26. Rosalind
ROSALIND
His admission hangs between us like a bridge I can't cross. Around us, the dying trees drop their leaves in steady rain, the physical manifestation of a bond fracturing under the weight of truth and betrayal and love that neither of us knows how to reconcile.
I'm still his—I can feel it in every pulse of our connection.
But I'm also lost, trapped in a moral crisis that he caused and doesn't know how to resolve.
The way he just confessed to caring more about me than his court's survival should feel like victory.
Instead, it feels like another weight added to my already crushing guilt.
"Tell me about the attack," I finally say, my voice raw from crying. "Tell me everything that really happened. No more lies, no more careful omissions. If you want any chance of fixing this, I need the complete truth."
Relief flickers across his face—not triumph, just the desperate hope of someone grasping at any chance for redemption.
He shifts slightly, settling more firmly against the base of a dying oak about ten feet away.
Close enough that our bond thrums with his presence, far enough that I don't feel trapped.
"What do you remember?" he asks carefully.
"Riding in the carriage with Brum. Him being attentive and charming, making me feel special.
The attack beginning—your people surrounding us.
" I force myself to continue despite the way my throat wants to close.
"And then seeing him draw weapons I never knew he carried.
Watching your thorns pierce his throat before I lost consciousness. "
Kaelen nods slowly, and there's something almost gentle in his expression. "You saw him draw weapons. That's more than I expected you to remember."
"I didn't understand what it meant then. Diplomatic missions carry security, guards with weapons. I thought maybe he was just..." The excuse sounds pathetic even to my own ears. "You're telling me there was more to it."
"Tell me, what was Brum Ashford's official role in your diplomatic mission?"
The question catches me completely off guard. "Cultural attaché. He was there to provide historical context and help bridge understanding between human and Fae perspectives."
"And what qualifications did he have for that role?"
I open my mouth to answer, then close it. Because suddenly I realize I don't actually know. Brum had been charming and knowledgeable, always ready with an anecdote or observation, but I'd never seen credentials, never heard the other diplomats reference his expertise.
"I... I don't know," I admit, feeling foolish.
"That's because he had none." Kaelen's voice carries no satisfaction at my realization, only grim honesty. "Brum Ashford had no diplomatic training, no cultural expertise, no official reason to be on that mission. He was there for entirely different purposes."
My stomach drops. "What purposes?"
"The weapons he carried weren't diplomatic security, Rosalind.
They were military-grade assassination tools.
Poison darts designed to kill Fae specifically, blades that could pierce our magical defenses, explosives powerful enough to level a building.
" He meets my eyes steadily, his ancient gaze holding mine.
"He didn't draw weapons to defend the convoy.
He drew them to kill me the moment he realized the attack was mine. "
The matter-of-fact way he describes instruments of his own potential death reminds me again that I'm bonded to something far older and more dangerous than I truly comprehend. What would be traumatic for me is simply another threat survived in his centuries of existence.
"That's impossible. Brum wasn't... he couldn't have been..."
"An assassin?" Kaelen supplies gently. "Rosalind, I can show you the weapons we recovered. I can provide testimony from my guards about how professionally he moved, how expertly he handled those tools. This wasn't a civilian caught in an attack—this was someone who came prepared for violence."
The pieces click into place with sickening clarity.
The way Brum had moved so smoothly when drawing his weapons, the practiced ease of someone who'd rehearsed those motions countless times.
The fact that he'd been the only non-official member of our delegation, added at the last minute with vague explanations.
"Why?" The word comes out as barely a whisper. "Why would he be there to kill you?"
"Because someone wanted to ensure these negotiations never succeeded.
Someone who benefits from continued tension between our peoples, who saw the prophecy of omega bonding as a threat to their interests.
" His expression darkens further. "I don't know who sent him yet, but I know he wasn't there to help build bridges. "
The betrayal cuts deeper than anything Kaelen has done. Because this means every moment with Brum, every conversation where he made me feel special and heard, was calculated manipulation. He'd been using my loneliness and need for validation to position himself.
"But he... he seemed to care about me," I say weakly. "The way he listened to my opinions, asked for my thoughts. That felt real."
Kaelen's expression softens with something that might be pity. "I'm sure it did. Good operatives are trained to make their targets feel special, valued, important. It's how they gain trust and access."
"Targets." The word makes me physically ill. "I was his target."
"You were a useful tool for getting close to me," Kaelen corrects, though there's no cruelty in it. "But Rosalind, there's something else you need to know about Ashford. Something that will hurt, but that you deserve to understand."
