Chapter 17 #2
The memory came back sharper than he expected, dragged forward by her body against him, by the quiet certainty of how she fit there.
Not blurred by sleep or softened by distance.
Precise. Intimate. Her hands on him, deliberate and unhurried.
Her mouth against his skin. The way she’d looked at him like she wasn’t discovering anything new but committing something to memory.
That realization tightened his chest.
She hadn’t been tentative. She hadn’t been reckless. She’d been present in a way that seemed… complete. As if she’d already accepted an ending he hadn’t seen coming. The thought unsettled him more than it should have. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, analyzing the possibilities.
That was when his phone rang.
Alaric stared at it for a beat before reaching for it. The caller ID made him frown. Magnus. Which meant this wasn’t casual and it wasn’t going away if he ignored it. He answered on the second ring.
“What?” he said, already standing.
“Good morning to you, too,” Magnus said dryly. “You’re late.”
“I won’t be in right away.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Not confusion. Shock. Magnus didn’t pause often.
“That’s not funny,” Magnus barked out.
“I’m not joking.”
Another pause, longer this time. “Alaric, we’re already in motion. The DNA results came in twenty minutes ago. Leif’s here. We’re convening.”
“I know.”
“You know?” Magnus repeated. “Then where the hell are you?”
Alaric glanced toward the bed and the woman sleeping in it. The Brand pulsed faintly, still wrong.
“At home,” he said.
Silence. Then, sharply, “That’s not acceptable. What’s the hold up?”
Something stripped away inside Alaric. Not control. Polish. He welcomed it. ”That’s none of your fucking business,” he said evenly. “I’ll come when I’m damn ready.”
Magnus exhaled hard. “You don’t get to—”
“Yes, I do,” Alaric cut in. “I always have. If that’s a problem, Leif can say so himself.”
The line went quiet again, tension humming through the silence. When Magnus spoke, his voice was lower. Careful. “What’s going on?”
Alaric closed his eyes for a brief moment, then opened them. “I’ll handle it,” he said. “You handle everything else.”
He ended the call before Magnus could respond.
Turning, he found Sera standing beside the bed, staring at him.
She was barefoot, as naked as he was, her hair loose and sleep-soft around her shoulders. Her expression wasn’t guarded or coy. It was stunned. She was looking at him like she was trying to reconcile what she’d just heard with the man she thought she understood.
“You’re not going in?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
Her brows drew together. “The DNA results are back.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“And you just told Magnus Severin you weren’t coming in right away and the reason was none of his… business?”
“Yes.”
She stared at him for another second, clearly recalibrating. “You never do that.”
“I do now.”
The words came out sharper than he intended.
Not angry. Pressed. Sera seemed to register it immediately.
She straightened slightly, her posture going calm and regulated, the same way it did when she stepped into a crisis.
She crossed the room to his closet and pulled out one of his shirts, slipping it on and swiftly buttoning it.
Then she turned to face him. “What’s wrong?” she demanded.
He didn’t answer right away. He crossed the space between them and stopped close enough that he could see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the faint mark on her lower lip where he’d bitten her the night before. The Brand tugged, still off, still wrong.
“Something’s shifted,” he said finally.
Her gaze flicked to his hand. “The Brand?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Muted. Misaligned.” He shook his head slightly. “I don’t know.”
She studied him with unnerving focus. “And that’s why you’re not going in.”
“That’s part of it.”
“What’s the rest?”
He hesitated, irritation spiking at himself. He didn’t hesitate. He assessed. He decided. But this wasn’t a boardroom or a threat profile. This was her. And the answer mattered more than he wanted to admit.
“I can’t compartmentalize,” he said.
Sera’s eyes widened a fraction.
“I can’t walk out of this house and leave you unanchored,” he continued, the words more basic now, stripped of the layers he usually used to buffer truth.
She absorbed that without interrupting him. Without reassuring him. With intentional restraint.
“Something about all this is fucking wrong,” he added, quieter now. “Which means I’m not ignoring it.”
She nodded once. “What do you want from me?”
The question hit harder than it should have. He didn’t want. He directed. He commanded. The impulse rose anyway, sharp and intuitive. ”Stay,” he said.
The word landed between them, heavy with everything he didn’t say. Don’t disappear. Don’t make absence real. Don’t leave me. Not now. Not ever.
Sera didn’t move. Her expression remained calm, her voice steady when she spoke. “I can’t promise that.”
The Brand pulsed sharply, like it had finally found something to react to. ”Why not?” he asked, the edge in his voice impossible to hide.
“Because you want a promise you can’t actually keep,” she said calmly. “You’re trying to lock this moment in place so you can go do what you have to do and believe it’ll still be waiting for you when you get back. And I won’t pretend that’s how this works.”
He held her gaze. He was used to resistance. Used to negotiation. This wasn’t either. This was refusal without defiance.
Silence stretched.
He stepped back first.
“I’ll return as quickly as I can,” he said. It was the closest thing to a promise he could give without lying.
She nodded. No drama. No pleading. Just acceptance. “I know.”
He turned toward the door, already feeling the pull of Severin’s gravity reasserting itself, the machine grinding forward whether he wanted it to or not.
“Sera.”
She looked up.
“Don’t—” He stopped himself. The word was wrong. He exhaled slowly. “Be careful.”
Her mouth curved, not quite a smile. Something steadier. Something resolved. “You always say that.”
He took one step toward the door, then another, forcing his body to move even as every part of him resisted it.
“Alaric.”
He stopped and looked back.
For a long moment they simply stared at each other. No words. No distance. Just the burden of everything neither of them would say. Her eyes were bright and steady, his unreadable, tight with restraint. The Brand hummed low and wrong between them, a pressure he refused to acknowledge.
Then he gave a single, decisive nod, as if committing the image of her to memory, and turned away.
He didn’t look back again.
The door closed behind him with a quiet, final click.
Sera stood where he’d left her. Tears filled her eyes, sharp and sudden, and she pressed her fingers against her lips, fighting them back.
Only when the house fell completely silent did she close her eyes and whisper, “Goodbye.”