Defying the Lycan King (Kira and Derek) novel Chapter 106

Chapter 106: Pick a Lane

Derek did not turn around. But his posture shifted the way it always did when he registered her presence, a small, almost imperceptible adjustment, the awareness of another person entering his space.

Kira kept her face arranged, moved to the fridge and opened it to find something to take with her, telling herself she was unbothered.

"You’ve been skipping breakfast," he suddenly said, not turning to look at her.

She turned her head. He had turned from the stove, and their eyes met across the kitchen, and her traitorous, entirely unreasonable heart did the thing it had been doing since the night of the dance. She looked away quickly, reaching further into the fridge for something her hands hadn’t actually found yet, hoping the cool air from the open door explained any colour in her face.

"I eat when I’m hungry," she said.

She heard him move before she registered that he was moving, and then she was no longer looking into the fridge. She was standing with her back to it, the door swinging shut, and Derek was directly in front of her, close enough that she had to tilt her chin up to hold his gaze. Something sharp and unreadable moved through his amber eyes.

"Hunger isn’t the only reason to eat, Kira. Do you want to kill—" He stopped. Something flickered across his face, and he reset. "Do you plan to starve yourself to death?"

She felt the flash of emotion move through her before she could stop it, all the days of distance and silence and lying awake in a quiet room pressing up against the inside of her chest.

"You don’t get to stand there pretending to care," she said.

His brows drew together. "What do you mean?"

She tried to move around him, because if she stood here any longer with his eyes on her face, she was going to say more than she had intended to, and today of all days, she needed her composure intact. But his hand caught her arm, gently, and she found her back against the fridge again, his palm flat beside her head, not trapping her, just present.

"Talk to me," he said.

She looked at him for a moment. At the genuine confusion in his face, the absence of the cold mask, the way he was actually looking at her, and something gave way quietly.

"I know this marriage isn’t real," she said.

"I know what it is. I’m not asking for something that it isn’t. But you cannot take me through this every other week. You’re warm and present one day, and the next you’ve disappeared completely. You blow hot, you blow cold, and I’m just supposed to keep adjusting."

She held his gaze steadily. "Pick a lane, Derek. Whichever one it is, I can manage it. I just need it to be consistent."

The kitchen was very quiet.

Something in his expression shifted, softening in the way she had only seen a handful of times, and each time it undid her a little more.

"Is that why you haven’t been eating?" he asked.

"I told you. I eat when I’m hungry."

He pulled back, but he took her with him, one hand at her elbow, guiding her to the kitchen island and settling her onto it with a careful deliberateness that she did not quite know how to respond to.

She opened her mouth to say she was already running late, but he was already back at the stove, and within a second, a plate slid onto the counter in front of her.

A perfectly folded omelette, golden at the edges, with two slices of toast beside it. Two mugs of steaming hot chocolate followed.

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