Dylan stops. His mouth is close enough that I feel the shape of the word before he says it—"wait"—and then he pulls back. Not far, not fast. A deliberate withdrawal, like stepping back from a ledge he walked to on purpose.
"I'm sorry." His voice is rough, his breathing uneven. "That was—I shouldn't have. I don't want to be that kind of man."
I try to even my breathing, and his attempt at apology only irritates me over something that didn’t—shouldn’t have—happen.
"Then what kind are you being?" It comes out sharper than I mean, but my pulse is still hammering and I need him to explain what just happened.
He drags a hand over his jaw, staring at the water. "The kind who's been lying to himself since you arrived. You walked through our gates with a taped suitcase, River on your hip, Ashton scanning exits like a tiny recon unit."
His voice drops. "You looked like you'd swallowed your fear so your kids wouldn't taste it. I thought—who is this woman. And then I spent a week pretending I hadn't."
My pulse is hammering so hard I can hear it over the water. River shrieks at something in the shallows and Ashton yells at her to stop scaring the fish.
And Dylan Warren just pulled back and apologized instead of kissing me, and he's confessing he noticed me before he had any reason to, while he was still suspicious of me. Which is worse—so much worse—because a kiss I could've blamed on the moment.
This I can only blame on him being exactly who he keeps showing me he is—a man who stops when stopping costs him, and tells the truth when silence would be easier.
Get a grip, Skyler. I dig my nails into my knees. You wanted him to kiss you. You didn't pull away. And now you're wishing he hadn't been decent about it, which makes you the idiot here, not him.
We sit in the aftermath, close, not touching. His thumb traces a slow line across the back of my hand and then he lets go, resting both arms on his knees.
"While we're being honest." His jaw works twice before the rest arrives. "The clinic bathroom. The accusations, the tone—I owe you for all of it."
"Go on." I don't help him. I've earned the right to watch him work for this, and some ferocious part of me wants to see him do it without flinching.
"I was scared." He shreds a blade of grass between his fingers. "Leon collapsed and his wolf went silent and I couldn't fix it, so I did what I always do—I found someone to blame."
His eyes come to mine, and whatever shield he usually keeps polished is gone. "You were there and I treated you like a suspect when you'd done nothing except survive. I'm sorry."
I don't rush to fill the silence—because years of being accused of things I didn't do has taught me that apologies should cost something, and his is only valuable if he feels the weight.
His throat bobs. He waits. And something behind my ribs loosens—not forgiveness exactly, but the first give in a knot I've been carrying since that fluorescent-lit bathroom. "That took longer than it should have," I say quietly.
He nods, no deflection, no charm. "Yeah. It did."
River has found a rock she's convinced is a moon crystal and is presenting it to Ashton with the gravity of a coronation. He turns it over and hands it back with a nod that says acceptable, and her whole face ignites.
"There's more." Dylan's voice drops, pulling my attention back. "The day I confronted you—I'd just come from Doctor Fielding's office. Didn't mention it because I didn't trust you yet."
The word yet does something behind my sternum. "And now?"
He meets my eyes. "Now I'm telling you things that could compromise my brother. So yeah. Now."
He tells me carefully—Leon's memory loss isn't stress, isn't neurological. The erasure is surgical—personal memories excised while tactical ones stay. When Dylan pushed, Leon's nose bled and he lost seconds before snapping back.
"Fielding says it's external." Dylan's voice has gone flat, the way voices go when carrying something too heavy for inflection. "Something done to him. Not something that happened."
I press my thumb into the wire ring until the metal bites, grounding myself against the vertigo of hearing what I've suspected since Leon looked through me on his wedding day spoken as medical fact.
"The drink." My voice comes out scraped. "Kailani's toast."
He doesn't look at me. "That's where my head goes too. But going after the Luna with a theory and no evidence gets people killed."
"So what do we do?" The question sounds pathetically small against the size of what's been taken.
"We wait. We're careful. We don't push—Fielding was clear. Forcing the memories triggers a defense response, and if we push too hard..." The silence finishes worse than words would.
River's laughter carries across the water, bright and unaware that her father's mind was gutted by a woman in silk pajamas with a crystal glass.
"Did Fielding say anything else?" I need there to be something—a treatment, a timeline, a door that isn't sealed.
Dylan's pause stretches. His eyes find mine and the look in them is the same one from before the almost-kiss—raw, searching, wanting. He studies my face intently, the line of my neck. His gaze stops at my lips. My breath catches. Then something shifts behind his face, a door closing, and the intensity banks to ash. "No."
I watch his face for the crack that would tell me he's holding something back and don't find one. So that's it. No cure, no timeline, no way to reach inside Leon's skull and pull us back.
Ashton will keep searching his father's face for a flicker that never comes. River will keep showing him drawings he should recognize. And I'll keep standing three feet from a man I loved first, knowing he's behind a wall I can't climb.
The grief is a fist under my ribs—then, slowly, it loosens. Because if Leon remembered, what then? I'd be the secret mother of the Alpha's children while his wife sleeps down the hall. A truth that could shatter a pack.
Maybe the door being sealed is the only thing keeping us standing. And if I don't get a second chance with the man I lost—maybe that's not the only kind of second chance there is.
"Mama!" River barrels into me, wet to the knees, brandishing her moon crystal. "Dylan, look—it has sparkles inside. Ashton says it's just quartz but I think it's magic!"
Dylan takes the rock with the solemnity of a jeweler, turns it in the fading light, holds it to his ear. "Definitely magic. I can hear it humming." Her squeal sends two birds scattering.
My son watches Dylan for a long moment—head tilted, mouth flat, running some calculation I'd give anything to read. When he turns to follow his sister, something fractionally less guarded sits in his shoulders.
Dylan watches them go—not with authority, not strategy. Just a man looking at two children like they matter more than anything in any room.
"We should head back." He pulls me up but doesn't let go. Three seconds on a copper lakeshore, my children's voices ringing off the water, his fingers around mine, and the truth about his brother between us like smoke.
"Dylan." He looks down. "Thank you. For telling me."
His thumb brushes my knuckle and he nods once. "Get the kids. I'll warm the truck."
He walks away and I stand holding the collision in my chest—the man who almost kissed me and the brother carrying proof that someone poisoned the father of my children are the same person, and I have no idea what to do with either one.
River tugs my hand. "Mama, can Dylan come to the lake with us every time?"
I smooth her wet hair back. "We'll see, baby."