Too Late for Tears: the Twin Alphas' Lost Mate novel Chapter 5

It is a small sound, dry, almost wondering.

“You finally figured it out.”

Iris goes very still.

“Skin and bones. Dressed like a beggar. Wandering the kitchens at midmorning so anyone can pity you the long walk back to the family table.” He shakes his head, the corner of his mouth lifting in something that is not a smile. “I’ll give you this much, Iris - three years ago you wouldn’t have had the nerve. Black Rock taught you something after all.”

The trays in her hands feel weightless, and the air weighs everything. Heat blooms behind her eyes. She clenches her jaw against it, hard.

Her face stays blank. She asked for too much yesterday. She is not asking again.

“Move out of my way, Adrian.”

“Move out of your way.” He pushes off the wall, slow, and his bootheels thud on the corridor stone - once, twice - closing the distance between them by half. “That’s funny. That’s actually funny. Because the last time I saw you, Iris, you were standing in the dock at your sentencing, and you didn’t have a single word for me. Not one. Three years, and now you want me to step aside? After everything I -”

“Adrian.” Her voice is quiet, but something in it surprises her. A warning. “I’m carrying breakfast trays. Move.”

He stops a foot from her.

This close, she can see the silver pin at his collar. His beta’s mark - the same one her father had given his father. She had held it against the sun once when she was nine, and Adrian had laughed when she pinned it to her own collar and pretended to be Cedric. He’d told her she would be a hell of an Alpha when she grew up, and he would be her beta until she was old.

She drops her gaze to it for a heartbeat. Lifts it. Shows him nothing.

“Three years, Iris,” he says, low. “You haven’t even said you’re sorry.”

“For what?”

The word is out before she can stop it.

His expression goes dark and tight.

“For what.” He tastes it like he can’t believe she’s said it. “For what. Goddess, you’ve lost the plot.”

“I didn’t burn anything, Adrian.”

She hadn't meant to say it. She'd promised Cedric to keep silent. But the words come out flat, almost involuntary, and once they are out she cannot put them back.

“And your sister was -”

She stops. She hasn't let herself think about Elena since the trial. Could not. Some doors you do not open.

But Adrian’s eyes have changed.

“Don’t.” The single word, soft and dangerous. “Don’t you dare put my sister’s name in your mouth. Not after everything you have already done.”

She holds his gaze.

She'd never thought of him as someone who could frighten her. But the man in front of her is a stranger, vindicated, almost relieved to have her here at last so he could get what he was owed.

“Apologize, Iris.”

“I didn't do anything wrong.”

For a heartbeat she thinks he is going to hit her.

He doesn’t. He grabs her wrist.

The trays hit the stone with a clatter, silver bouncing, plates smashing, someone shouting somewhere about the noise. He shoulders her sideways through a doorway she hadn't noticed, and she stumbles into the deep, dark space of a windowless storeroom -

“Adrian — ”

“Stay there until you can find a kinder mouth.”

“Adrian — ”

“Stay there, Iris.”

The door slams.

The lock clicks.

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