Chapter 11 The Truth He Should Have Told Me
3098 Words
For one second, I forgot how to breathe.
Three months.
Not yesterday. Not after the ceremony. Not in the forest.
Three months.
Kade stood in the foyer with the cold still clinging to him, hands loose at his sides, face carved into that hard, impossible calm of his. But now that I knew what to look for, I could see it.
The strain.
The readiness.
The fact that every muscle in his body was braced for impact and he had chosen not to move anyway.
I hated that he looked like the one about to be hit.
He should have.
I stared at him. “Three months.”
His voice stayed low. “Yes.”
I laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Wow.”
That one word held more hurt than I wanted it to. More than pride would have preferred. But pride had been bleeding for too long to control anything properly now.
Kade didn’t speak.
Good.
Let him sit inside it.
I stepped closer, the letter still folded in my hand like a weapon too small for the damage it had done.
“You knew something was wrong,” I said. “You knew before the ceremony. Before the rejection. Before I stood there in white looking like a fool in front of the whole pack.”
His jaw tightened.
“I knew something felt wrong,” he said.
“Oh, that is not a distinction I’m going to enjoy.”
His eyes held mine. “Probably not.”
I hated that answer.
Because it was honest.
Because it was his.
Because he kept refusing to lie in ways that made it harder, not easier, to stay angry cleanly.
Mara had vanished fully now. Cowardly woman. The kitchen remained too quiet. The whole house did, really, like it knew better than to interrupt.
I folded my arms tighter. “Start from the beginning.”
A pause.
Then he nodded once.
“I came back to pack lands three months ago after the southern border campaign ended.”
“I know that part now.”
His gaze dipped briefly to the letter in my hand, then back to my face.
“I wasn’t staying. It was meant to be temporary. A week, maybe two. My father had been pushing succession meetings. Darius wanted strategy sessions. Liam wanted…” He stopped.
“What?”
His mouth flattened. “Approval.”
Well.
That tracked.
I looked away for half a second, then back again. “So you came back for politics.”
“Yes.”
“Charming.”
“No.”
He didn’t argue the point.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
“I saw you the second day I was back,” he said.
The room shifted.
Not visibly.
Inside me.
Something hot and uneasy moved under my skin, something I immediately resented.
“That doesn’t answer anything.”
“No,” he said. “But it matters.”
My throat tightened.
I told it to stop.
It did not listen.
He went on anyway, because apparently once Kade started telling the truth, he did not believe in doing it halfway either.
“You were in the lower stable yard.” His gaze stayed on mine, steady and dark and too focused. “It was late. You were carrying flowers.”
The breath left me.
That memory.
The shadow.
The feeling of being watched.
Oh.
God.
I had been bringing wildflowers to the little moon shrine by the old fence. Something my mother used to do with me when I was younger. Something I did only when I needed to think and wanted to pretend I was still the kind of girl who believed the goddess had time for small heartbreaks.
I looked at him in disbelief. “That was you.”
“Yes.”
The word landed softly.
Brutally.
I laughed again, sharper this time. “Fantastic. So Selene wasn’t inventing that part.”
“No.”
He did not even try to soften it.
“Did you think about maybe telling me then?” I asked.
His face changed.
Only slightly.
Enough.
“Yes.”
The answer stunned me more than denial would have.
I stared at him.
He kept going.
“I thought about it every day after.”
My pulse stumbled.
No.
No, that was not fair.
Not with this face.
Not with this voice.
Not with the memory of his hand against my cheek still fresh enough to hurt.
I shook my head hard. “Then why didn’t you?”
He was silent for one beat too long.
And the reason arrived before he said it.
Liam.
His brother.
Of course.
When Kade finally answered, his voice had gone rougher.
“Because suspicion isn’t proof.”
I stared at him.
“That’s it?”
“No.” His jaw flexed. “Because if I had stepped in on suspicion alone, before a completed bond, before council verification, before anything irreversible… they would have buried it faster.”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
He saw the conflict.
Of course he did.
That didn’t stop him.
“Darius was already watching the succession lines. Maeve was already measuring council optics. Liam knew enough to be restless but not enough to understand what he was restless about.” His gaze held mine. “If I had moved too early, they would have called it interference. They would have contained you, shut me out, and pushed the ceremony faster.”
I went still.
Because that—
that sounded possible.
Horribly possible.
The politics fit.
The timing fit.
The cowardice fit too neatly with everything I had learned today.
But pain is ugly when it has already chosen its shape, and mine had chosen betrayal.
So I said the thing that hurt instead.
“You still let it happen.”
There.
There it was.
The real wound.
Not the politics.
Not the council.
Not even Liam.
You still let it happen.
Kade took that one without moving.
Without defending himself too quickly.
Without pretending it was smaller than it was.
“Yes,” he said.
