Chapter 13 Tessa
TESSA
The storm finally breaks at dawn, leaving behind a world drenched in silence and a frostbitten kind of beauty that catches in the throat.
The snow outside lies thick and undisturbed, blanketing everything in deceptive stillness, like the world has decided to hold its breath along with me.
I can’t sleep, not after last night. I stayed up until the fire died, until the cold crept into my toes and the dark thoughts crept into my heart.
Darius never came back. Not to the house, not to me.
I wrap a blanket around my shoulders, pad barefoot across the freezing floorboards, and pour myself a cup of tea that tastes more like bitterness than comfort. I tell myself not to read too far into it. Maybe he just needed space. Maybe he regrets the kiss. Maybe I should.
But no matter how many ways I spin it, nothing about last night feels like a mistake. It felt real—raw, tangled, confusing as hell, yes—but real.
I find myself wandering through the east wing, the one Mary said was “not much in use these days,” which is her polite way of saying “off-limits” without being outright rude.
It’s colder here, draftier, and the air smells faintly of cedar, dust, and something older, like forgotten sorrow.
One door is slightly ajar: oak with a tarnished brass handle that’s been worn to a dull gleam.
I push it open and find a study, not unlike the one I saw Darius in last week, only this one looks. .. untouched.
Stacks of leather-bound books line the shelves, their spines cracked and faded with age.
A thick layer of dust lies on the desk, except for one item—a small journal, bound in cracked red leather with frayed edges and a black ribbon holding the pages shut.
It doesn’t look like it belongs to Mary or the other staff, and something in me knows, down in the marrow, that it’s his.
I shouldn’t.
But I do.
The journal creaks when I open it. The ink inside is dark and jagged, like it was written with fury or desperation or both. The handwriting is sharp, masculine, but messier the further I go. And then I see it.
The night she died… I should have stopped her.
I should have sensed it. The moment the wind turned and her scent disappeared from the bond, I knew.
And still, I waited. I thought I could fix it after, thought I’d clean up the blood and bury the memory and move on.
But the wolf never forgets. The wolf remembers everything.
My breath catches. I flip the page with trembling fingers.
She called me a monster with her last breath. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was too far gone to deserve the way she looked at me. I thought love could tame this thing inside me. I was wrong.
There’s more—pages filled with pain, with rage, with guilt so thick it bleeds off the paper. I close the book slowly, my chest hollowing out with each word still echoing in my head. The Darius I kissed last night is the same Darius who wrote this, who lost someone, who maybe...hurt someone.
I’m not sure how long I stand there, staring out the frosted window with the journal clutched to my chest. Time doesn’t feel real in this house. I could be a ghost, reading the remnants of a man who doesn’t even exist anymore.
“Found that old thing, did you?”
I jump at the sound of Mary’s voice behind me. She’s holding a tray with folded linens, her expression unreadable. She steps inside, calm as ever, but her eyes land on the journal in my arms, and something sharp flickers across her face.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” I say quickly, hugging it tighter without realizing it.
Mary sets the linens down on a nearby chair, smoothing one with unnecessary precision. “You wouldn’t be the first,” she says. “But that doesn’t make it wise.”
I hesitate. “He loved her, didn’t he?”
Mary sighs, slow and long. “Loved her? Oh yeah. With everything he had left. Which wasn’t much, mind you. Darius... he was already cracked when she came along. She tried to piece him back together. But some things aren’t meant to be fixed.”
I want to ask what happened. I want to ask if the journal is true, if he really… “Did he kill her?”
Mary doesn’t answer right away. Her fingers still on the hem of a pillowcase. Her mouth tightens, and her shoulders lift like she’s bracing for a storm.
“She died,” she says finally. “And he was there. That’s all I’ll say.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No, it isn’t.”
There’s something in Mary’s face that I haven’t seen before—fear, maybe, or memory. A flicker of the past that still shadows her now. And suddenly, I don’t want to know more. I don’t want to ask. I want to run.
So I do.
I retreat to my room, the journal burning in my hands, and sit on the edge of the bed, heart hammering.
I think of the kiss, of the way his breath stuttered like it was the first time he’d dared to hope again.
I think of the way he bolted, wild and undone, like he was terrified of what he could become.
And I wonder, what if he didn’t kill her?
What if the story is more complicated?
What if... loving me terrifies him because he thinks he’ll make the same mistake twice?
I don’t sleep. I lie awake staring at the ceiling, listening to the creaks of the old house, the shifting of wind, and the flutter of pages from a book still open beside me.
I don’t leave, either.
Because something tells me that running now would be a mistake. That this man—this complicated, haunted, beautifully broken man—deserves someone who stays.
Even when it’s hard.