Chapter Twenty-Two: Take It Back
2132 Words
She woke up in his room.
She didn't remember deciding to stay.
She remembered standing at the window after Max left — Victoria's garden in the dark, the bond silent, the ring on her finger, keep wearing it sitting in the air of the empty room — and then the specific exhaustion of a night that had held too much arriving all at once.
She must have found the bed.
His bed.
She was in it now — morning light pressing through the curtains she hadn't drawn, the specific grey of a day that hadn't committed to anything yet, and the smell of the room around her.
Pine. Old books. The ghost of him that the room had been keeping in his absence the way rooms kept things when the person who had made them was gone.
She lay still.
Pressed her hand to her chest.
The silence.
But different this morning.
Max's voice in it somewhere.
He misses you.
Whatever he made you believe.
He misses you.
She closed her eyes.
Opened them.
Looked at the ceiling of Jace's room — the ceiling he had looked at for centuries, that had been above him through every version of who he was before she knew him — and felt the weight of everything she'd been handed last night settle into its new configuration.
Shawn.
The vow.
Aaron knowing.
The specific terrible clarity of understanding that the person who had been the most present thing in her life since April had been carrying something that made his presence dangerous in a way she hadn't seen coming.
She sat up.
Looked at the room.
At his books and his desk and the window with Victoria's garden beyond it.
She stood up.
Put the ring on.
Went to find a bathroom and a mirror and did what could be done with a face that had cried and then slept in someone else's house and was currently doing neither of those things but showed evidence of both.
Then she went downstairs.
Made coffee in the Ryder kitchen that she'd been in twice and found her way around instinctively because Mason had described it often enough that she knew it.
She sat at the kitchen table.
Drank the coffee.
Looked at the window.
Waited for the day to tell her what it wanted from her.
She heard him at the gate.
Not the footsteps — too far for that. The bond was still silent but her vampire instincts had spent months learning the specific frequency of Shawn's approach and they registered it now the way they registered things that had become familiar.
She set down the coffee.
She waited.
The knock came.
Three. His cadence. The one she'd catalogued without meaning to.
She didn't move.
He knocked again.
She stood up.
Went to the front door.
Opened it.
He stood on the Ryder estate doorstep.
Dark curly hair. Storm grey eyes. His jacket. The specific stillness he carried everywhere that she had spent weeks misreading as cold and had eventually understood was simply — contained. Everything about Shawn was contained. It didn't mean there was nothing there.
It meant the opposite.
He looked at her.
At the Ryder estate behind her.
Something moved in his expression — brief, there and gone, the recalibration of someone who had expected to find her at her own house and had found her here instead and was processing what here meant.
She looked at him.
"You need to leave me alone," she said.
"Elara—"
"I mean it."
"I know you mean it," he said. "I'd like to talk."
"I don't want to talk."
"I know," he said. "I'd still like to."
She looked at him.
At the storm grey eyes that were doing the reading thing — taking in her face, the ring, the Ryder estate doorstep, all of it — and staying steady through all of it.
"You lied to me," she said.
"I didn't lie—"
"By omission," she said. "Which is the kind of lying that requires more effort."
He said nothing.
"You sat on my sofa," she said. "You bought me cotton candy. You stood between me and five wolves in a forest." Her voice was very controlled. "And the entire time you were carrying a vow to kill the person I love."
"Yes," he said.
"And you didn't think that was relevant information."
"I thought—" He stopped. Started again. "I thought it was separate. That what I was doing with you was its own thing and the vow was its own thing and they didn't have to—"
"They're not separate," she said. "They have never been separate. You know who I am. You know whose ring this is." She held up her hand. The gold caught the morning light. "You knew from the beginning."
"Yes," he said.
"Then you knew there was no version of that vow that didn't touch me," she said.
He looked at the ring.
At her face.
"Yes," he said. Quietly. "I knew."
She looked at him.
"Then why," she said. "Why did you keep coming. Why the forest and the carnival and the sofa and the—" She stopped. "Why did you keep showing up."
He was quiet for a long moment.
The morning held them both.
"Because," he said finally, "you needed someone to show up."
She stared at him.
"And I—" He stopped. Something moved in his jaw. "I wanted to be the one who did."
The honesty of it landed in a way she hadn't expected.
She pressed her lips together.
Looked at the garden.
Looked back at him.
"What do you want, Shawn," she said quietly. "From me. Right now. What do you want."
He held her gaze.
"I want to still be your friend," he said simply.
"My friend," she said.
"Yes."
"You want to be friends," she said, "with the fiancée of the man you've sworn to kill."
"I want to be friends with you," he said. "Specifically. Whatever that comes with."
She looked at him for a long time.
At the storm grey eyes that weren't flinching.
At the contained stillness of someone who had said the thing and was standing in it without looking for exits.
She turned.
Walked back into the estate.
Left the door open.
He followed.
They stood in the sitting room.
