The Alpha's Forbidden Pact

CHAPTER 8: SINCE HER

"Theo. I need to talk to you."

He was in the kitchen, half a sandwich abandoned on the counter, and the second he saw my face, he set down the knife like he already knew whatever this was, it wasn't going to be quick.

"Ivy. It's late."

"I don't care what time it is."

"You look like you haven't slept in a week."

"I haven't slept in about six hours, which feels like a week tonight, so close enough."

He almost smiled at that, the tension in his shoulders easing just slightly, before he seemed to remember why I was actually standing in his kitchen at this hour and the ease drained right back out of him.

"This is about my father," he said. Not a question.

"Yes."

"I figured."

"Theo."

"What happened tonight? With your father. I need you to actually tell me, not manage me the way everyone else in this house seems to think is the same thing as protecting me."

"I don't know what you're asking."

"You do. You saw his face in the gathering hall when he looked at me too long. You saw it again tonight before he sent Kade out of the room. You've been watching him watch me for weeks, and you haven't said a single word about it, and I am done being the only person in this house who doesn't get to know things about my own life."

Theo's jaw tightened, the same telling his father had, and for a second I could see exactly whose son he was in a way I usually managed to overlook.

"It's not my place," he said.

"It's exactly your place. He's your father. I'm the person he apparently can't stop looking at. That makes it both our business whether either of us likes it."

"You're asking me to talk about my own father like he's a stranger doing something wrong."

"I'm asking you to talk about him like he's a person, because right now everyone in this house treats him like a rule instead of a man, and I think that might be part of the problem."

That landed. I watched it land, watched something shift in Theo's expression, some old resignation settling into place like he'd been waiting years for someone to finally ask the right question.

"Sit down," he said.

"I don't want to sit down."

"You're going to want this one."

I sat.

Theo pulled out the chair across from me slowly, buying himself time the way his father did, and I wondered if that was something learned or something inherited, the two of them sharing more than a jawline.

"My mother left when I was young," he said. "Not dead. Left. Couldn't handle what this life demanded of her, the secrecy, the danger, all of it. My father never talked about her after that. Not once. Not even to me."

"That's not what I asked about."

"I'm getting there. Let me get there."

"You always do this. Circle a thing three times before you land on it."

"Some things deserve circling."

I nodded, folding my hands in my lap to keep them from doing something restless.

"After she left, he changed," Theo said. "Went colder. More controlled. Everyone assumed it was about her, about the marriage falling apart, and maybe some of it was. But I was young, not stupid, and I noticed things. The way he'd get quiet whenever your mother's name came up in Council meetings, quiet in a way he never got quiet about anything else, like the room itself had asked him a question he didn't want to answer in front of witnesses."

"You're saying he knew her. My mother."

"I'm saying he knew her a lot better than anyone ever admitted out loud. There's a photograph, an old one, tucked in the back of a drawer in his study. I found it when I was maybe twelve, going through his desk looking for something else entirely. Your mother and him, younger than I'd ever seen either of them, standing close enough that it wasn't a formal Council photograph. I asked him about it once. He took it out of my hands so fast I dropped the frame, and he never mentioned it again, and neither did I, because the look on his face told me some questions weren't safe to ask twice."

"Where's the photograph now?"

"I don't know. I never saw it again after that day. Maybe he moved it. Maybe he burned it. I never had the courage to check."

My chest went tight, the same tightness from earlier, except now it had a shape I could almost name. "How much better did he know her."

Theo was quiet for a moment, choosing his words the careful way people choose words they've never said out loud before. "I don't know the whole story. He's never told me the whole story. But I know what I've watched for eighteen years, and I know what I saw on his face tonight, and it wasn't new. It's just the first time he stopped hiding it well enough for other people to notice."

"What did you see?"

"The same thing I've been seeing since you turned sixteen, if I'm honest. It just used to be smaller. Easier to explain away as a guardian being protective, a man who lost someone once being extra careful about losing someone else. I told myself that story for years because it was easier than the other one."

"What's the other one?"

He hesitated, and I watched him weigh loyalty against honesty the way I imagined he'd been weighing it for years without ever having to say it out loud before tonight.

"You could still tell me the second story," I said. "You don't have to be sure of it for it to matter."

"It matters more if I'm wrong. You'd walk out of here believing something about my father that might not even be true, and I'd be the one who put it there."

"I'll take that risk."

"I know you will. That's exactly why I'm hesitating."

"Theo."

He rubbed a hand over his face, the same gesture I'd seen Kade make a hundred times, exhaustion wearing a young man's face like it belonged to someone twice his age. "He hasn't looked at anyone the way he looks at you," Theo said finally, quiet, like admitting it out loud made it more real than he was ready for. "Not since your mother died."