The Alpha Who Regrets Losing Me Chapter 25 – The Brother He Never Mentioned

For a mont after Lucien spoke, neither of us moved.

The city continued around us as though nothing had shifted, as though the street remained just another narrow passage between taller buildings, just another line of pavent swallowed by traffic, voices, and the constant movent of strangers who had no idea that sothing far older than the city itself had just stepped into their world. But the air between us had changed. I felt it before I understood it, and my wolf, who had been restless since the mont I entered the city, suddenly grew still in a way that was sohow more unsettling.

Lucien’s gaze had shifted past , not sharply, not with alarm, but with a kind of recognition that made the space behind feel charged.

I turned.

Rowan stood at the far end of the street, no longer hidden by distance or blurred by passing bodies, and the mont I saw him, sothing in reacted before I had ti to think. It wasn’t the violent pull of the bond I still shared with Kael, nor was it the strange, fractured edge of the visions that ca without warning. It was simpler than that, and for that reason more dangerous. It was the imdiate, undeniable awareness that he had co after .

He didn’t hurry toward us, and he didn’t call my na. He simply walked forward with the sa steady certainty that had marked every step he took in the forest, but here, against the sharpened lines of the city, that certainty looked different. Harder. Less patient. As if leaving his own territory to follow here had stripped sothing away and revealed the edge beneath it.

His eyes found mine first, and in the brief silence that followed, I understood sothing I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself.

I had expected him to co.

Not because I thought he would chase , and not because I believed he would try to drag back, but because so part of had known that Rowan was not the kind of man who let important things disappear into silence. I had left a letter on a table because it was easier than staying. I had crossed into the city because distance felt simpler than honesty. But seeing him there, closing the final space between us without hesitation, made the truth impossible to ignore.

Leaving had not ended anything.

It had only moved it sowhere else.

When Rowan stopped a few feet away, his attention shifted from to Lucien, and whatever passed between them was not re recognition. It was too sharp for that, too layered, too imdiate. This was not the eting of strangers, nor even the cautious assessnt of rival Alphas testing one another. It carried history. The kind that wasn’t spoken about, because it had already sunk too deep into the bones to need explanation.

"You got here faster than I expected," Lucien said, his tone calm enough to be conversational, though the faint curve at the edge of his mouth suggested he was not displeased by the outco.

Rowan’s expression did not soften.

"You knew I was coming."

Lucien gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug.

"It wasn’t difficult to predict."

"That doesn’t answer the question."

"It answers the important part of it."

The exchange was quiet, yet there was nothing casual about it. Even without understanding the full shape of what stood between them, I could feel the weight of it pressing into the street, pushing everything else to the edges of the mont. Rowan did not take his eyes off Lucien, and Lucien, for all his cultivated calm, did not look away either.

I looked between them, trying to understand what was happening without asking the wrong question first.

"You know each other," I said, because that was the only fact that felt solid enough to na.

Neither of them denied it.

That, sohow, made the silence heavier.

Rowan stepped slightly closer, not enough to stand in front of , but enough to make his position unmistakable. He was not shielding , not exactly, yet the movent still carried a ssage. Lucien noticed it imdiately.

"That hasn’t changed," he said, and this ti the amusent in his expression beca easier to see.

Rowan’s gaze hardened.

"Stay out of this."

Lucien tilted his head, as if considering whether the request deserved a serious response.

"I could say the sa to you."

"This doesn’t concern you."

"Then you ca a long way for sothing unimportant."

The words landed cleanly, almost elegantly, but there was a blade hidden inside them. Rowan did not react outwardly, though I felt the air tighten.

I should have spoken then. I should have cut through the strange, layered tension that neither of them seed interested in explaining. But there was sothing in the way they looked at each other that made interruption feel pointless, as if whatever this was had started long before I stepped into it and would not stop simply because I demanded clarity.

Lucien’s gaze settled more fully on Rowan then, and when he spoke again, his voice remained light, but only on the surface.

"You always did mistake force for urgency," he said.

"And you always did mistake distance for wisdom," Rowan replied.

