Chapter 163

Darius

She’d walked out without waiting for my dismissal.

Most wolves wouldn’t have dared. Most women wouldn’t have survived the silence that followed.

But Alaria… she didn’t flinch. She didn’t even look back. The soft sway of her hair was the only trace she left as she disappeared through the doorway, and somehow that was louder than any argument we could’ve had.

I sat there long after she’d gone, the untouched food between us cooling into nothing. The candlelight flickered, shadows cutting across the table like old scars. The air still held her scent, soft, warm, infuriatingly alive.

For the first time in years, I couldn’t name what I was feeling.

It wasn’t victory.

It wasn’t desire, not in the way I understood it.

It was something quieter, sharper, threaded with a strange, reluctant respect.

A feeling that I didn’t even think that I was capable of having.

She had faced me without trembling.

And that, I reali