Page 48 of Scarlet Wars
“What?”
And then I just told him. “I found out James is Alek’s father.”
TWELVE
EMMA
Caden’s head snapped back like he’d just been struck. “What? How?”
I leaned back against the wall as I stared up at him, this beautiful, infuriating man who had gone farther for me than anyone ever should. He’d fought, bled, risked everything without ever needing a reason other than me.
And now… Would all of it vanish? Would the fragile thing between us snap the moment he realized the truth? Would his loyalty evaporate if he found out he wasn’t Alek’s father, or that the chances he ever was had been laughably small from the start?
“He told me as soon as I portaled into Cyclos,” I said finally, the words tasting like ash.
Caden moved to the windowsill on the other side of the room, bracing himself against the frame. His jaw flexed once as his eyes stormed, an entire tempest I couldn’t get a hold of. “Tell me everything.”
A little overtwo months ago.
Leaving Crown behind was a lot harder than I’d ever imagined. I found myself crying real, aching tears over a place I’d once dreaded stepping foot in. A place I had only fled to in the first place to escape James, the man I had believed, with all my heart, would be the love of my life. But Crown had changed me in ways I hadn’t expected. My time over there had forced me to confront truths I’d buried for too long, and one of those truths was this: I had never been truly happy in Cyclos. Not like I’d been at Crown.
James was the man who had opened the door to this world for me, the one who’d held my hand through the storm until I could stand on my own, and I would always love him for it.
But he was also the man who never let me go. Never let megrow. Never let me discover who I could become without him by my side. And with whom I’d never known true partnership.
He was not the man who brought out the best version of myself. Who could challenge me enough to grow into the badass version of myself I knew I could be.
In bearing all his responsibilities and keeping his lies, he had become a man who had wanted to keep me small, to keep me safe.
I could forgive him for the lies and deceit, but not for that. Never for that.
And I needed to tell him.
I portaled into my old room, the familiar scent hitting me harder than expected. Everything was right as I’d left it, except for the glowing message from Jackson already waiting. I quickly nexed him, telling him I would prefer to meet James first bymyself if the all mighty Leader of Cyclos could find the time to come grace me with his presence.
Which he did, no more than a minute after my arrival.
The knock on my door was soft, tentative, but it reverberated through me like a thunderclap. My chest tightened as I swallowed back the flood of emotions threatening to spill over.
“It’s open,” I called, sounding steady, though I didn’t feel like it.
There was a pause, long enough for doubt to creep in, and then I heard the faint click of the handle. The door eased open, and there he was.
Time seemed to stop as our eyes met. All the distance, all the silence between us, disappeared in an instant, replaced by something raw and unspoken. He stood there, framed in the doorway, looking at me as if I were the answer to every question he couldn’t bring himself to ask.
And I felt…nervous. On edge. I was glad to see him alive and well, but there was no rush of joy, no overwhelming relief like I’d thought there would be after five months of nothing. Instead, something else gnawed at me.
Because in those five months, he hadn’t reached out. Not once. No nexing, no texting, not anything. This man, who had lied and deceived me throughout our entire relationship, had had the audacity to ignore me completely.
“You’re back,” he said, his statement breaking the silence first and catching me completely off guard.
I tilted my head. “You sound surprised.”
“I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again,” he admitted, stepping forward hesitantly.
I crossed my arms tightly over my chest. “Well, if you’d bothered to nex me once or twice in the past months, you’d have known this was always the plan.”
He swallowed hard, his gaze darting away from mine. “Emma?—”
