I released his arm and put space between us and paced the room, searching for words for my thoughts.
He waited. Of course he waited. Malric used silence like his sword, and he was adept at both. Right now, he was reading me, cataloging, deciding how he would handle me.
“You were against this,” I said. “Earlier, you couldn’t say what you wanted when she asked you directly. Two hours ago, you were in the library working out how to keep her at a strategic distance while we figured out what she was.” I struggled to keep my voice even and calm, so Aveline wouldn’t hear me. “And now you’ve told her the only option left is to bond with an alpha.”
“That’s not inaccurate,” he said.
“That’s not what I asked.” I stepped closer. “How could you do that? She just found out her father has been draining her for most of her life. She’s been sitting in that nest trying to hold herself together, and you walked in there and told her that if she wants to be useful, she has to bond.” I stopped. “What kind of man does that?”
“The kind who is running out of time,” he said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer that’s true.” He moved to the edge of the broken circle and looked down at it, his back to me. Not evasion. Malric thought better when he was looking at something that wasn’t a face. I’d learned that. I knew all of it, every displaced habit and deflection, and right now I wanted to know none of it.
“She deserves better than that,” I said. “After everything she’s already learned, she deserves?—”
“I know.” He said it to the cracked stone. “I know she does. But I can’t let her go.”
His voice was stark, bleak, as if he had already given up.
I stood in the cold dining room and looked at his back and waited, because that had been too unexpected.
He turned.
“Let me remind you of what kind of man I am,” he said. “I watched my mother defy the king and jump to her death, leaving her bonded mate and children behind. I was eleven years old and I watched her die because I wasn’t strong enough to protect her. I watched my father after. I watched what losing a true mate does to an alpha, watched him come apart in increments over eleven years until there was nothing left that resembled the man he’d been.” His jaw tightened. “I’ve watched soldiers die on campaigns that were ordered by men who didn’t care if they lived or died. I’ve watched villages lose their harvests to taxation that served no one. I’ve been held in a room and hurt in ways I don’t discuss for information I didn’t give, and I kept going because the alternative was that it meant nothing.”
He stopped. Let that sit.
“There is nothing I would not do to end this,” he said. “If my death would end it, I would arrange that. I have been ready to arrange that for two years. There is no version of this where I weigh my own comfort against the outcome and choose comfort.” He held my gaze. “But I would not sacrifice her. And I would not sacrifice you.”
I was still angry. The anger hadn’t gone anywhere. But it had shifted shape around what he was saying, reforming around new information the way it always did when Malric finally said the true thing.
“You told her bonding was her only option,” I said. “That’s?—”
“I told her if she wanted to be a weapon, there was one option left.” He moved away from the circle. “I didn’t tell her she had to. I didn’t tell her she had no choice. I told her what the path looks like if she chooses it.” He looked at me steadily. “She told me to treat her like a weapon. She asked for it. I respected that enough to answer honestly.”
“You could have been less blunt.”
“She would have known I was softening it.”
He was right. I hated that he was right. Aveline had spent years being managed through selective information couched as comfort and care, and she was done being handled. Blunt was what she could trust.
“You were against bonding,” I said again, but the accusation had less force behind it now. “You couldn’t answer her when she asked what you wanted.”
“I know.”
“So what changed?”
He was quiet for long enough that I started to think he was going to avoid the question like he often avoided uncomfortable topics. He had done that repeatedly since we’d arrived in this tower and I had stopped expecting him to answer.
Then he crossed the room toward me and I held my ground.
He stopped close, invading my space until all I could smell was Malric—smoke and iron. Closer than the conversation required. His hand came up and gripped the back of my neck, not hard, firm and solid, and he brought his forehead down against mine.
“You were right,” he said quietly. “What you said in the library. I’ve been certain since before I was willing to admit it and I’ve been avoiding it until I can control the outcome.” His grip on my neck tightened fractionally. “I cannot control this outcome. I’ve accepted that.”
I didn’t move. Now that Malric accepted the need to bond with Aveline, was he going to toss me aside, break our bond, and bond with her? He needed an heir for his title and lands. I couldn’t give him an heir, and I was disinherited, a nobody now. Was he replacing me?
