Chapter Three — Why Gloves?
1147 Words
° AUTHOR'S POV °
Morning came too fast.
Lorianna hadn't slept.
Not really.
She'd drifted in and out, chasing fragments of a conversation that refused to make sense no matter how many times she turned it over.
*Some distances are necessary.*
What did that even mean.
She dressed slowly, pulled her hair back, and told herself she wouldn't ask him again. Not today. Today she would simply exist in the estate she'd missed for two years and let herself feel something other than confusion.
She lasted until breakfast.
°°°
The dining hall smelled like cedar smoke and fresh bread, exactly the way she remembered. Kaiden was already inhaling a plate of eggs like he hadn't eaten in a week. Kieran sat across from him, a book propped against a teapot, one hand turning pages, the other holding a fork he never used.
Some things never changed.
"You look terrible," Kaiden said around a mouthful of toast.
"Thank you Kaiden you know just how to make a girl feel lovely."
"I mean it. Bags under your eyes. Did he keep you up arguing all night?"
"We weren't arguing."
Kieran glanced up from his book. Just briefly. Just enough.
"You were in the library past midnight."
"You were spying on me?"
"I was reading in the room next door. The walls are thin if you didn't know."
Lorianna's face heated. "It wasn't like that."
"I didn't say it was," Kieran said, and returned to his page, but there was something careful in the way he said it. Something that told her he'd already drawn conclusions she hadn't given him permission to draw.
Kaiden, oblivious as always, pointed his fork at her. "So what did you talk about?"
"Nothing important."
"Doesn't look like nothing. You've been staring at your eggs for five minutes."
She hadn't noticed.
She pushed the plate away.
"Has he seemed different to you? Since I got back?"
The question landed heavier than she meant it to. Kaiden's fork stopped halfway to his mouth. Kieran closed his book entirely.
"Different how," Kieran asked, too evenly.
"I don't know. Distant. Careful. Like he's—" She searched for the word. "Like he's holding something back."
"Or he's walking on eggshells."
Neither twin answered right away.
That, more than anything, told her she wasn't imagining it.
"He's the Alpha," Kaiden finally said, too casually. "He's always holding something back. Comes with the crown."
"And Dad is never walking on eggshells." Kieran mutters flipping a page in his book before staring at Lorianna.
"Kaiden."
"I mean it, Sera— Don't read into it."
But his eyes had flicked to his brother when he said it. And Kieran hadn't looked away from her once.
°°°
She found Valerian in the training yard an hour later, sparring with one of his guards. Bare-chested, gloves still on — of course they were still on — moving through the drills with the same brutal precision she remembered from a decade of watching him from the sidelines.
He was beautiful when he fought.
The runes of magic and tattoo swirling on his chest. He looked like a god.
She'd never let herself think the word before.
She let herself think it now, and hated how easily it came.
He caught her watching. Missed a block. The guard's blunted blade caught him across the ribs, and he grunted, stepping back, waving the man off.
"That's enough for today."
The guard bowed and retreated, casting a curious glance between his Alpha and the woman standing at the fence.
Valerian toweled off his neck. Didn't approach.
"You're staring," he said.
"You're bleeding."
He glanced down at the shallow red line the practice blade had left. "It's nothing."
Slowly but surely the wound heals on it own looks like new skin.
"You never used to get hit."
"I'm not as young as I was."
"You're not that old either."
A ghost of a smile. The first real one she'd seen since she came home. It vanished as quickly as it appeared.
"Did you need something, Lorianna?"
Her name again. Not Lioreal. Not Anna.
Something in her chest twisted.
"I wanted to see you train. Like I used to."
"You used to sit on that fence for hours."
"I remember."
"You'd critique my footwork."
"Your footwork was sloppy."
"It was not."
"It was. Kieran told me so."
"Kieran reads books about warfare. He's never held a sword in his life."
"He held one yesterday."
"Badly."
She laughed. For a moment, just a moment, it felt like nothing had changed. Like two years and a wall of gloved silence hadn't come between them.
Then he took a step back.
Small. Automatic. Like his body had learned the motion without asking permission from the rest of him.
The laughter died in her throat.
"You did it again."
"Did what."
"Stepped back. Like I'm about to catch something contagious."
His jaw tightened. "You're imagining things."
"Am I?"
He didn't answer.
She crossed the fence line before she could stop herself, closing the distance he kept trying to build. He went rigid. Every line of him coiled tight, like a man bracing for impact.
"Lorianna—"
"Why do you always wear the gloves?"
The question hung in the air between them.
His golden eyes darkened. Not with anger. With something closer to fear, though she'd never seen fear on him before and wasn't sure she was reading it right.
Come to think of it she has never asked, maybe because she was too scared or she didn't think it would matter.
But now it did.
"They're practical," he said. "Weapons calluses. Sword grips."
"You wear them to dinner. You wear them reading. You wore them the night I came home, standing at the top of the stairs, and you didn't hug me because your hands stayed behind your back the entire time."
"Lorianna."
"That's not practical, Valerian. That's deliberate."
"Enough."
The word came out sharper than she'd ever heard from him. Sharp enough that a bird startled out of the nearby oak. His Alpha tone sipping into that one word with authority.
She flinched.
He saw her flinch, and something in his face crumbled.
"I'm sorry," he said, quieter now. "I didn't mean—"
"Then tell me what's wrong."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because if I start," he said, and his voice had gone low, rough, almost pained, "I don't know that I could stop myself from telling you everything. And you are not ready for everything, Lorianna. I'm not sure I am either."
She stared at him.
He held her gaze for exactly one heartbeat longer than was safe.
Then he turned and walked back toward the estate, gloves creaking as his hands curled into fists at his sides, and did not look back.
°^°
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