The simplicity of it hit like a slap.
I hadn’t expected him to admit it that cleanly.
I almost wished he would fight me more.
Almost.
“Do you have any idea what that looked like from where I was standing?” My voice rose despite myself. “I loved him. I trusted him. I walked into that ceremony believing my life was beginning.” My chest was tight now, every breath too sharp. “And all that time there were men in back rooms debating whether my bond was real enough to be useful.”
Kade’s expression hardened with something that looked a lot like self-disgust.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
He came one step closer.
Too close for this conversation.
Too close for me to keep pretending his body didn’t make mine react on instinct.
“I know,” he said again, lower this time, “because I stood there and watched you walk toward a future I wasn’t sure was yours, and I hated every second of it.”
The room tilted.
Not because the sentence was dramatic.
Because it was worse.
Because he said it like confession.
Like damage.
Like truth dragged over broken glass and offered to me anyway.
I looked at him and felt everything inside me split in two directions at once.
One half still furious.
One half hearing the ache in his voice and wanting to do something reckless like believe him.
I hated that.
I hated it so much.
I looked down at the letter in my hand instead, because paper was easier than eyes.
“Selene says you only stepped in after I was publicly shamed.”
His answer came immediately. “No.”
I lifted my head.
His gaze was locked on me.
“I stepped in the second I knew they had crossed from silence into cruelty.”
The words slid under my skin.
Not because they excused him.
Because they were exactly the sort of answer that made staying angry feel dangerously complicated.
I let out a shaky breath. “That is not as noble as you think it is.”
His mouth moved at one corner.
A bitter almost-smile.
“I’m not trying to be noble.”
Good.
Because if he had tried noble on me right now, I might have actually thrown something.
I took another step toward him before I could stop myself.
The letter was still between us.
The whole house felt like it had narrowed to this one impossible conversation and the man standing inside it like he had been waiting for the reckoning and had decided not to run.
“Did you know I would be yours?” I asked.
The second the word left my mouth, the air changed.
Yours.
I should not have phrased it like that.
He noticed.
Obviously.
His eyes darkened by a shade that had nothing to do with the light in the room.
“No,” he said.
That helped.
A little.
Then he added, “I knew I couldn’t stop looking at you.”
That did not help.
At all.
I stared at him.
He looked mildly furious with himself for saying it and not remotely sorry at the same time.
“What is wrong with you?” I whispered.
A flicker crossed his face. “That’s a long conversation.”
Despite everything, the corner of my mouth twitched.
Traitor.
Absolute traitor.
He saw that too.
And the way his expression shifted when he noticed I was this close to not breaking entirely open made something inside my chest ache in a new and dangerous way.
“You should have told me,” I said.
His face changed again.
Back to hard honesty.
“Yes.”
That simple.
That final.
No argument.
No justification.
Just yes.
The apology in it hurt more than the excuses would have.
I swallowed hard. “Then why does it feel like you’re still holding something back?”
Silence.
There.
There it was.
My stomach dropped.
“Kade.”
His gaze moved over my face once, measuring maybe whether I could survive one more truth today.
That alone offended me.
“Yes,” I said sharply. “I can see you thinking. I hate that I can see you thinking. Say it.”
His jaw tightened.
“Liam came to me before the ceremony.”
The room stopped.
Everything inside me went cold.
“What?”
Kade didn’t look away.
“He knew enough to be afraid. He didn’t know enough to understand why.”
My fingers tightened so hard around the letter it crumpled.
“What did he say?”
A pause.
Then: “He asked me if I had ever questioned the bond.”
The floor might as well have vanished.
I stared at him.
No breath.
No movement.
No mercy.
Because now Liam was here too. In this room. In this story. In this truth I had not been allowed to hear while it could still save me.
I could picture it instantly.
Liam restless.
Pacing.
Arrogance cracked by fear.
Coming to the one man he most resented and most needed to be stronger than.
And asking that.
I almost laughed.
Instead, I said in a voice I barely recognized, “And what did you tell him?”
Kade’s eyes didn’t leave mine.
“I told him that if he had to ask, he already knew the answer.”
The words hit like fire.
Hot.
Blinding.
Destructive.
My whole body reacted before my mind could catch up.
I stepped back from him.
Then another step.
The hurt came up too fast to control this time.
“So he knew.” My voice shook. “He knew enough to ask. And you knew enough to answer. And still you both let me stand there.”
Kade moved.
I put up a hand instantly. “Don’t.”
He stopped.
That might have been the cruelest thing I had done to him yet.
Good.
Let him feel at least a fraction of this.
“I told him to stop the ceremony,” he said.
The room went silent.
My hand dropped slowly to my side.
“What?”
His face had gone very still.
“I told him to stop it before he made it public.”
My pulse thudded once.
Then again.
I stared at him.