The broken things were still on the floor — she hadn't cleaned them, hadn't had the energy or the inclination, and Max hadn't apparently found the motivation to deal with them either. The crystal and the ceramic and the dents in the wall and the plaster dust were exactly where she'd left them.
Shawn looked at the room.
"Max," he said.
"I did this," she said.
He looked at her.
At the devastation.
Something moved in his expression that might, in different circumstances, have been the almost-smile.
"Okay," he said.
"I was angry," she said.
"I can see that," he said.
"I'm still angry," she said.
"I know."
She turned to face him fully.
Crossed her arms.
Looked at him with the expression she'd spent three centuries developing for situations that required absolute clarity.
"You want to be my friend," she said.
"Yes."
"Then there's something you have to do," she said.
He looked at her.
Waiting.
"The vow," she said.
His expression shifted.
"Elara—"
"The vow, Shawn," she said. "Take it back."
The sitting room went very quiet.
He looked at her — at the ring, at her face, at the broken things around them — and something moved through his expression that was more complicated than anything she'd seen on it before. Not the cold. Not the warmth. Something that lived between them and was working through several things simultaneously.
"You don't understand what you're asking," he said quietly.
"I understand exactly what I'm asking," she said. "I'm asking you to take back the vow you made on the Ryder estate grounds to kill every member of that family."
"That's—"
"Every member," she said. "Cole. Nathan. Victoria." A beat. "Jace." Another beat, smaller, harder. "And yes. Even Max."
He stared at her.
"Max," he said.
"Especially Max," she said.
"Elara—"
"Max is the reason Jace left me," she said. "Max is the reason there's a war. Max has done things I cannot defend and will not try to." She held Shawn's gaze. "And Max sat in that chair last night—" She pointed at Nathan's chair. "—and told me the truth about you when he didn't have to. And told me to keep wearing this ring." She looked at her hand. "So yes. Even Max."
Shawn looked at the chair.
At the ring.
At her.
"You're asking me," he said slowly, "to abandon something I've carried for two centuries."
"Yes," she said.
"Because you want to be friends."
"Because I cannot be friends with someone who wants the person I love dead," she said. "It's not complicated, Shawn. It's the only thing I'm asking."
He turned away.
Crossed to the window.
Stood where she'd stood the night before — looking out at Victoria's garden, his back to her, his hands in his pockets.
She waited.
The morning light came through the curtains.
The broken things lay where she'd left them.
She waited.
"What Jace and I had," he said quietly, to the window, "before it went wrong — it was real. I want you to know that. It wasn't just proximity or pack obligation. It was real."
"I believe you," she said.
"And what it became—" He stopped. "What I let it become. The rogue. The vow. All of it." He paused. "I'm not proud of it."
She said nothing.
"But pride and vows are different things," he said. "A vow isn't something you just—"
"I know what a vow is," she said quietly. "I made one. In blood. I carry it every day."
He turned.
Looked at the ring.
At the scar on her palm — still visible, still silver, the mark of a blade and a promise.
He looked at it for a long time.
"If I take it back," he said slowly.
She waited.
"If I take it back," he said again. "You'll be my friend."
"I'll be your friend," she said.
He looked at her.
Storm grey eyes moving over her face with the specific quality of someone making a decision that they know is going to cost them something and are making it anyway because the alternative costs more.
She knew that look.
She'd seen it on a different face in a different forest in the rain.
She held his gaze.
He exhaled.
Long. Slow. The specific exhale of something being put down after a very long time of carrying it.
"The vow," he said quietly. "Against the Ryder family."
"Yes," she said.
"Every member."
"Every member."
"Including Max."
"Especially Max," she said again.
Something moved in his expression.
Something she couldn't name.
Then —
"It's done," he said.
Two words.
The same register he'd used in the forest.
Stand down.
It's done.
She looked at him.
At this wolf who had come here to be her friend and had just put down two centuries of something because she'd asked him to.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
He looked at her.
"Don't," he said.
"Shawn—"
"Don't thank me," he said. "I didn't do it for gratitude."
She held his gaze.
"Why did you do it," she said.
He looked at the ring.
At the broken things on the floor.
At the Ryder estate sitting room that she had taken apart with her bare hands the night before out of grief and fury and love for a wolf who wasn't here.
"Because you needed me to," he said simply.
She looked at him.
He looked back.
Storm grey eyes in the morning light.
The almost-smile.
"Now," he said, looking at the floor, "are you going to clean this up or were you planning to leave it as a feature."
She looked at the broken things.
Despite everything.
Despite the vow and Max and the forest and two centuries of something just being put down in a sitting room full of shattered crystal —
She almost smiled.
"It's not my house," she said.
"You destroyed it," he said.
"Max can clean it," she said.
Something moved in his expression.
The almost-smile becoming something slightly more committed.
"Fair," he said.
She picked up her jacket.
He held the door.
They walked out into the morning.
The ring on her finger.
The bond silent in her chest.
The vow — two centuries of it — left somewhere in the broken things on the floor of a Ryder sitting room.
Done.
- Writer
