Too Late for Tears: the Twin Alphas' Lost Mate novel Chapter 3

Iris heads for the staircase, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Queen Elara spoke to her. Smiled.

"Iris."

Cedric's voice stops her on the third step. She turns.

He's crossed the foyer, Viola trailing behind him like a shadow. The Queen and her entourage have moved deeper into the house, thank the goddess.

"The Queen seemed... interested in you," Cedric says carefully.

Iris shrugs. "She was being polite, I guess."

"She's never that polite," he mutters. And the kinds of questions she was asking… His eyes narrow. "What was all that about? The White Wolf?"

"I don't know.”

He raises an eyebrow, waiting. She doesn’t budge.

Viola peers around Cedric's shoulder. "She must have seen something special in you, Iris,” she says, tone slightly envious. “You're still so likable.”

For a convicted arsonist who survived three years of Black Rock, she doesn’t say. Iris gets the drift.

Cedric rubs his temples, feels the tension headache coming on. His voice is laced with threat,"Iris."

She doesn’t look remorseful, doesn’t even look back.

Three years ago, she used tears and clinginess to compete for attention with Viola. Now, it’s ice. Different tactic, but it’s the same old game. If she’d just cut the bullshit and quit being so difficult, they could move past this and be a family again. He needs her to see that before she pushes everyone away for good.

He catches up with her on the stairs, gritting his teeth. "I'd hoped three years would teach you some maturity. Didn't they have reformation classes in Black Rock? Apparently, you learned nothing."

Iris goes still.

Reformation classes.

For other werewolves, there were group classes at Black Rock. For Iris, reformation class was sickening doublespeak - a solitary, cramped room so dark she couldn't see her own hands, where she was locked for hours on end. She’d always been afraid of the dark - and had made the mistake of calling for help the first few times. Had been beaten violently for it.

"What is it?"

She realizes her hands are trembling. She shoves them behind her back.

Emotion flickers across Cedric's face. He opens his mouth to speak when Viola moans softly, cradling her scraped elbow.

“Sorry," she breathes. "It just - it really stings. I'm fine, though. Don't worry about me."

Shit. He’d forgotten. "Let's get you back upstairs,” he tells Viola, “I’ll have the healer look at that."

Iris takes a breath as they tread up the stairs without her, steadies herself, and shoves the memories trying to surface down as far as they’ll go.

Moving through the east wing, she finds everything has changed.

Iris passes white walls, gold-leaf-framed artwork, chandeliers, and marble. She’s stepped into a Viola fever dream.

Then she reaches the old photo wall. Iris stops.

Three years ago, this wall held fifteen years of memories. Blowing out birthday candles with Cedric grinning behind her. Training exercises where she’d insisted on joining the older wolves. A candid shot of her laughing at something Cedric had said, his arm slung around her shoulders.

All of it. Gone.

Now there’s only Viola. Viola at a garden party. Viola with Cedric at some formal event. Viola smiling softly at the camera, delicate and perfect.

She turns away, doesn’t want to see it anymore.

Her old room is at the end of this floor’s east wing - smaller than the suites Cedric and Viola occupy on the third floor, but it had been hers.

She reaches her room, tucked in at the end of the hall. Finds, to her relief, her colorful, handwoven runner rug at her feet, runs her fingers along the familiar brass sconce. They’d let Viola redecorate everything else, but had saved this small piece of Iris.

She lets out a breath. Viola had yanked her photos from the wall, but Cedric had made sure not everything of Iris was erased.

She opens the door.

Racks of clothes greet her. Dresses, blouses, coats. There are shelves of shoes, a velvet ottoman, and a gold-framed mirror.

Viola’s walk-in closet.

Iris stands in the doorway for a long moment.

She closes the door quietly. She’d been wrong to hope. Wrong to think they still cared about her.

Numb and weary, she retraces her steps through the corridor, back toward the stairs.

“Hey.”

She turns to see Cedric and Viola filing down from the third-floor landing. He’d come back to check on her, then. The way Viola had pleaded.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify