Chapter 60: There Is No Other Way

Lucian’s POV

The elders had summoned me to deliver one verdict.

Marry Tessa.

It wasn’t a small issue. It never was going to be.

I stood in that court and listened to them lay it out like it was the simplest thing in the world. Tessa was just a wolf I’d slept with a few times. Nothing more. I didn’t love her. I couldn’t tell them that ... an Alpha’s position didn’t factor love into the equation, and they knew it ... but that didn’t change the fact that I didn’t want her.

"So you’re telling me I don’t have a choice?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, you don’t, Alpha Lucian," one of the elders said.

"In fact, we should begin preparing wedding arrangements immediately, now that the matter has been settled," another added.

I kept my face still. "For your information, elders, I don’t need a Luna. I’ve been running this territory just fine before any of this came up."

"Do you have an heir?" one of them asked.

I said nothing.

"Guess you can’t make one on your own either, huh?"

The sarcasm coming from men that old lit a fire in me I had to physically contain. In that moment I wanted to banish every last one of them from Winterwood and never look back.

"This is how things have always been done ... long before you even became Alpha," the elder continued. "It is for the posterity of this territory. It is for all our good."

Fuck you, I said to them. In my head. Because I still had enough sense not to say it out loud.

I left without giving them anything more than my back.

By the time I reached my room, the restraint was gone.

I started destroying things.

Knocking over furniture, hurling whatever my hands landed on ... it was the only way I knew how to pull the rage out of my system before it tore me apart from the inside. Kael had to walk in and physically stop me before I put my fist through something that would take a finger with it.

"Lucian, you’re the king," he said, steady as always. "Winterwood still needs you. You can’t destroy yourself over this."

The words hit something raw.

I turned to him, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt the burn behind my eyes.

"No one cares about my feelings," I said. "No one even stops to think that I have feelings. This territory is just using me. I can’t have the one thing I want ... the one thing." I grabbed a glass cup off the table and sent it straight into the wall. "That’s fucking insane."

Kael didn’t flinch. "What would you have me do, Alpha?"

I exhaled hard. "Find Selene. Wherever she is, I want to go to her. I know she won’t want to come here."

"I’ll get her location now," he said, and left.

I stood in the wreckage of my own room and reached for the last bottle of water I could find. I didn’t want wine. Didn’t want anything that would cloud my head before I saw her. I needed to be sharp. Present. Every word between us tonight was going to matter.

I was the feared Alpha of Winterwood. The formidable force that no one dared test. I had clawed my way to where I stood today ... through blood, through sacrifice, through every kind of war. I had never lost. Not once. Not in battle, not in politics, not in any game this territory had ever thrown at me.

I wasn’t going to lose at love either.

I told myself that.

Kael returned.

"She’s at the beach, Alpha. With some friends. We tracked her phone."

I straightened. Set the water down. "Get the car ready. I’m going to get my woman."

Kael drove hard and fast under my command, and we reached the beach in no time.

I spotted her the moment we pulled up ... standing near the shoreline with some of my former breeders, the ocean stretching out dark and wide behind her. I didn’t get out of the car immediately. I just sat there and watched her through the window.

Even now. Even after everything she had been put through ... the betrayal, the accusations, the possession, all of it ... she still looked exactly the way she had the first time I claimed her. Soft. Untouched by the ugliness the world had thrown at her. Like the goddess had carved something gentle into her bones that nothing could break.

I couldn’t afford to lose her.

I stepped out of the car.

I walked toward them across the sand, close enough that she should have heard me, but she and the breeders were lost in the sound of the waves. I called her name.

Selene turned. So did the breeders.

The others scattered the moment they recognised me. Selene stayed. She already knew I was there for her.

"Hey, Selene." I tried to put something like a smile on my face. It didn’t sit right, but I tried.

"Hey, Lucian." Her voice was quiet. The breeze lifted the hem of her skirt as she looked at me, and all I could see in her eyes was that heart of hers ... too good for all of this. Too good for me, probably.

"You should be married by now," she said.

"What? No ... we were planning that together. You know that."

"But it can’t work." She looked away toward the water. "They won’t accept me. They said I have too much blood on my hands, that I don’t belong to Winterwood. We..."

I stepped forward and kissed her.

She was talking too much, and every word she said was true, and I couldn’t stand to hear it. I knew she was as wrecked over this as I was. But there was nothing that love couldn’t find a way through ... she was the one who had made me believe that in the first place.

The kiss changed something in her. I felt it the moment it happened. She kissed me back ... deeply, fully ... like she was angry at me and in love with me at the same time, which was probably exactly what she was.

I pulled back just enough to speak. "I still love you. I never stopped. No matter how hard they try to pull us apart, we are always going to be meant for each other."

She looked at me, and her eyes filled.

"Are any of these words relevant, Lucian?" Her voice broke. "I need you in my life. I love you. But a person can’t always have what she wants." She steadied herself. "What did the elders tell you?"

She already knew. I could see it in the way she asked.

"That’s not important. They’re just doing their job..."

"What did they say, Lucian?"

I couldn’t dodge it any further. She wasn’t going to let me.

I felt it then ... the pressure behind my own eyes, the thing I had been holding back since I walked out of that court. I couldn’t watch a tear fall from Selene’s eyes. I just couldn’t.

"They said I have to marry Tessa." I said it straight. "And quickly."

She didn’t crumble. She just nodded slowly, cleaning the tears off her own face before I could reach up to do it for her. When I tried, she moved my hand away.

"Good," she said. "So what are you waiting for?"

"I can’t just ... I’m trying to find another way around this, Selene. You’re the only one I want as my Luna. But we have to stay together to fight this. We have to..."

"There is no other way." Her voice was soft but absolute. "You have to marry her, Lucian. You have to." She looked up at me, and the certainty in her eyes was worse than anger would have been. "Maybe we can’t be together. Not in this life. But I would choose you over and over again."

She rose onto her toes and pressed her lips to mine one last time. Slow. Like she was memorising it.

Then she stepped back.

And started walking away.

I stood there and watched her go. The breeders fell in around her, hands on her back, walking her away from me across the sand.

Something broke open in my chest.

I cried.

Right there on that beach, in the dark, with the ocean loud enough to swallow the sound of it. The water could take my tears. It was the only thing in Winterwood generous enough to take something from me tonight without asking for anything in return.

The pain sitting in my chest wasn’t the kind that faded. I didn’t think it ever would.

I turned back toward the car.

Kael reached out to pat me on the back, and I nearly swung at him. He read me fast enough to step away.

We got in. I stared straight ahead for a long moment.

"I’m not going to meet Tessa," I said finally. "Tell her to start preparing herself for a wedding. I have a duty to Winterwood to fulfil." I let the words settle into the silence between us. "Let’s get this done. Let’s get fucking married."

"Yes, sir," Kael said quietly.

The car pulled away from the beach, and the dark swallowed everything behind us.