I can feel through our bond how much he doesn't want to tell me whatever comes next. The reluctance to cause more pain wars with his commitment to complete honesty.
"Tell me," I say, though I'm not sure I can handle another revelation.
"He was engaged to be married when he came here. A merchant's daughter in Waypoint named Margaret Cromwell. The engagement was announced in the papers three weeks before your diplomatic mission departed."
The world tilts violently. "Engaged?"
"They'd been courting for over a year. She was planning their wedding for his return from his 'cultural mission.
'" His voice remains carefully neutral, but I can feel his attention on me like a physical weight.
"His uncle—Major William Ashford— confirmed it when he came for the body.
Spoke quite fondly of the young woman Brum was excited to marry. "
Everything inside me crumbles. Every flower he brought me, every compliment on my insights, every lingering look that made my heart race—all of it performed while he had a fiancée waiting at home. A woman planning their life together while he played at romance with me for strategic advantage.
"The way he'd find me after meetings," I whisper, remembering how touched I'd been by his attention. "How he'd ask my opinion on the negotiations. I thought... God, I actually thought he might love me."
"You're not foolish for believing it," Kaelen says firmly. "You're someone who deserved real affection, who should have been treasured, and he exploited that need. The fault lies entirely with him."
Through our bond, I sense a brief flicker of confusion beneath his protective anger—the incomprehension of an ancient being trying to understand why deception lasting mere weeks could wound so deeply when mortal lives are so brief anyway.
But he's trying to understand, trying to grasp why this betrayal cuts me so profoundly.
"Margaret Cromwell," I repeat numbly. "She must be devastated."
"She is. Major Ashford said she'd been planning every detail of their future."
And that's when the truly horrible realization hits. "She's grieving someone real. Someone who actually existed, who genuinely loved her. While I'm mourning a complete fiction, a performance designed to manipulate me."
The cognitive dissonance threatens to tear me apart. Part of me feels relief that Kaelen didn't murder an innocent man in cold blood. But that relief is tangled with humiliation, with the devastating knowledge that nothing I felt was based on truth.
"I don't even know how to process this," I admit. "Do I mourn the man who died, who I never actually knew? Do I feel guilty for caring less about his death now? Or do I just feel stupid for falling for someone who never existed?"
"You feel however you need to feel," Kaelen says softly. "There's no correct way to process this kind of betrayal."
Through our bond, I sense his desperate desire to comfort me warring with his understanding that pushing now would be another manipulation. He's learning, trying to give me space to work through this without his influence.
But the distance between us aches like a physical wound, and that terrifies me most of all. Because even knowing what Brum was, even understanding Kaelen's deceptions, I still love him. The alpha who killed my false suitor, who claimed me through manipulation, who has been lying for weeks.
I should feel only anger and revulsion. Instead, I find myself really seeing him for perhaps the first time—not as a romantic figure or a monster, but as something genuinely Other.
The exhaustion in his green eyes isn't human weariness but the weight of centuries.
His stillness as he waits carries the patience of something that measures time in decades rather than heartbeats.
When he spoke of Brum's weapons, there was no anguish about taking a life—just the matter-of-fact recounting of neutralizing a threat. Through our bond, I can feel how my pain affects him, but it's the frustrated distress of an alpha whose mate is suffering from something he can't fully grasp.
This is what I've bonded to. Not just an alpha, but an ancient power whose perspective spans centuries where mine barely covers decades.
"What does this make me?" I ask quietly. "What kind of person learns someone she cared for was a complete fraud and feels relief instead of deeper grief?"
"It makes you someone strong enough to face truth even when it's devastating. Someone who can recognize genuine feeling when you encounter it, despite being deceived by an expert."
His words settle into my chest like warmth, validating that my judgment isn't completely broken, that what I feel for him isn't just another delusion.
Around us, the dying grove holds its breath. The magical corruption from our fractured bond hasn't spread further, but neither has it healed. Everything waits in terrible balance for me to decide whether love built on lies can be forgiven when the alternative means innocent deaths.
"I don't know how to forgive you for lying," I finally say. "But I also don't know how to forgive myself for still loving you despite everything."
The admission hangs between us like a bridge finally ready to be crossed, and for the first time since fleeing, I think I might find a way forward.
Even if I'm no longer certain who I am beneath all the deception and magical transformation.
Looking at Kaelen across the dying grove, feeling the desperate hope flowing through our bond mixed with his ancient patience, I think the love might be stronger than the betrayal.
But I need to be sure. And that means understanding exactly what I'm choosing if I stay.