Wrong love 2

Chapter Five: His Choice

The Ryder estate had not held this many people since the last war.

That thought occurred to Cole as he stood in the entrance hall watching the arrivals — cousins he hadn't seen in decades, aunts and uncles who had been summoned by pack instinct and grief and the specific pull of a bloodline that gathered itself when threatened the way wolves always gathered themselves when threatened.

Together.

They came through the afternoon and into the evening in ones and twos and small groups — filling the rooms of the estate with a warmth that sat uncomfortably alongside the cold of what had brought them here. Children running in corridors that hadn't heard children in years. Old wolves finding old chairs and settling into them with the ease of people returning to somewhere that had always been theirs.

Victoria moved through all of it like a woman on a mission — feeding people, organising rooms, turning grief into logistics the way she always had, the way Jace had always suspected was her specific version of coping. Her eyes were still red rimmed. Her spine was still straight.

She was Victoria Ryder.

She would not bend where anyone could see.

Nathan sat at the head of it all — receiving relatives, accepting condolences about Darian with the measured gravity of an alpha who understood that his people needed him to be steady right now more than they needed him to be human about it.

He was steady.

Mason had arrived at four and immediately made himself useful in the kitchen in the specific Mason way of someone who expressed love through feeding people and was currently feeding approximately forty wolves.

Max was not present.

Nobody mentioned Max.

Dinner was long.

The table — extended to its full length for the first time in years, every leaf added, chairs brought from other rooms — seated thirty-seven wolves in various degrees of grief and fury and the specific bone-deep exhaustion of people who had been running on adrenaline since dawn and were only now beginning to feel the weight of the day.

The food was good.

Mason had made sure of that.

The conversation moved the way conversation moved in large grieving families — around the edges of the thing rather than directly at it, touching it occasionally and retreating, filling the air with stories about Darian that were funny and painful simultaneously and produced laughter that had tears right behind it.

Jace sat in his usual place — to the right of his father, which had been his seat since he was old enough to sit at the adult table and had remained his by a combination of habit and the specific unspoken acknowledgment of where the next alpha sat.

He was quiet through most of dinner.

Cole noticed.

Mason noticed.

Probably several other people noticed because Jace being quiet at a family dinner was approximately as usual as snow in July and the people who knew him were sensitive to the difference between Jace being still because he was comfortable and Jace being still because he was building toward something.

He was building toward something.

Cole could feel it across the table — that specific quality of gathered intention, of a decision made and being carried toward its moment of expression.

He caught Mason's eye across the table.

Mason gave him a look that said I know and I can't stop it and this is going to be something all simultaneously.

Cole looked back at his food.

Here we go, he thought.

It happened between the main course and dessert.

The table was in one of its natural lulls — conversation having reached a temporary resting place, the particular quiet of thirty-seven people all processing the same long day in the same moment — and Jace set down his fork.

Looked at the table.

And spoke.

"I have something to tell you all," he said.

His voice was calm.

That was the first thing that registered — not the words themselves but the register of them. Calm and certain and carrying the specific weight of something that had been decided long before this moment and was now simply being delivered.

Thirty-seven wolves looked at him.

Nathan looked at him.

"I've asked someone to marry me," Jace said. "She said yes."

The table erupted.

Not in the way tables erupt at good news — not with joy and congratulations and the cheerful chaos of celebration. In the way a room erupts when something unexpected lands in it — sudden and overlapping and not entirely sure yet what it's responding to.

"Who—"

"Jace when did—"

"You never said anything about—"

"Who is she—"

The cousins who knew — Rena, who had been in the entrance hall that morning, a handful of others who had been at the estate long enough to know the shape of things — went very quiet very fast.

The ones who didn't know kept asking.

"Who is she?"

Jace looked at the table.

"Her name is Elara Vale," he said.

Silence from the ones who recognised it.

Blank faces from the ones who didn't.

"Vale," one of his aunts said slowly. "I don't know that name. Which pack—"

"She's not from a pack," Jace said.

A beat.

"Then what is she," his uncle Garrett said. Older wolf. Border pack. Had been fighting vampires since before some of the younger cousins were turned. Said it with the specific directness of someone who already suspected and wanted it confirmed so he could respond to the confirmation rather than the suspicion.

Jace looked at him.

"A vampire," he said.

The silence lasted approximately two seconds.

Then the table came apart.

Thirty-seven wolves simultaneously — some on their feet, some not, all of them loud, the grief and the fury of the entire day finding this moment the way a current finds a gap, pouring through it with everything it had been carrying since dawn.

"A VAMPIRE—"

"Today of all days you tell us—"

"Are you out of your mind—"

"Malachar's people killed Darian and you're MARRYING one of them—"

"This is a joke—"

"It's not a joke, look at his face—"

"Jace what in the—"

"A VAMPIRE—"

Victoria set down her glass.

Said nothing.

Looked at her son with an expression that was impossible to read — not anger, not shock, something more complex than both of those things, something that had several layers to it that she wasn't ready to separate into their components in front of thirty-seven people.

Mason stared at his plate with the focused intensity of someone trying very hard to be invisible.

Cole sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling briefly.

Nathan said nothing.

That was the thing that cut through the noise eventually — not because Nathan raised his voice or commanded silence, but because thirty-seven wolves were attuned to their alpha and their alpha had gone very, very still, and stillness of that specific quality had a way of pulling attention toward it regardless of how much noise surrounded it.

