Thalia's POV
I cannot unhear it.
Three days since I stood in that doorway, Lysander's voice carried through the darkness, admitting to a woman named Claire that there was someone else. Three days of watching him across breakfast tables and pack meetings, searching his face for answers to questions I have no right to ask.
Claire is real. The words loop through my mind like a curse I can't break. But not right.
Jealousy burns beneath my ribs, hot and shameful. I despise myself for feeling it. I have a mate, confirming what destiny intended. Kieran's mark sits on my throat like a brand, visible proof that I belong to someone else.
So why does knowing Lysander has someone waiting for him in Colorado make my chest feel like it's caving in?
I find him in the garden Thursday afternoon, sitting on the stone bench where I used to read when we first moved into this house. He's watching the children play—Phoenix chasing Orion around the fountain while Luna directs their game with quiet authority.
His face is soft when he watches them. Unguarded in ways he never allows himself to be around adults. The love there is obvious, unconditional, fierce in its protective tenderness.
I sit beside him without invitation. He tenses slightly but doesn't move away.
"We need to talk about what I overheard," I say quietly.
"I wondered when you'd bring it up." His voice carries resignation. "I assumed you'd pretend it never happened."
"I tried, but I can't stop thinking about it."
He turns to look at me, blue-grey eyes searching my face. "What exactly did you hear?"
"Enough." I force myself to hold his gaze. "You told her there was someone you've been trying to forget."
The silence stretches between us, heavy with implications neither of us should name.
"I didn't lie to her," he finally says. "Claire deserves the truth, even if I'm not brave enough to say it directly."
"Tell me about her."
His eyebrows lift slightly. "Why?"
"I need to understand." The words scrape against my throat. "To know who she is to you."
Lysander exhales slowly, shoulders dropping. "She's brilliant. Sharp mind, sharper wit. We work together at the Colorado office. It started as professional respect, then friendship, then..." He trails off. "Something that could have been more. Should have been more, probably."
"But it wasn't."
"I kept her at arm's length without meaning to. Let things develop enough to give her hope, but never enough to give her certainty." His jaw tightens. "I was using her. Not consciously, but that doesn't make it less cruel."
"How?"
He meets my eyes, and the raw honesty there makes my breath catch. "As a shield, against feelings I had no right to have. Feelings that should have died when the mate bond chose my brother."
We're treading dangerous ground, saying things that can't be unsaid. I should walk away, retreat to the safety of my bond with Kieran, the certainty of destiny's choice.
Instead, I ask: "Did it work?"
"No." The word comes out rough, defeated. "I built a new life. I found someone kind and available and genuinely interested in building something with me." His voice drops. "But none of it made a difference."
"Lysander..."
"You asked for the truth." His eyes hold mine with devastating intensity. "Claire is real. What I feel for her is real, in its own way. But it's not what I want when I let myself stop pretending."
"What do you want?"
The question hangs between us like a blade waiting to fall.
"Something I can never have." His voice breaks slightly. "Someone who belongs to someone else."
I should feel anger, should feel the protective fury of a mated wolf whose bond is being challenged. My wolf should rise, should snarl at the threat to her claim.
But she stays silent. And my heart—my treacherous, confused heart—aches with something that feels terrifyingly like recognition.
"I don't have the right to feel this way," I whisper. "I know that. The bond chose Kieran. I chose Kieran. Everything I am belongs to him."
"I know."
"But hearing you talk to her..." My voice wavers, threatening to break. "Knowing you'd found someone who could give you everything I can't—" I press my palm against my chest, trying to steady my breathing. "It hurts, Lysander. More than it should, more than I have any right to let it hurt."
His hand finds mine on the bench between us. The contact sends warmth spreading through my fingers, familiar and forbidden.
"What does that mean?" he asks quietly. "To you?"
"I don't know." The confession feels like surrender. "Fate should have answered everything and made the choice simple, clean, absolute. But it didn't erase what existed before."
"Tell it!"
I turn to look at him—really look, taking in the face I've known since childhood, the man who searched for me, who flew across the country to fight for my children, who loves them like they're his own even knowing they aren't.
"Something that felt like a possibility," I admit. "Like choice."
His grip tightens on my hand. "The bond didn't give you that."
"It gave me certainty, a connection I couldn't deny even if I wanted to." I shake my head, frustration bleeding through. "And I don't want to deny it. I love Kieran. My wolf recognizes him as mine. Everything about him is real and right and exactly what it's supposed to be."
"But?"
"Why does it still feel like a loss?"
Behind us, the children's laughter rings out—Phoenix shrieking as Orion catches her, Luna clapping at some victory I can't see. Normal sounds of a normal family, oblivious to the complicated adults sitting in the garden questioning everything.
Lysander releases my hand slowly, the absence of his warmth immediate and jarring.
"I should go back to Colorado," he says quietly. "Being here isn't fair to anyone. Not to Kieran, not to you, not to myself."
"The children need you."
"They need stability and parents who aren't distracted by impossible feelings." He stands, putting distance between us. "I'll help resolve the school situation, then I'll leave."
"Lysander—"
"You asked what I want." He turns back, expression carefully controlled despite the pain bleeding through. "I want you to be happy and your children to be safe and loved. I want my brother to be the man you deserve." His voice drops. "And I want to stop wanting things that will only hurt everyone involved."
He walks toward the house without looking back.
I sit alone on the stone bench, watching my children play, feeling the weight of everything we said pressing down on my chest. The mate mark on my throat pulses steadily, a constant reminder of the bond I chose, the destiny that claimed me.
My wolf stays silent through it all. No guidance, no instinctive certainty, no primal recognition of right and wrong.
But my heart keeps asking questions. Somewhere in the space between destiny and choice, I'm starting to wonder if they were ever the same thing at all.