Page 51

LYRA

The music had gotten too loud. The lights too bright. The crowd too much.

Lyra had needed air, space,peace, and Ezra’s voice in her ear, smooth and practiced, had only made the need sharper. She hadn’t realized just how tightly her emotions were coiled until she excused herself, stepped beyond the arch of silver-draped ivy, and let herself breathe under the open sky.

She hadn’t meant to walk this far. Hadn’t meant to end up by the oldwishing well, tucked away at the edge of the park where the festival’s magic faded into moonlit stillness.

But she was tired of pretending.

Tired of smiling like it didn’t ache to see Jace watching her with those storm-gray eyes that said everything and nothing all at once.

You’re my mate.

And still, he’d acted like it was something to be ashamed of.

Likeshewas.

She closed her eyes and leaned against the cold stone of the well, the night breeze catching her curls and tugging gently like it wanted her to stay grounded.

Behind her, a familiar, low throat-clear.

Her heart stuttered. She turned slowly.

Jacestood just outside the lantern’s reach, tall and sharp in his dark clothes, looking like sin and regret wrapped in shadows and the kind of pain you couldn’t dress up or explain away.

“Didn’t expect you to follow me,” she said, voice tight.

He stepped closer. “Didn’t plan to.”

“But you did.”

He nodded once.

Silence stretched between them, brittle and heavy.

She shook her head. “You can’t keep doing this, Jace.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I saw you with him,” he said, voice rough. “And my wolf nearly clawed through my skin.”

She folded her arms. “So you’re jealous.”

“Yes.”

“But notenoughto actuallydosomething about it.”

“Iamdoing something,” he snapped, stepping forward. “I’m telling you the truth. Thewholeof it this time.”

He rubbed a hand over his jaw, jaw clenched. “I can’t claim you, Lyra. Not because I don’t want to. Stars above, Ido.But because claiming you meanseverything. It ties your soul to mine, your future to mine. It makes you a part of my world in ways you can’t undo.”

“I never asked for an undo button,” she snapped. “You never even gave me a chance to.”

“My mother died two years after my father vanished,” he said, voice low. “She withered. Piece by piece. Waiting for him to come back. Trying to carry a bond that had been abandoned. She smiled for the pack, held the ceremonies, taught the rites—but I watched it kill her from the inside out.”

Lyra’s chest tightened.