Chapter 216: It Could Destroy Them All

Alaric:

I held his gaze for a moment before shaking my head.

"I don’t know." The admission felt unpleasant, but I wasn’t going to lie to him. "I’m not going to pretend I have some brilliant solution hidden up my sleeve. I don’t even know what the right answer looks like yet." I paused, then shifted slightly so I could face him more directly. "But I’m going to find out. Because watching you drink yourself into oblivion isn’t a solution, and neither is spending the rest of your life pretending you don’t care about her. I don’t plan to end up like you."

Kairo stared at me as though he couldn’t quite decide whether to believe me. Then he let out a soft sigh and slumped backward against the bed, his head resting against the mattress. "I always thought you had the best control over your feelings out of all of us," he admitted. "You never seemed to struggle the way the rest of us do. Reign has his own issues, Esme is practically determined to win her heart, and Lorien..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "But you always seemed fine. I never caught you looking at her the way we do. I thought you were the one person who had managed to stay out of this mess."

I laughed once, without humor, and dragged a hand down my face. "That’s because I was an idiot who thought ignoring a problem meant it didn’t exist." Kairo turned to look at me. I leaned my head back against the wall, searching for the words to explain something I had barely admitted to myself.

"When Elara first arrived at the academy, Reign launched his little campaign against her, and following his lead felt natural. He was my friend, she was a stranger, and I had no reason to question why he wanted to put her in her place. Besides, tormenting some arrogant new student would normally have been entertaining. Most people would have backed down after a few days. They would have tried to avoid us, stayed quiet, or done whatever they could to make themselves less noticeable. But not her. She fought back. Every single time. She refused to be intimidated, refused to hide, and refused to act like we were more important than we actually were."

I remembered the first time she had looked me directly in the eyes after one of our pranks, her expression burning with fury but her spine perfectly straight. I remembered the satisfaction I had expected to feel and the strange discomfort that had followed instead.

"The more she fought back, the less fun it became. Not because she was winning, but because I started realizing how wrong it felt to keep attacking someone who hadn’t done anything to deserve it. I wasn’t enjoying myself anymore. I was just making her life miserable because Reign had decided she needed to be taught a lesson." I paused, staring at my hands. "And the more I saw her, the more I started noticing things I hadn’t wanted to notice. Her intelligence. Her courage. The way she could be infuriatingly stubborn one moment and unexpectedly kind the next. I became curious about her. Then I became attracted to her. And by the time I realized what was happening, I was already in too deep."

Kairo listened without interrupting, his expression unreadable. I took another breath and continued.

"Then Reign dropped the mate bomb, and everything changed. Suddenly, Elara wasn’t just an interesting woman I had developed feelings for. She was my best friend’s fated mate. And whatever I felt for her, I decided it had to stop. Immediately." I shook my head at my foolish self. "I thought it would be simple. I’d stop seeking her out, keep my distance, and focus on everything else. I told myself that whatever attraction I felt would disappear once I stopped feeding it. So I stayed away from her as much as possible. I convinced myself I was doing the right thing."

A bitter smile tugged at my mouth.

"Except the more I tried to ignore her, the more I noticed her. The more I forced myself to stay away, the more I wanted to be near her. She started appearing in my dreams, and I caught myself thinking about her at the most ridiculous times. I would hear her voice in my head when she wasn’t even in the room. And every time I saw Reign, I had to remind myself why I had chosen to step back in the first place."

I fell silent for a moment, allowing the admission to settle. "I kept telling myself it was just a normal attraction, something I could overcome if I tried hard enough. But I’m starting to wonder whether I have been fighting something far more complicated than that. Something magical. Something powerful enough that none of us fully understands it yet." I looked at Kairo. "And if that’s what this is, then I don’t think I can keep fighting it simply because I’m afraid of what it might mean."

The room fell quiet again. Kairo stared at me for a long moment, his earlier exhaustion giving way to something more alert, something that looked suspiciously like recognition.

"You feel it too, then?" he asked eventually. "That there’s something happening between Elara and the rest of us? Not Reign, obviously. His situation is different. But the rest of us."

I nodded slowly. "Yes. I don’t know what it is, and I’m not going to pretend I understand it. But there’s something there."

Kairo’s eyes narrowed slightly as he considered my answer. "Then what do you think it is?"

I looked down at the floor, searching for an explanation that didn’t exist. I could have offered him a dozen theories, but none of them would have been anything more than speculation.

"Honestly? I have no idea." I turned back toward him, my expression growing serious. "But whatever it is, we need to find out before it does more damage. We need to understand what’s happening to us, why Elara seems to be at the center of it, and whether there’s something about her magic or our own that we haven’t discovered yet."

I paused, thinking of Reign’s quiet message and the worry he had tried to hide behind those four simple words. "And once we have some answers, we need to talk to Reign. Properly. No more secrets, no more pretending everything is fine, and no more making decisions for each other without understanding the consequences. Because if we keep going like this, whatever is happening between us won’t just hurt Elara. It could destroy all of us."