And all at once the whole picture changed shape.
Not enough to undo anything.
But enough to make it uglier.
Because that meant Liam hadn’t just been a coward.
He had been warned.
Warned and still chosen spectacle.
Warned and still decided that breaking me under the moon was preferable to facing the truth like a man.
I sat down abruptly on the edge of the sofa because my knees had stopped negotiating with the rest of me.
Kade didn’t move toward me.
Good.
If he had, I might have shattered in a less dignified shape than I preferred.
I looked at the floor for a long second.
Then said, “He wanted to punish me for something that wasn’t even mine.”
Kade’s answer came like stone. “Yes.”
I laughed once.
Softly this time.
Not because it was funny.
Because if I didn’t, the other sound waiting in my throat would have been much worse.
A sob.
A scream.
Something weak.
I was tired of sounding weak.
Kade’s voice lowered. “Ariana.”
I looked up.
His face was harder to r******w.
And maybe mine was too.
“Did you come to me in the forest because you knew?” I asked.
“No.”
I blinked.
He stepped closer again.
Slowly.
Like approaching a wounded animal or a truth likely to bite.
“I came because I heard what he had done,” he said. “And because the second I saw you in the trees, there was nothing left in me that would have let you walk away alone.”
The house seemed to exhale.
Or maybe I did.
That answer—
that answer was worse than anything noble.
Because it was raw.
Instinctive.
Too late to save me and still fierce enough to make me feel suddenly less alone inside the memory of that forest.
I looked at him for a long moment.
Then at the letter.
Then back again.
Selene had wanted this.
The fracture.
The question.
The hurt.
She had succeeded, yes.
But not in the way she wanted.
Because instead of proving Kade false, all she had really done was force him into the open.
Into honesty.
Into the thing he clearly hated more than violence.
Being seen.
I let out a breath.
Slow.
Shaky.
“You should have told me sooner,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You should have dragged me out of the ceremony if you had to.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
That startled me into looking at him sharply.
He meant it.
He really meant it.
No hedging. No excuses.
Just that grim acceptance that if he had to live this day again, he would choose the scandal sooner and the heartbreak smaller.
That did something terrible to me.
I looked away before he could see how much.
The silence between us shifted.
Not healed.
Not resolved.
But no longer sharp enough to cut cleanly.
Something messier.
More honest.
More dangerous.
Finally I asked the question that had been sitting between my ribs since the forest.
“If you had told me then… before last night… what would you have wanted me to do?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
And because this was Kade, the delay itself felt intimate.
When he did speak, his voice had dropped low enough to make the whole room feel closer.
“Run.”
I looked at him.
He held my gaze.
“With you?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Big mistake.
Huge.
Because the second the words landed, something dark and hot flashed through his face.
Gone almost instantly.
Still there.
Still seen.
“Yes,” he said.
The single word hit me like heat to the spine.
No drama.
No hesitation.
Just yes.
And I, apparently, had learned nothing from any of the disasters already available to me, because my body answered first.
A sharp breath.
A stupid pulse jump.
A dangerous flicker low in my stomach that had absolutely no place arriving in the middle of emotional devastation.
I stood too fast.
The sofa leg scraped the floor.
“I need air.”
He moved immediately. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
The word came out too quick.
Too sharp.
His face changed.
I forced my voice steady. “No. I need air without… without your face making everything more complicated.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
A terrible almost-smile.
“You think it’s my face.”
I stared at him. “Do not become arrogant in this moment.”
“Yes, that would be inappropriate.”
That got me.
A half-laugh, half-exhale.
God, I hated him.
Not really.
Which was, unfortunately, much worse.
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed again on the hall table.
Both of us froze.
The silence turned immediate and ugly.
Because there it was.
Selene.
Always arriving exactly where the wound was freshest.
I crossed the room before Kade could.
Picked up the phone.
Unknown number again.
Of course.
My thumb hovered over the message for one beat too long.
Kade’s voice came low behind me. “You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
I opened it anyway.
One image.
No text.
My stomach dropped so hard I almost dropped the phone.
“What?” Kade asked.
I couldn’t answer.
Not immediately.
Because the image on the screen was grainy, badly angled, taken from what looked like an old paper file laid open beneath poor archive lighting.
But I could read enough.
A council record.
A bond inquiry.
Two names.
Mine.
And his.
I turned the phone slowly toward Kade.
He looked at the image once.
And every line of him went rigid.
At the bottom of the page, just visible beneath the blur, were the words:
Primary response recorded — Blackthorne, Kade. Recommendation: delay disclosure.
The room went dead.
Not silent.
Dead.
Because now it wasn’t only suspicion.
It wasn’t only instinct.
It wasn’t only something he felt and failed to say.
They had written it down.
And hidden it.
- Writer
- chap_listContents
- likeADD