Chapter 13 #2
She saw his reaction to Vidar’s name. Not fear. Readiness. The kind that came from memory, not imagination. ”You go on alert when I say his name,” she said softly.
“I don’t.”
“You do,” she said. “You just do it in places people can’t see. Why?”
He fell silent for a long moment, a muscle jerking in his jaw. “If I’m right, he’s tried once to take you out. I won’t let him come after you again,” he gritted out.
The truth of it slid beneath her defenses before she could stop it.
This wasn’t about her at all. It was about what had already been done to her.
And that was what made everything that followed worse.
Not because it excused him, but because it proved he knew exactly what he was choosing.
Containment over trust, authority over her. And he chose it anyway.
As though to prove her suspicion, he continued: “As for Magnus, he’s doing what he’s supposed to do.”
“And what are you doing?”
For a beat, she wondered if he would step out of process and meet her where she was. If he would choose her over the structure already closing around them. She already knew the answer. The pause told her more than any reassurance could.
His voice went flat. “I’m doing the same.”
Something inside her settled into a colder shape. ”So you agree with your brother,” she said. “I’m a dangerous breach. I’m at risk to be manipulated even if I’m not malicious. And because of that, I need to be isolated while you decide whether I belong in your world.”
He swore under his breath. “That’s not what he said.”
“It’s exactly what he said,” she retorted. “He just used cleaner words for the parts he thinks I can’t hear.” She breathed in carefully. Slowly. “So tell me. What does containment look like?”
She saw the pause. The mental inventory. The intention to slow the moment until the facts were fully in view and he could set them down gently. It didn’t matter how he phrased it. She’d already heard enough to be hurt.
“It looks like restricted access,” he told her. “It looks like you not going anywhere alone. It looks like you not touching systems until we can validate all paths. It looks like time.”
“To prove I’m innocent,” she whispered.
“To prove what happened,” he corrected.
Her eyes sharpened. “That’s convenient. It means you don’t have to believe in me. You only have to believe in the results.”
She saw it land. Not anger. Understanding. The moment he realized what she was actually asking of him. Not for exemption. Not for blindness. But for faith in her that existed before logs, before proof, before validation cleared her name on paper.
She wasn’t asking him to ignore evidence.
She was asking him to choose her without needing proof.
And she saw, with sudden brutal clarity, that this was the one thing he had never learned how to do.
“I don’t operate on belief,” he said.
“Just hard, cold facts.” She held up her palm where the lightning bolt throbbed. “But not this hard, cold fact.”
“Fuck, Sera!” He shot a hand through his hair.
“What do you want me to say? That I don’t think you were involved in the theft?
I absolutely do not. But I have obligations that don’t belong to me alone.
This file was erased. Someone reached into my family’s systems and made something disappear.
I don’t get to look away from that. I don’t get to say it doesn’t matter just because I trust you.
If I stop asking how it happened, who did it, and why, then I’m not doing my job. I’m not the Underboss.”
She absorbed it without flinching. Let the words settle. Not because she agreed, but because she understood exactly what he was saying.
“I know,” she conceded.
That made his gaze sharpen.
“I know what your job is,” she continued. “I know what it costs you to hold that seat. I know you don’t get to decide when the rules apply and when they don’t. I’m not asking you to abandon your responsibilities or pretend the breach didn’t happen.”
“Then what the hell are you asking, Sera?” Frustration ripped through the question.
She took a breath, steadying herself. “I’m asking you to understand what it feels like to stand here and realize that none of that includes me.
” She met his eyes fully now. “You keep telling me what you have to do. What the role requires. What the family demands. And I’m listening.
I am. But every word of it tells me the same thing.
That I only factor into the equation because I’m a variable you have to manage. ”
She shook her head once, slow and calm. “You say you don’t think I was involved. But that doesn’t protect me from what comes next. Because belief, to you, only matters after the proof lines up.”
Alaric stood rigid, the stillness around him tightening into something harder. When he spoke, his voice was low, every word placed. ”I don’t need proof to know you didn’t do this,” he said. “I need proof to stop it from happening again.”
“Of course, but—”
He cut her off with a wave of his hand, then took a breath, as if forcing himself to stay in his position as Underboss.
“Someone erased that file because it mattered. Because it was leverage. Because it was dangerous. If I ignore the how, I leave the door open for whoever did it to use the same path again. And next time, it won’t be data they reach for. ”
She shook her head in confusion. “Then what?”
“It’ll be you.” He allowed the shock of that to sink in, his eyes never leaving hers. “Belief doesn’t close attack vectors. Understanding does.”
The words were brutal. Not cruel. Not dismissive. Final in the way only obligation could be.
