and around in my head.
“Our whole lives ahead of us.”
I lower myself onto the edge of the bed and try to picture it.
Lydia, across from me at a breakfast table twenty years from now. Lydia, standing beside me at pack ceremonies. Lydia, in this bed. The image stops working each time I reach the part where I have to want her. I stare at the carpet, understanding what I have done.
I told myself this could work. I let her convince me. After all, Lydia is intelligent, warm, loyal. She would be a competent luna, a kind presence, and I let myself believe that I could live the rest of my life with her.
But I can’t.
I do not love her. Not as a man loves the woman he stands beside for the length of his life. I love her as I loved my father, my mother. She is like a sister to me. Family. Nothing closer than that. Nothing that belongs in my bed.
I rub a hand over my face.
I cannot do this. I told myself these past few days that I could, that I was strong enough to purchase Sienna’s survival with this arrangement, that love was a small thing to trade against a life. It is not a small thing. My wolf can’t bear it.
I have to end it. The realization fills me with something akin to relief and regret.
I can’t mate Lydia. It’s Sienna or no one.
If it were just the fated mate bond, it would be easier, but it has become more than that.
Somewhere along the line, Sienna found her way into my heart.
All that pride and ambition and cleverness, the confidence she wears like a second skin…
How could I not fall for her? Any man would be desperate to possess her.
If only she weren’t my fated mate.
I let out a shuddering breath.
I’ll send Sienna home. I won’t be able to explain to Darius or her why, so I’ll take the blame. Tell them I can’t be with her for personal reasons. I will take every shred of culpability onto my own back. Once she finds somebody else, once she wears his mark, this will be over.
I sit on the edge of the bed, forcing myself to accept reality.
I was angry that she touched Ethan and that she spent hours with human men, letting them see her, dance with her.
The truth is, there will be someone to take my place, and I will have no say in the matter.
Somebody will recognize how precious she is and snap her up, and that will be the end of it all.
I sit like this for a while, unable to lie down, unable to get out of my own head.
My eyes fall on the clock on the wall. Eleven-forty. I pull a jacket off the back of the chair and leave. I need to get some air.
The corridors are dim. The estate has gone to bed.
My shoes make almost no sound on the runners, and I pass Sienna’s door without allowing myself to look at it.
The door in the kitchen that leads to the garden is unlocked.
Outside, the night is clear. The moon hangs full and high, a hard, white disc.
Cold air fills my lungs, and for a moment, I think I may be able to breathe out here.
I head toward the forest. It may be unsafe for others, but I’m the alpha. My wolf wants to run, to be free from the confines of this human body.
As the tree line rises ahead of me, the wind turns. It comes at me off the forest, and when it hits me, I stop dead in my tracks.
Blood. Sienna’s blood.
The smell becomes thick in the air. My body understands before my mind does. I am already running, already shifting. My jacket tears off me in pieces, and I hit the ground at a dead sprint. My wolf takes over, his fury a dangerous thing.
The forest canopy closes over us.
The blood-scent feels hot as it deepens, and underneath it, I hear the sounds.
Growls. Teeth. That particular, wet noise of a body being worked over.
My wolf covers ground I cannot measure. Branches whip against my shoulders.
I do not feel them. I burst through a wall of ferns into a clearing, and I see her.
Sienna.
Her wolf is on her side. She is not moving. Her brown fur is red in patches. The ground under her is black with blood. Her mouth is open, her tongue resting on the moss, and she is not moving.
A sound I have not made in years leaves me. It is not a howl; it is something older. It shakes leaves off branches on the far side of the clearing.
The wolves around her look up and turn their attention toward me.
There are five still on their feet, maybe six. Not my pack. Rogues. Their scent is sharp, with something unsettling underneath the animal musk. Their eyes are blank, empty as a void.
One is standing over Sienna with his jaws at her throat. I slam into him at full speed.
The violent impact takes him away from her body and rolls us both across the clearing. He is big, but not big enough. I pin him under me before he can twist out of my grasp. I snap my teeth shut around his throat and tear. Blood comes out hot, and his body goes limp under my paws. I drop him.