Alpha Xander's Undoing Chasing my Unknown Mate Back novel Chapter 58

Chapter 58

Chapter 58

*Rory*

The door to Xander’s room clicked shut and silence closed in.

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I didn’t move. Neither did Xander. The lamplight carved his face into planes I knew too well-the stubborn line in his mouth, the tightness at his temples, the tension in his shoulders that wasn’t a threat, just a man trying not to shatter.

“You disobeyed me,” he said finally. “You broke into his office last night?”

“How did you know-”

“Lilith told me.”

I rolled my eyes. Of course she did. She seemed as if she was helping me last night, but at the same time, she still wanted Xander. Any chance she got to get us on bad terms, she’d do it.

“Well you lied to me,” I shot back, because we were past the point of pretending those weren’t the same conversation. “You knew about Eden, didn’t you? You knew she was gifted. You probably knew the Venatorum killed her and yet you thought I did? What else did you know? You knew about me?”

“I didn’t know that the Venatorum killed Eden.”

But he didn’t deny anything else.

“You knew about me?”

His jaw flexed. He came closer, not quite within reach, stopping like there was a chalk circle on the floor he was afraid to cross.

“I told the Council you had nothing to do with the attack on the wolf from my pack who Zerina killed. I told them your wolf had a lapse in judgement because she thought he was hurting you. I told them you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I told them the Z3 in your system was from the intruder, not from anything you asked for.”

“Because it was,” I said, carefully even.

“And,” he continued, his voice dropping in that way that stripped it of all the alpha bark and left only bone, “I didn’t correct them when they concluded you were unremarkable.”

The word landed between us like a curse. It wasn’t the admission that undid me-it was the way he said it. Unremarkable. As if he’d held that word in his mouth like a thorn to keep me from being the one to swallow

“You lied,” I said.

“I lied to keep hunters out of your bed,” he said, no apology in it, only a battered truth. “I lied because the day you collapsed in that hallway and your eyes went silver and the air bent, I knew. I knew you were gifted. Maybe more. And I also knew what the enemy does when it thinks it has found a pattern to fear.”

13:10 Wed, Sep 17

Chapter 58

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I stared at him. The anger I’d braced was there, yes, but it was braided with something else-something rawer, older. It wasn’t that he had hidden the truth. It was that he had carried it alone. He looked exhausted from the weight.

“You should have told me,” I said. “Not your father. Not the Council. Me.”

“I know.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face, and for a second he looked like the boy he must have been once, too serious too young, daring the world to give him a reason to keep the faith he carried for people he loved.

“I kept thinking if I said it out loud, I would make it real. And if it was real, I would lose you. To fear. To them. To yourself.”

“You don’t get to protect me by erasing me,” I said softly.

His eyes closed. When he opened them, the blue had gone darker with unshed things, and Azrien hummed under his skin like a low chord, present but contained. “You’re right.”

Something loosened in my chest. Not forgiveness. Not yet. Something like breath returning after you forgot to take it.

“What happened with your father,” I asked. “The meeting you were summoned to. The one you wouldn’t talk about.”

“We fed the Council a lie,” he said. “My father offered a trail the Venatorum wanted to hear-that the Chaos signature had been tracked on the northern ridges of the fourth Packland, three borders away. Varra corroborated. Your father attended.” He watched my face for that and saw-I couldn’t help it-the flicker of shock. “He did not deny it. He did not confirm you. He… walked a line.”

“Of course he did,” I murmured, anger and something like a bruised relief tangling inside me. “He classified my file. He drugged me. He sent me into a marriage I didn’t want. But goddess forbid he embarrass himself by letting his daughter be discovered under his roof.”

Xander flinched like I’d struck him-not at the words, but at the hurt in them. “It buys us time,” he said. “Not absolution. Not safety. Just time.”

“And what,” I asked, “am I supposed to do with that.”

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