Thalia's POV
Three days of silence.
Kieran sleeps in his office, eats meals at different times, and avoids every room I enter. The children notice—Phoenix asking why Daddy looks sad, Orion watching us with analytical concern, Luna feeling the tension thick enough to choke on.
On the fourth morning, I find him in the kitchen before dawn. He's standing at the window, coffee growing cold in his hands, staring at nothing.
"We can't keep avoiding each other." My voice sounds foreign to my own ears. "The children are suffering."
He doesn't turn around. "And whose fault is that?"
"Both of ours." I move to the counter, pour coffee I don't want just to have something to do with my hands. "I need you to hear me. Not as your mate who betrayed you, but as the mother of your children who has been trying to tell you something for weeks."
Finally, he faces me. The devastation in his eyes hasn't faded—if anything, it's deepened. But beneath it, I see something that might be willingness.
"Talk."
I take a breath and let everything pour out.
"The school situation isn't just about bad teachers or bullying classmates. It's about our children growing up in a world that doesn't understand them, being labeled and dismissed the same way I was labeled and dismissed for nineteen years." I set down my untouched coffee. "When I brought those concerns to you, you wanted to handle it with threats and dominance. Warning letters, pack authority, making people afraid."
"You know I was protecting them."
"You were controlling the situation. There's a difference." I hold his gaze despite the flash of anger that crosses his face. "Dominance alone cannot fix everything, Kieran."
"And my approach was wrong?"
"It dismissed mine." The words come harder now, carrying weight I've been holding too long. "I came to you with a plan—diplomatic but firm, working with the teachers instead of against them—and you told me it was too soft. Called it weak in front of the pack elders."
His jaw tightens but he doesn't interrupt.
"Do you know what that felt like?" My voice wavers. "Watching you dismiss my judgment, override my suggestions, treat my input as naive instead of valuable? It felt like being nineteen again. Like being the wolfless girl whose opinions didn't matter because everyone else knew better."
"I've never treated you like—"
"You did." I cut him off, desperate for him to understand. "I felt invisible. Unheard. Like my perspective only mattered when it aligned with what you'd already decided."
He sets his coffee cup down hard enough that liquid sloshes over the rim. "So you went to my brother for validation."
"I went to him because he listened." The admission comes out raw, unvarnished. "When Lysander heard about what was happening at school, he didn't immediately strategize about pack politics or worry about what the elders would think. He got angry. He flew across the country to fight for our children. He showed up."
"I show up every day."
"You do that as Alpha and protector. As the man who handles things." I move closer, needing him to see my face, read the truth I'm offering. "But sometimes I need you to show up as my partner. Someone who values my judgment, who believes my instincts might be right even when they conflict with yours."
The kitchen fills with silence, heavy and charged. Kieran's hands grip the counter behind him, knuckles white with restrained emotion.
"The past still shapes me," I continue, softer now. "Every dismissal, every moment of feeling small—they left marks that never fully healed. When you override my concerns or treat pack politics as more important than our children's immediate pain, it triggers something I can't always control."
"I didn't realize."
"That's part of the problem." I step closer, feeling his cold voice physically. "I've been trying to tell you for months, in different ways, and it kept bouncing off. You heard criticism instead of need. Saw weakness instead of perspective."
His expression shifts—still pained, but something new emerging underneath. "You're saying I made you feel invisible."
"Yes."
"And Lysander made you feel seen."
"Exactly." The word carries no apology. "He listened without immediately problem-solving. Asked questions instead of giving answers. Made space for what I was feeling instead of rushing to fix it."
"So you fell for him."
"I fell for being heard." The distinction matters even if he can't see it yet. "For being treated like my thoughts had value, feeling like a person instead of a role."
Kieran's silent for a long moment, his breathing carefully controlled. I watch the struggle play across his face—instinct warring with understanding, Alpha dominance fighting against something more vulnerable.
"I have feelings for both of you." The confession lands between us like a bomb. "Despite everything that tells me I should only want you. I care about Lysander in ways that don't erase what I feel for you, and I've stopped trying to pretend otherwise."
"How can you be okay with that?"
"I don't know." Honesty is all I have left. "But fighting it was destroying me. Pretending I could wall off parts of my heart based on what destiny dictated—it was making me someone I didn't recognize."
He pushes off the counter, paces to the window and back. Rigid, barely contained, fighting himself as much as he's fighting this conversation.
"What do you want from me?" His voice cracks on the question. "I can't stop being who I am. Can't rewire decades of Alpha instinct because my mate wishes I were gentler."
"I'm not asking that." I step into his path, force him to stop, to see me. "Just grow. Make room for my voice alongside yours, trust that I might know things you don't, see angles you miss, have value beyond what the bond assigns me."
"I need you to choose me." The words come out strangled, desperate. "Not just the bond. Not just our children or our pack or our history. I need to know that you, Thalia—the woman underneath all of it—actually wants to be here."
The rawness of his need cuts through everything else. This is what he's been afraid of since the beginning. That without destiny's chains, I'd walk away.
"I'm still here." I reach for his face, cup his jaw the way I have a thousand times. "I chose to tell you the truth when I could have hidden it. I chose to have this conversation instead of running. Those are choices, Kieran. Mine."
"But you don't know if you'd have chosen me without the bond."
"Neither do you." My thumb traces his cheekbone. "Neither of us can know what we'd be without destiny's interference. All we can know is what we choose now, in this moment, with all the complications laid bare."
He doesn't pull away from my touch, but he doesn't lean into it either. The neutrality hurts more than rejection would—the same distance I've been showing him, reflected back.
"I need time." His voice is hollow. "To figure out if I can be what you're asking. If I can change enough to make this work."
"I understand."
I drop my hand and step back, giving him the space he's asking for. The conversation ends unfinished, questions hanging in the air without answers.
I walk out of the kitchen unsure if my honesty brought us closer or widened the gap between us. Unsure if laying everything bare was the beginning of healing or the final blow that breaks us apart.
Some truths, once spoken, cannot be taken back. I can only hope these truths lead somewhere worth going.