Her voice stayed even, but something in her chest ached sharply.
“I don’t need you to stop investigating.
I don’t need you to stop asking questions.
I need you to understand what your investigation makes me.
” She held his gaze, refusing to let him retreat into abstraction.
“Right now, I’m not someone you stand beside.
I’m something you manage. Something you bracket and monitor and decide about later once Magnus offers you proof. ”
For the first time, anger flared. “That’s bullshit, Sera.”
Her throat tightened, but she kept going.
“You keep saying this is about protecting me. But protection that depends on whether I pass your thresholds isn’t protection at all.
It’s conditional.” She let that land, let the implication sharpen.
“And if I fail those conditions—even by accident—then what am I to you?”
Alaric didn’t answer immediately. Not because he hadn’t heard her.
Because he had. He stiffened as if he were restraining something more volatile than anger.
When he spoke, his voice was careful, but there was steel underneath it now.
”It means I don’t let you become the price,” he said.
“It means I absorb the risk before it reaches you.”
She watched him closely. Heard what he said. Heard what he didn’t. She paused, choosing her words with care. “So, if the truth clears me, then I’m safe. If it doesn’t, then what? I’m collateral damage in a process you’ve already decided you can live with?”
His gaze didn’t drop. If anything, it hardened. ”No,” he said flatly. “You’re not collateral.”
“Then what am I?” she pressed. Silence stretched. Not empty. Measured. The room became tighter now. Smaller. ”That’s the part you won’t look at,” she said. “Not the evidence. The cost.”
Alaric exhaled slowly through his nose, a sound that carried restraint rather than release. ”The cost is mine,” he said. “It has always been mine.”
Her eyes flickered at that, just once. ”And I asked you this before,” she said, very quietly. “And you never answered. Do you plan to erase me if you don’t like some tiny piece of what Magnus finds?”
“You want to know what I’ll do?”
The words were barely out of his mouth before he moved.
Alaric stalked toward her, every step controlled, the kind of motion that didn’t rush because it didn’t need to.
His presence filled the space between them, compressed it, left no room for distance or retreat.
His light blue eyes were blazing now, stripped of calculation, stripped of role, burning with something unmistakable.
Before she could speak, before she could brace herself, he caught her.
One arm locked around her back, hauling her against him. The other slid into her hair, fingers tightening just enough to hold, not hurt. His mouth came down on hers with a force that stole her breath. Not gentle, not careful, but urgent, desperate, claiming.
She fought him.
Her hands shoved against his chest, nails biting into muscle, her body straining back even as his strength held her there.
She turned her face, broke the seal of his mouth, pushed again, every part of her screaming that this was wrong, that he couldn’t take this from her when he wouldn’t give her what she needed. Then he took her mouth again.
Seconds stretched. Endless. Burning.
Slowly, her resistance faltered.
Her hands slid, not away but closer. Her breath hitched.
The fight drained out of her in a rush, a combination of surrender and betrayal all at once.
She melted into him despite herself, despite the ache still lodged in her chest, and kissed him back with a hunger that matched his—long and deep, a collision of need and frustration and everything they were refusing to say.
For a moment, nothing existed but the kiss. The heat of his body. The grip in her hair. The way his mouth softened even as it demanded.
Then he broke it. Abruptly. Like a man tearing himself away from a fire before it burned him alive. He rested his forehead against hers, breath heavy, hands still gripping her as if letting go would be a mistake he couldn’t afford.
For an instant, she understood exactly how easy it would be to let this replace the answer he wouldn’t give.
“That,” he said hoarsely, “is what I’ll do with whatever Magnus finds. Every. Fucking. Time.” He released her then, stepping back, restoring distance with visible effort. ”But what I want doesn’t get to decide this,” he finished, voice steadying, walls slamming back into place.
The words hit harder than the kiss.
Sera stared at him for a heartbeat longer, chest rising too fast, lips still tingling, heart pounding with everything he’d just confirmed and denied in the same breath. He had answered her the only way he knew how. And it still wasn’t enough.
She turned before he could stop her, before he could touch her again, before she could lose the resolve she’d clawed back piece by piece. She crossed the room fast, bare legs silent on the floor, the hem of his shirt brushing her thighs like an accusation.
At the door, she paused.
She didn’t look back.
“You don’t get to claim me with your mouth,” she said, voice steady despite the tremor in her hands, “when you won’t choose me with your actions.”
Then she opened the door and fled the room.
The latch clicked shut behind her.
Alaric didn’t move.
The space she left behind felt scorched.
For the first time since he’d become Underboss, he wasn’t sure whether holding the line had just cost him the one thing he wouldn’t be able to get back.
And wanted more than anything.