Now she did.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
But it did.
The room went quiet in a way different from silence.This silence had weight. Sera didn’t sit.She wasn’t sure she trusted herself to. Not that Alaric offered her a chair. She recognized the look immediately.
It was the same expression men like Alaric wore when something valuable had slipped out of a reserved state. Not alarm. Not panic. Assessment. Distance. The quiet focus that came when they stopped seeing a person and started watching for fallout.
She’d been on the receiving end of that look before.Usually when something was already broken.
“You werelistening,” hesaid.
“I was looking for you,” she corrected. “I heard my name. Istopped. Then I listened.”
Alaric’s voice stayed even. “You shouldn’t have been here. I’m sorry you heard that.”
Something twisted low in Sera’s chest, atight, inward pull that had nothing to do with surprise and everything to do with recognition. Of course it was his first response. Not dismissal. Not cruelty. Procedure. The need to put structure around a moment before it fractured further.
She held his gaze. Let the apology hang between them long enough to examine it. Her mouth curved slightly, the expression deliberate and practiced. Not amusement. Never amusement. It was the look she used when something hurt and she refused to give it the satisfaction of showing.
Pain, held in check with both hands.
“Sorry because what you said might have hurt me?” she asked with impressive calm. “Or sorry because I overheard something you intended to keep contained?”
He didn’t answer her right away. Instead, he took a step toward her. It wasn’t aggressive. It wasn’t abrupt. It was the automatic movement of a man who closed distance when something mattered,when words were suddenly inadequate and proximity had always been his other language.
“Sera,” he said quietly.
She saw the intent the moment he moved. Not to corner her. To gather her. To pull her close and steady what had started to fracture.
She stepped back.
The space between them snapped back into place, clean and unmistakable.
His hand stilled mid-reach.That, more than an answer, told her everything.She understood what he was choosing without him having to say it. Not cruelty. Not indifference. Authority. The nature of a man who ended problems by taking command of the space, by asserting presence instead of explanation, by bending situations back under his control rather than justifying himself to anyone.
That choice landed between them like awall.
“What I heard wasn’t a breach,” she said, steady. “It was a judgment. And you didn’t challenge it. You didn’t question it. You accepted it.”
She watched him keep his gaze steady. Watched him refuse to look too closely at her face, at the tension sheknew was visible around her mouth, at the way her vision became a little too bright at the edges.
She knew why.
If he focused on her like that, he might do something human.He’d never had a problem with restraint.Not untilher.
“This isn’t personal,” he said.The lie landed softly. Almost politely.
“It is to me,” she replied.This time she chose to take a step closer and caught the faint hitch in his breathing. It was small. Regulated. The kind of reaction he probably thought no one noticed.
She noticed.
She was holding herself together by force. By habit. By sheer refusal to fall apart in front ofhim.
He knew that kind of restraint.She could see it in the way his shoulders stayed squared, in the way his hands didn’t move even when they wantedto.
“Sera,” he said again.