Lucien’s smile deepened just enough to reveal that the words had found their mark.

"There you are," he said softly. Then, almost as if the thought had just occurred to him, he added, "Still as direct as ever, little brother."

For a second, the city vanished.

Not literally, not in the way my visions sotis shattered the world and replaced it with sothing else, but in the sense that everything peripheral lost importance. The traffic, the movent, the sound of voices sowhere further down the street all receded beneath the sudden impact of what he had said.

Little brother.

I turned to Rowan so quickly I barely registered the motion.

He didn’t look at .

Which sohow told more than if he had.

The stillness in his face had changed, not into surprise, but into the rigid kind of control that only appears when sothing private has been dragged into the light against its will. Lucien, by contrast, looked entirely composed, as if he had simply chosen to move one piece across a board and was now waiting to see what the rest of us would do.

"You should leave," Rowan said, and although the words were directed at Lucien, there was nothing uncertain about them.

Lucien’s expression remained unreadable.

"This is my city."

"That isn’t what I ant."

"No," Lucien said, his eyes narrowing just slightly in a way that did not quite qualify as a smile, "I know exactly what you ant."

I looked from one to the other, the shape of this becoming no clearer even as the pieces grew more visible.

"You never ntioned having a brother," I said before I could stop myself.

This ti Rowan did look at , but only briefly, and in that brief glance I saw sothing I had not seen in him before.

Not anger.

Not even discomfort.

Sothing closer to reluctance.

The kind that forms around old damage.

Lucien answered before he could.

"That would require him to enjoy unnecessary conversation," he said.

Rowan ignored the remark.

"It never mattered."

The answer was too fast, too flat to be true in the way he wanted it to sound.

"Clearly it matters now," I said.

"It matters because you’re standing in the middle of it," Lucien replied, and although his tone had lost none of its composure, the words themselves carried more weight than before. "Otherwise, he would have gone another ten years pretending blood ans less than choice."

Rowan’s jaw tightened.

"That’s enough."

Lucien’s gaze shifted toward , and for the first ti since Rowan arrived, I felt as though I had stopped being rely the center of the conflict and beco the audience for sothing far older than I understood.

"Do you see what I an now?" Lucien asked quietly. "Nothing in this city is simple, and neither is anything that followed you here."

"I didn’t ask to be followed."

"No," Lucien said. "You didn’t."

Rowan’s attention returned to then, and the force of it cut through everything else.

"You’re leaving with ."

The words were so direct that for a second I could only stare at him.

Lucien gave a soft laugh that held no warmth.

"There it is."

Rowan didn’t spare him a glance.

"Elara."

My na sounded different in his voice now. Not because he raised it, and not because he tried to soften it, but because whatever patience had remained when he first entered the street had now been stripped down to sothing rawer and more honest.

I should have answered imdiately. I should have refused imdiately. Instead, I stood there caught between the undeniable fact that he had co after and the equally undeniable fact that I still did not understand half of what stood around .

"You don’t get to decide that for ," I said at last, though my voice lacked the certainty I wanted it to carry.

"No," Rowan said, and for the first ti since he had arrived, sothing in his expression shifted enough to let the strain beneath it show. "But I do get to decide whether I leave you standing here with him."

Lucien did not seem offended.

If anything, that made it worse.

"You say that as if she’s safer with you," he murmured.

Rowan finally looked at him again.

"She is."

The silence that followed was not empty. It felt like a line being drawn sowhere I could not yet see, one that had less to do with than both of them wanted to pretend, and yet everything to do with what I had beco inside their unfinished history.

I looked at Lucien.

Then at Rowan.

Then back again.

And with each passing second, one thing beca clearer than anything else.

I had not stepped into the city to escape the forest.

I had walked straight into a fracture that had been waiting much longer than I had been alive.

And now, standing between two brothers who clearly had no intention of telling the full truth, I could already feel the shape of the next problem forming.

Because if Rowan had hidden Lucien from , and Lucien had clearly chosen to reveal himself only now, then whatever history existed between them was not buried.

It was active.

And sohow, impossibly, I was already inside it.