ROWAN
The problem with being the reasonable one was that everyone expected you to stay reasonable even when everything around you was falling apart.
I slled the fight before I saw it.
Perfu and adrenaline and two won who had run out of civil words, and I broke into a stride across the open ground, the sun hamring the back of my neck, and I got there in ti to see Lila’s hand already raised and Amaris standing with her cheek red and her feet planted, and I closed my hand around Lila’s wrist before the second blow could land.
"That is enough." My voice ca out harder than I planned. "Let it go, Lila."
"She insulted ," Lila snapped, wrenching against my grip, her voice climbing high and brittle, "she stood there and insulted to my face and you want to let it go, Rowan."
I looked at Amaris over Lila’s shoulder.
She looked back at , jaw tight, eyes flat and tired and direct, the face of a person who had expected better and was done pretending otherwise, and then she turned away without a word and that landed heavier than a shout would have.
Nia touched her arm and they moved off toward the steps, and I stood there holding my fiancée’s wrist and watched them go and kept my mouth shut.
"Rowan." Lila’s voice cracked down the middle.
I steered her back toward the pack house, my hand at the small of her back, and she let guide her but the tears were already falling by the ti we reached the corridor, quiet shaking sobs she pressed the back of her hand against as we walked, and I opened my room door and pulled it shut behind us.
She stood in the middle of the room and cried properly then, shoulders caving inward, chest heaving, and I exhaled through my nose and dragged a hand through my hair.
Lila broke easier than she let people see, I had always known that, under the composure and the careful smile and the sharp way she worked a room was a girl who bruised fast and deep, and whatever Amaris had said out there had found that bruise and pressed a thumb into it.
I felt a pull of guilt about that even while Amaris’s face kept cutting back through my head, that flat tired look, the way she had turned away from first.
"You didn’t defend ," Lila said, turning to face , mascara streaking thin dark lines down her cheeks, "she stood there saying those things and you said nothing, not one word for ."
"What do you want to do," I said carefully, "she is my father’s intended, Lila."
She made a wounded sound and pressed her hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking harder, and I crossed to her and held her by both arms.
"You have changed," she said against my chest, her voice muffled and raw, "I feel it even when you won’t say it."
"That is not true."
She pulled back and looked at my face, her red eyes moving across every feature, jaw, mouth, eyes, searching for the crack in what I was saying, "You have not touched in a week, Rowan, not once, you barely look at when we are in the sa room, you cancel everything and say you are busy and I am your wife to be, I am supposed to be your Luna, how is that not telling you that sothing is wrong."
I opened my mouth and she cut straight through it.
"Am I not enough for you anymore." Her voice dropped, raw and unguarded and stripped of every layer she usually kept between herself and the world. "Are you not attracted to ."
"I am," I told her.
She held my gaze for a beat and then stepped forward and pressed her mouth to mine, and I kissed her back because she was my fiancée and she was crying and it was the decent thing to do.
But past the warmth of her hands on my chest and the familiar grip of her perfu in my nose, Amaris kept cutting back through, that flat tired look at the steps, the red mark across her cheek, the way she had turned away from without waiting to see if I would speak, that particular expression she wore the day my father had her burning her palms on that coal and I had stood back and watched and done nothing, and she had looked at then too, the sa way, and I had looked at the floor first.
I had been avoiding her since that day, ducking corridors and rearranging my schedule and telling myself I was busy, every hour of it was an hour of knowing I had no explanation that held up.
Lila’s fingers worked the buttons of my shirt open one by one and I let her, hands resting at her waist while she pushed the fabric back off my shoulders, and then she sank to her knees in front of .
I looked down at her.
She looked up at , hands moving to my belt, fingers pulling it loose, and I stood there in the quiet of my own room and waited, and my body gave her absolutely nothing, my length slept not even hard one bit and completely uncooperative, and I stood there willing it to change and it did not change.
Lila’s hands went still.
She looked up at my face and then down and then back up again, and her expression moved from open to closed in the space of three seconds, jaw setting, eyes hardening, the soft crying girl replaced by the one I was more familiar with.
She rose to her feet, smoothed her dress down with two sharp strokes of her palms, picked her bag off the chair and looked at with eyes that had gone to ice.
"Clearly," she clipped out, "I was wrong about the attraction."
The door shut behind her with a controlled click and her heels disappeared down the corridor and I stood in the middle of my room alone.
This had never happened to , not with Lila, not with anyone, my body had never simply refused like that, flat and cold while a woman knelt in front of , and I had no frawork for it and I knew I had no frawork for it.
Except that earlier, crossing the open ground toward the hall, the mont my eyes found Amaris standing at those steps with her chin up and her cheek red, I had gone hard without a single warning, instant and inconvenient and completely beyond my control.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.
What the hell was wrong with ?
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