CHAPTER 180: _ POOR LIRA

The next day, Amias is still tasting whiskey on his lips when he makes the call.

The first ring is a soft slap in the suite’s hush. The second is the one that makes his jaw clamp shut. Corvin picks up with the same dry, bored cadence he uses for every reprimand, negotiation, and every threat that doesn’t involve the Bellamys. The man has never been afraid of anyone at Duskwind Academy except the Alphas... which is why Amias’ voice gets immediate attention when it comes out low.

"We need to meet." He goes straight to the point, knowing how well the man would understand that he’s finally here to collect.

After all, there’s been a little deal between them. It is one that no other living soul knows about and one that allows Amias to have an upper hand over Corvin. This chance... He would use it to save Heidi.

"Three minutes," Corvin says on the other end.

He didn’t bother with questions or asking what for. He owes Amias, and Corvin is a man who keeps ledgers. The tone in his voice tells anyone this is not the first favor they’ve traded; it’s one of a small account being cashed.

"Meet you at the old sundial," Amias answers.

He hangs up before Corvin can give him the "are you sure" speech he’d happily deliver if he thought Amias would listen. He tugs his shirt over his head, palms rough against the fabric, and the suite smells of cut grass drifting from the lawn outside and last night’s mutilation. The cut on his lip is a crescent moon that refuses to fade; it tugs when he smiles, and he doesn’t trust himself to do that tonight.

Vark is already awake and loud in his head.

"That’s right, Amias. Help her," he urges and it’s not a plea. It’s a demand, wrapped in honey. "She’s ours," he adds, and that little syllable... ’ours’ vibrates with possessive promise, one that makes Amias’ chest tighten in ways whiskey never could.

He folds his fingers once around the knife he left on the nightstand and then sets it on the dresser. He doesn’t need the weight of steel to feel dangerous. He needs courage, and maybe a little patience, and the kind of stubbornness that makes mountains shift.

"This is not about claiming," he tells the wolf aloud, but inside his skull, Vark rolls his shimmering eyes and says, "Of course it’s about claiming. We’re wolves, not saints."

"I’m not competing," Amias says instead. "Not with them."

Not with his brothers, he thinks, the words souring on memory. Principle tastes like old blood and rotten fruit when he tries to parse it. He told himself he wouldn’t share something sacred with Darien or the twins. He still believes that. But he also believes in Heidi, not just because the bond carved its awful map across his bones, but because, in the last weeks, she has been the only honest thing in a life of bartered loyalties and brittle smiles.

He will do what he can to keep her breathing. That much, he can at least, offer her.

By the time he steps out into the hallway, evening has folded itself into the academy like a cloak. He can hear the noises from the long corridors of the economy dorm buzzing with the vibration of students shifting toward dusk as it drifts to his ears.

Well, it does because he listened out. And why did he bother listening out? It’s because he, a part of him, hopes that amidst the sea of noises, he can hear her. A speck of her voice or laughter. Anything.

Anything to carry him through the evening since he’s already addicted to her like a hard substance. It’s shameful. He’d been the one to reject her first, giving her up because she slept with Darien. He doesn’t regret that. He’ll never take a woman tainted by any of his brothers.

Yet, he has the balls to miss her? To crave her scent no matter how little? Her jingling laughter or the warmth of her skin?

He shakes himself, retracting his activated elevated hearing, and decides to focus on what is before him—getting to Corvin and actually doing something for her. Missing her will do her no good. This... this would.

"There’s nothing to be ashamed of, bro. She’s ours because the Moon Goddess bonded us to her, not because of your goddamn principles." Vark groans and Amias can picture him gripping the air in frustration.

Amias sucks his teeth in disagreement. "What do you know about principles, Vark? You just want to get under her skirt."

"No, I want to love, claim, and care for her." Vark protests.

Amias scoffs. "Just that? Yeah, right."

