Marrying My Childhood Nightmare

Chapter 16: What He Knows

Draven's POV

One moment the sign was there, the next, nothing. Like it had never existed. My neck told a different story.

The mark I had been hiding for three weeks under my alpha markings, low on the left side of my throat, had burned so hot during those three seconds that I had bitten down on the inside of my cheek to keep my face still. It had faded now, back to its usual low pulse.

Around the hall, people were recovering. Dessa had a cloth pressed into her nose. A crimson fang warrior was shaken behind her. Sera had gone very pale near the door.

Ryker was talking to Marcus in a low, rapid voice. Lena caught my eye across the room. Her eyes filled with confusion, and then the realization that I had an idea about what had just happened.

I turned and walked toward the west corridor.

"Don't."

Lyra's voice. Quiet enough that only I heard it but with an edge that stopped me the way a blade at the throat stops a person.

I turned to her.

She stood two feet away, arms at her sides, storm-grey eyes locked on mine. Lyra's jaw was set with her chin up. She had the look of someone who had run out of patience, and she wanted answers.

"You recognized it," she said. Not a question.

I held her gaze. "Yes."

"You've seen it before."

"Yes."

A knowing glint passed her eyes. She had suspected I’d known, she had seen it in my face before I could lock it down. "Where."

I looked at the surrounding hall. At the staff, the warriors and Sera with her clipboard and the florist, who had finally stopped talking and was watching the room with wide eyes.

"Not here," I said.

She studied me for a few seconds, deciding if she could trust me.

"Five minutes," she said. "The east terrace." She walked away without waiting for my answer.

When I got there, Lyra stood at the railing with her back to the door. She didn't turn around but her tightened shoulders told me she had heard me arrive.

I stopped a few feet behind her. The bond pushed me to stand closer, but I steeled myself against it.

"Talk," she said, not bothering to face me.

I looked at the back of her head. At the silver-white hair she'd pulled back, the line of her neck, the place just below her jaw where I knew the mark was, because mine was at the same place and I had spent those two weeks pretending I didn't know what it meant.

I was finished pretending.

"The symbol," I said. "I've seen it in Elder Mirael's records. He showed it to me once, when I was sixteen, the night he gave me a prophecy." I paused. "He called it a covenant mark. He said it was an old mark that goes back centuries."

Lyra turned around. Her eyes swept my face looking for any deception.

"You know what it means."

I held her gaze. "Yes."

She arches an eyebrow, folding her hands. "Then tell me."

"Not yet."

The two words landed badly. I knew it before they finished leaving my mouth.

A little smirk played on her lips like she expected that answer. "Not yet," she repeated. Flat. “Okay,” she says quietly and turns back to the forest.

"There are things I need to verify first before I—"

"No." She cuts across it cleanly, turning back to me sharply. "Don't do that. Don't stand in front of me and decide what I'm ready to hear. You have been doing that since we were thirteen, and I am telling you right now it is not going to work on me anymore."

I flinched at the coldness in her tone. She deserved to say it and I deserved to hear it, but it still hurt too.

"I'm not deciding what you're ready for," I said carefully. "I'm telling you I need more information before I can give you accurate answers. There's a difference."

"Is there?" she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, her eyes narrowed to slits.

"Yes."

She looked at me for a long moment. The mist moved in the valley below. She folded her arms across her chest again and something in her expression shifted into something more deliberate.

"Fine then," she said. "Answer me this."

I waited.

"The mark on my neck." Her eyes were steady and direct on mine. "Do you have one?"

The silence that followed lasted one second. One second was all she needed.

Her eyes widened a little, and she nodded her head slowly, because I had just answered her question without opening my mouth and we both knew it.

"How long," she said.

"Lyra—"

"How long have you had it?" she grits out.

I held her gaze. "Three weeks."

The number landed like a stone hitting water. I had been carrying the same thing the entire time.

And I had said nothing.

"Three weeks," she said.

"Yes."

"You have been standing in front of me every day for two weeks in this house." Her voice was controlled, which was worse than if it hadn't been. "You watched me cover it with a scarf, watched me make a fool out of myself." She stopped and drew in one breath. "You were carrying the exact same thing I was carrying, and you looked me in the eye and said nothing."

I didn't defend it. There was no defense that would hold, and she would see through anything I tried to say.

"Yes," I said.

"Why."

I could hear the underlying question. Why was she never good enough to be told the truth?

My chest tightened around something I didn't have a clean answer for. "Because telling you meant starting a conversation, I don't have all the pieces to finish. And I didn't want to hand you half of something and watch you carry it alone."

She stared at me.

"That is the same decision," she said slowly. "Dressed up in different words. You decided what I could handle. You decided what I should know and when. You have been doing that my entire life and calling it protection, and I am done being protected by you in ways I never asked for and never agreed to."

Her voice hadn't risen. That was the thing about Lyra at her angriest. She went quieter and colder. It hit harder than shouting would have.

"You're right," I said.

"I know I'm right."

"I handled it wrong."

"You handle everything wrong when it comes to me." She unfolded her arms and took one step back, the deliberate step of someone creating distance because the alternative was something they weren't going to do in front of anyone. "And the worst part is you know it every time. I can see it in your face. You know it and you do it anyway, because somewhere in your head keeping me at a safe distance and keeping me safe are still the same thing."

I had nothing to say to that because it was the most accurate thing anyone had ever said to me.

I see something fleet across her face. Hurt? Before she locks down behind her icy facade.

Then she turned toward the terrace door.

"Lyra."

She stopped but didn't turn around.

I opened my mouth. I closed it. There was so much I needed to say and none of it was ready.

It had always been me.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Not for the alliance. Not for marriage. For eleven years. For every time I decided for you instead of trusting you with it. I'm sorry."

The terrace was silent. She didn't turn around.

But her hand, resting at her side, closed slowly into a fist. Then she went inside.

The door didn't slam. That was almost worse.

I stood alone in the cold with the valley below and the mark on my neck pulsing with its low steady rhythm.

Behind me through the glass I could see the hall, just visible through the doorway of the main corridor, Sera.

Standing very still.

Looking at something on her clipboard that made her face the wrong color.

She looked up and found my eyes through the glass.

"Mr. Voss," she called out, her voice carrying the particular tone of someone trying very hard to sound calm. "I think you need to come and see this.”