Page 25

LYRA

T he 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 old wishing 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.

Like she was.

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.

Jace stood 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 not enough to actually do something about it.”

“I am doing something,” he snapped, stepping forward. “I’m telling you the truth. The whole of 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, I do. But because claiming you means everything . 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.

“When she used to braid her hair in the mornings,” he went on, softer now. “She’d tell me the story of how she and my father found each other. How fate made it perfect. But after he disappeared? She stopped telling the stories.”

Lyra swallowed, hard. “I’m sorry.”

“I swore I’d never be that selfish,” he whispered. “Swore I’d never take someone’s heart and leave them hollow.”

She stepped forward, anger swirling with grief. “But that’s what you’re doing now, Jace. You’re punishing me for something that hasn’t even happened .”

He looked up at her, wounded and furious and so very raw. “I’m trying to protect you.”

She shook her head. “No. You’re trying to control a future you can’t predict. And in the process, you’re doing the exact thing you’re afraid of. You’re leaving me without ever really being here.”

She pressed her palms against his chest. “I never knew your father. And I don’t know you that well.

But I can tell you that you’re not him. You’ve never abandoned your pack.

Never let them down. And yet you’re so scared of love breaking you that you’d rather shove it away than let yourself be whole. ”

He stared at her like she’d peeled him open with a whisper.

He grabbed her.

Kissed her like it was the last thing he’d ever get to do.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t patient. It was desperate and consuming and aching with every word he hadn’t said, every touch he’d denied them, every second of longing he’d buried under duty and pride.

Her hands slid into his hair.

She kissed him back. Because for one second, he wasn’t holding back. He was hers .

And then, as before, he pulled away. Just like that.

Stepped back, breath ragged.

“I can’t,” he said again, brokenly.

Lyra’s heart shattered clean through.

“Then don’t come back,” she said, voice shaking. “Don’t kiss me and leave. Don’t keep giving me hope only to crush it with your fear.”

He looked like he wanted to say something.

She didn’t let him. She turned, skirts brushing the grass, and walked away—head high, shoulders tight, the sting in her eyes matching the fury in her chest.

She didn’t even glance toward Ezra.

Didn’t care.

Let him wonder where she went. Let Jace wonder what came next.

Because tonight she was done with both of them.