Chapter 16 The Distance He Chooses
I didn't sleep that night. I want to be honest about that, because everything that happened in the days that followed started here — in a single night, alone in my rooms, with Desmond's words turning over and over in my mind until I could no longer tell which parts of them were true and which parts were poison, because somewhere along the way, the two had become indistinguishable.
The binding only worked because part of you wanted it to.
I wanted it to be false. I wanted, more than almost anything, to be able to say with absolute certainty: no, that's not me, that was never me, whatever happened that night was entirely Desmond's doing and none of it came from anything real inside myself.
But I couldn't say that. Not honestly. Because the gap was still there — three years of my life, missing, with nothing inside me to push back against whatever Desmond claimed had filled that space.
I had no memory to contradict him with. No feeling I could point to and say this is what I actually felt, and it wasn't what he's describing.
I had nothing except the bond — present, warm, undeniable, but also, I realized somewhere around three in the morning, not proof of anything except that the bond itself was real.
The bond didn't tell me what I'd felt about the rest of it.
The pregnancy. The Luna title. The enormous, life-altering weight of everything that would have come with accepting all of it, at twenty-eight, while drowning in grief and an Alpha title I'd barely begun to understand.
Was it possible some part of me had looked at all of that and felt, underneath the love, underneath the bond — fear? Not fear of Marlowe. Fear of the scope of it. The permanence. The way it would have changed everything, all at once, on top of a year that had already changed everything once.
I didn't know. And not knowing — three years after the fact, with no memory to draw on, with only Desmond's voice in my head offering an explanation that fit a little too neatly into the shape of every insecurity I'd never let myself examine — felt like standing on ground that might, at any moment, simply not be there.
By morning, I hadn't resolved anything. But I had arrived at something — not a conclusion, exactly, but a kind of exhausted, defensive certainty, the particular certainty of a man who'd spent a sleepless night convincing himself that the safest thing, the only responsible thing, was to step back.
From all of it. The bond. Marlowe. Whatever this had become, in the space of barely a week.
Because if Desmond was right — even partially right, even just a little right — then everything I'd felt over the last several days, everything that had felt so immediate, so undeniable, so real , might not be trustworthy.
Might be built on a foundation I couldn't verify, couldn't examine, couldn't trust. And if I couldn't trust it — if there was even a possibility that what I felt for Marlowe was tangled up with whatever Desmond had amplified three years ago, rather than being entirely, cleanly my own — then continuing as we had been, continuing toward whatever this was becoming, felt less like hope and more like a risk I had no right to ask her to take.
Not again. Not after everything she'd already survived because of decisions I'd made — or that had been made through me — without her ever having the full picture.
I told myself this was protecting her. I told myself, with the particular conviction of a man building a wall and calling it shelter, that pulling back now — before either of us got in any deeper, before the Reclamation concluded and the council made its ruling and everything became permanent — was the responsible thing. The careful thing.
I didn't examine, closely enough, how familiar that reasoning felt. How much it sounded, if I'd let myself hear it, like exactly the kind of thing a binding might amplify in a man already inclined toward retreat.
I went to find Marlowe that afternoon — not for the scheduled check-in, which wasn't for another few hours, but before it, because I'd decided, in the cold light of a sleepless night, that what I had to say needed saying directly, not within the careful structure of a fifteen-minute formality.
She opened the door, and the moment she saw my face, something in her expression shifted — wary, careful, the look of someone who'd spent the previous evening waiting for a conversation that hadn't come, and who could see, now, that whatever this conversation was going to be, it wasn't going to be the one she'd hoped for.
"Roman." Her voice was quiet. "Are you all right?"
"I need to talk to you." I kept my voice level, though it cost me more than I expected. "Can we — is Birdie—"
"She's with Petra. In the kitchens." Marlowe stepped back, letting me into the sitting room, and I noticed, with a fresh ache I tried to ignore, the careful distance she put between us as she did — not the easy warmth of the last several days, but something more guarded, bracing.
"I've been thinking," I said, "about what Desmond said.
About the binding, and what it amplified, and—" I took a breath, and made myself continue, even though every word felt like it cost something.
"I don't think I can rule out that he was right.
At least partially. And I don't think — Marlowe, I don't think it's fair to you, to continue as we have been, when I can't be certain that what I'm feeling is — mine .