"Okay, OKAY! And maybe get you under her... skirt, but so what? Isn’t that what mates do?" Vark whines, hating to lose to Amias.

The doors of his brothers’ suites stand dark and silent as he passes. He inhales, taking a breath that stems from observation and part habit. Darien’s scent is faint and vanishing, like smoke after a match, which tells him his brother is somewhere other than the suite, maybe prowling the cliffs outside the Academy or pacing the old training grounds under the moon.

The moment he smells Grayson, the twins’ markers on Heidi’s skin make his stomach knot, but he tastes, instead, the salt of something sharper: envy that runs along his teeth like a bitter draught.

So... Darien and Morgan are out? Doing what? He wonders.

The more he approaches the ground floor, the louder the laundry tumblers of the students as they prepare for home, and the occasional laughter ricocheting off the stone gets. The scent here is a layered thing. It’s old wood, lemon oil, wolf sweat, and perfume pretending to be something less animal than it is. It smells like a school that teaches claws and then ties ribbons to them.

Well, isn’t that exactly what it is?

Two steps down the staircase, and he sees Lira there in the lobby, apparently on her way out. Amias shuts his eyes in exasperation before reopening them.

Lira is the last person he wants to see right now. He’s been doing a good job avoiding her since the beginning of the awakening ceremony, and now, he’s accidentally bumping into her, thanks to Heidi.

He wouldn’t have encountered her if he hadn’t stepped out to help Heidi. It’s crazy, how despite that, he’ll still do it again.

He knows how to protect the things he cherishes. ’The people he cherishes’ A title Lira absences and might never feature in.

The moment she catches a whiff of him, Lira comes toward him the way she always does with a kind of faithful speed, like she was born under a promise. Her hair falls in a neat curtain around her face, hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket. She’s always slightly too composed; tonight, she looks as if someone has placed her in a suit of armor meant for a parade. She brightens when she sees him, the way flowers might tilt toward the sun even when the weather’s wrong.

He wants to step into the warmth, let her arms wrap around him, to forget his throat feels bruised from the words he never let out. He wants to fold himself into the lie they’ve been practicing. The pretend lovers who lift each other’s statuses by association, a bargain they once made to keep their families’ tempers dulled. Instead he shrugs her off with a motion that is more reflex than cruelty.

"I have to be somewhere," he says, and the sound is small and inadequate.

Lira’s hands fall away mid-motion, fingers hovering as if unsure whether he’s pulling away or not. He hates that she looks hurt. He hates that he has to be the one to make her hurt, because pain is a currency and he is bankrupt. But she doesn’t know when to stop, does she?

She never does. This isn’t what he wants and it is high time she learns that.

"Where?" she asks, brows furrowing in that lovely concern of hers that he has learned to expect.

He could tell her the truth — that he’s meeting Corvin to collect a favor, to grease a wheel he never wanted to have to touch. He could tell her he’s going because Heidi has been targeted and rumor will chew and swallow her whole unless something big and loud intervenes. He could tell her that he is going because he cares too much, because the bond makes thinking of her like a splinter under his ribs. He could say any of those things.

He says, instead, "I’ll tell you later."

That’s the lie that settles everything. Lira’s face goes fragile for half a minute before it stiffens. There’s a creature of habit in her is that she does not like not knowing where she stands. She does not know when to give up. She refuses to acknowledge that he might respect her, but he’ll never love her.

That’s the truth.

She shakes the lie she sees in his eyes off with a smile. How fast her smiles returns like a mask she’s good at holding will never cease to faze Amias

"Okay," she raises her hands in surrender, voice wonky with the effort to be small. "Be safe."

Just like that? No dramatics. No demanding to come along with him? As sincere as Lira seems, Amias knows her well enough to know how manipulative she can sometimes be. He pardons her sometimes and shoves it under the fact that she’s a desperate young woman...

Desperate for the love of a man who can never be hers where emotions are concerned. Poor, poor Lira.