One by one the voices dropped.

Until the table was quiet.

And Nathan looked at his son.

"No," Nathan said.

One word.

Quiet. Absolute.

"Dad—"

"No, Jace."

"I'm not asking for permission," Jace said. His voice hadn't changed register — still that same calm, that same certainty, that same quality of something that had been decided and was not available for renegotiation. "I'm telling you. There's a difference."

"You are telling me," Nathan said carefully, "that you intend to marry a vampire. While a war between our kinds is actively being fought. While Darian is not yet buried."

The name sat on the table like something physical.

Jace's jaw tightened.

"Yes," he said.

"Then let me tell you something," Nathan said. "If you do this — if you stand in front of our bloodline and our pack and bind yourself to one of them — you will not be the next alpha. I will not pass that to you. I cannot pass that to a wolf who has chosen a vampire over his own people."

The table was absolutely silent.

Every person in it holding their breath.

Jace looked at his father.

For a long moment he simply looked — silver eyes meeting silver eyes across thirty years of a table and a thousand years of history and the full weight of what was being offered and what was being asked in exchange for it.

Then —

"Alright," he said.

Nathan blinked. Barely. But Jace saw it.

"Alright?"

"Take it back," Jace said simply. "I mean that. Give it to Cole. Give it to Max if you want to — though I'd strongly recommend Cole." He glanced at his brother briefly. "I have never wanted to be alpha, Dad. You know that. I've carried it because it was expected and because I'm capable of it and because nobody else was stepping up." A pause. "But I am not going to give her up to keep a title I never asked for."

The table stayed silent.

Nathan looked at his son.

"And if I tell you," Nathan said slowly, "that you are not welcome in this house. That I will not have a wolf who has chosen a vampire over his pack living under my roof—"

"Then I'll leave," Jace said.

Just like that.

Quietly. Without drama. Without the performance of sacrifice or the theatre of a ultimatum being met.

Just — then I'll leave. The way you state a fact that has already been absorbed and accepted.

"In peace," he added. "I'll leave in peace, Dad. No anger. No falling out. I love this family." His silver eyes moved around the table — across cousins and aunts and uncles and his mother and Cole and Mason's carefully neutral face — "I love all of you. That doesn't change."

He looked back at Nathan.

"But I'm marrying her," he said quietly. "After school. When she's ready and I'm ready and the world has done whatever it's going to do with itself." A beat. "Nothing that's happened today changes that. Nothing that happens tomorrow changes that."

"Jace—" Victoria said.

"Mom." He looked at her. Something in his expression softened — just for her, just in that specific way that had always been reserved for her. "I know. I know what today was. I know what we lost. I know this isn't the night and I know it isn't easy." His voice was very quiet. "But I am done pretending this isn't real because the timing is difficult. She is real. What we have is real. And I spent too long in this life carrying things I didn't choose to spend one more day pretending I don't choose her."

Silence.

Complete silence.

Thirty-seven wolves and a table full of food that nobody was eating and a fire in the hearth that had been burning all evening and the clock on the wall that didn't care about any of this.

Rena — who had been quiet since the entrance hall, who had sat through dinner with her jaw tight and her grief barely contained — looked at Jace across the table.

Something moved in her face.

Not acceptance. Not yet.

But something that wasn't only fury either.

Nathan looked at his son for a very long time.

Then he looked away.

At the fire.

At the table.

At thirty years of raising something that had apparently decided to be exactly what it was regardless of the consequences and had the audacity to do it calmly at a family dinner.

He said nothing else.

Which was, from Nathan Ryder, almost everything.

Cole found Jace in the corridor after.

"You could have waited," Cole said. Not accusatory. Just honest.

"I could have," Jace agreed.

"Tonight of all nights—"

"If not tonight then when?" Jace said. "Tomorrow there'll be another reason. Next week another. There is never going to be a good time to tell this family that I'm marrying a vampire, Cole. I'd rather it be done."

Cole looked at him.

"You meant it," Cole said. "About leaving."

"Yes."

"About the alpha title."

"Yes."

"About all of it."

Jace looked at his brother.

"Every word," he said quietly.

Cole was quiet for a moment.

Then —

"For what it's worth," he said. "I think Darian would have liked her."

Something moved in Jace's expression.

Quick. There and gone.

He looked at the corridor floor for a moment.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I think so too."

Cole put a hand briefly on his brother's shoulder.

Then walked back toward the dining room.

Jace stood alone in the corridor for a moment.

Felt Elara through the bond — north-west, her house, the warm steady presence of her going about her evening completely unaware of what had just happened at a dinner table three miles away.

He pulled out his phone.

Typed one message.

I told them.

Three seconds.

Her reply —

All of them?

All of them.

A pause. Longer.

Then —

Are you okay?

He looked at the message.

At the two words that contained in them everything she was — the directness, the care, the way she always cut to the thing that actually mattered.

He typed back.

I will be. Go to sleep. I'll see you tomorrow.

Another pause.

Jace.

Yeah.

I love you.

He stood in the corridor of his family's estate with the dinner still audible through the walls and his father's silence still sitting somewhere in his chest and Darian's absence a fresh wound that wasn't going anywhere quickly.

He typed back.

I love you too.

He pocketed the phone.

Went back to his family.