Entirely mine. Not shaped by whatever's underneath the binding, whatever Desmond amplified, whatever's been sitting there for three years influencing things I can't fully access or understand. "
Marlowe went very still. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying—" I made myself hold her gaze, even though everything in me wanted to look away.
"I'm saying I think we need to step back.
From — from this. From whatever this has become, over the last week.
I think it's too soon, and too uncertain, and I don't think either of us is in a position to know what's real and what isn't, given everything that's still unresolved. "
"Roman, that's not—" Marlowe's voice had gone sharp, urgent.
"That's not stepping back to protect me.
That's Desmond's lie still working. Can't you see that?
He told you something specifically designed to make you doubt yourself, and now you're — you're retreating , exactly the way he wanted, exactly the way—"
"Maybe." My voice was quieter now, and underneath the quiet, something that felt like the last of my composure, holding by a thread.
"Maybe it is exactly what he wanted. But Marlowe — I also have to consider the Reclamation.
The council's ruling. I've spent the last week — feeling things, building something with you, that I can't fully account for.
And if, at the end of this, the council rules against the Reclamation regardless — if none of this changes the outcome — then continuing as we have been only makes that outcome harder. For both of us. For Birdie ."
"So your solution is to make it hurt now, instead.
Preemptively." Marlowe's voice had gone hard, and underneath the hardness, something raw, something I recognized, with a fresh wave of horror, as an echo — the same kind of pain the scribe had recorded three years ago, just quieter, just more controlled, because Marlowe had spent three years learning to carry pain quietly.
"Roman, I need you to hear what you're actually telling me.
You're telling me that you're not sure the Reclamation will be approved — and instead of fighting for it, instead of telling the council everything you found, everything about Desmond, everything that should obviously change the outcome — you're choosing to step back.
To create distance. Before any of that's even been decided. "
"I don't—" I stopped, because she was right, and I knew she was right, and the knowing didn't change anything about the exhausted, defensive certainty that had carried me here.
"I don't think the Reclamation is going to be approved, Marlowe.
I think — given everything, given how complicated this has all become, given that I genuinely don't know what's real anymore about my own feelings — I think the responsible thing is for you to prepare for that.
For the possibility that, at the end of the thirty days, the council upholds the original rejection, and you and Birdie—"
"Don't." Marlowe's voice cracked, and for a moment, the careful hardness gave way to something that looked, devastatingly, like the exact same plea the scribe had recorded three years ago.
"Don't do this again. Please. Look at me — actually look at me, Roman, not at whatever Desmond put in your head, not at whatever fear is driving this — look at me , and tell me this is actually what you want. "
I looked at her. I want that on record too — I looked at her, directly, for a long moment, and the bond between us was still there, warm and steady and undeniable, and everything in me wanted to cross the space between us and take back every word I'd just said.
And then I thought about Desmond's voice, low and certain: the binding only worked because part of you wanted it to — and the warmth, the certainty, the steadiness of the bond didn't feel like proof anymore.
It felt like exactly the kind of feeling that couldn't be trusted, precisely because it felt so undeniable.
A man drowning doesn't trust the current that feels like it's carrying him to shore — not until he knows where the shore actually is.
"I think," I said quietly, "that the council's ruling should be made on its own merits. Without — without this complicating it further. I'm sorry, Marlowe. I think this is the right thing to do. For both of us."
I left before she could say anything else — the same way, I realized later, with a horror that arrived far too late to be useful, that I'd apparently left a council chamber three years ago, walking away from a woman pleading for me to look at her, retreating into distance because distance felt, in that moment, like the only solid ground available.
I didn't see what happened after I left. I didn't see Marlowe sit down, slowly, on the edge of the bed, and stay there for a long time without moving. I didn't see her, later that evening, pull out the single bag she and Birdie had arrived with, and begin, quietly, methodically, to pack.
I went back to my own rooms, and sat alone with the bond — still there, still warm, still steady, a current I'd just told myself not to trust — and told myself, over and over, that I'd done the right thing.
I didn't believe it. Not really. But I'd told myself plenty of things over the last three years that I hadn't fully believed, and somehow, none of them had ever felt quite as wrong as this one did.
Twenty-two days left. And for the first time since the Reclamation clock had started, I found myself hoping — quietly, guiltily — that Marlowe wouldn't make it to the end of them. That she'd leave early. That whatever came next, it would happen somewhere I didn't have to watch.
I didn't yet understand how badly I was about to need her to stay.