Page 64 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

“I’d do it again.” My voice comes out rough. “Getting her back was worth anything you could have taken. I don’t understand why hearing this is doing what it’s doing to me.”

“That’s the exact point,” he says. “Being willing to pay a price and being handed one you were never told about are two different things. They stay different even when the answer would have been yes either way.”

The horses have gone quiet at the far rail.

“Then why let me climb it?” I ask it straight. “You knew what it would break. You knew what breaking it would do to every realm. You had a choice about that. I didn’t.”

Samuel takes his time. “Because leaving that truth buried forever would have taken something just as real,” he says. “From every realm. Knowing that, we wouldn’t have stopped you.” He holds it. “Not then. Not now.”

I go still, the same stillness Sasha used to catch on me for the better part of a year after Maelik’s compound, when she’d come into a room and find me sitting exactly where she’d left me an hour before. She’d say my name twice before I answered her.

What he’s taken isn’t my life. It’s the belief that fighting for Harper was ever mine to choose. I built the last part of my life on standing up in that chamber and putting myself on the table for her. They already knew what I’d say before I said it. I push off the fence and turn toward the treeline. That’s where I used to go. Hours at a time, before her, when there were things I couldn’t say out loud to anyone. Samuel stays where he is at the pasture’s edge and lets me walk. Six steps into the grass the bond hauls at my chest. It pulls hard, backwards, which only happens when she’s already moving. Then her voice comes across the open field.

“Ben.”

I turn around before I’ve gone another step. Harper’s most of the way across the pasture at a near run with one hand clamped over her inner wrist.

“It went hot,” she says when she reaches me. “No warning. It’s still going. Ben, it’s sharp, it’s never done that.”

My hand covers hers over the mark before I’ve decided to reach for it. Her skin is hot enough for me to feel through both our hands. He’s working it wider tonight. That’s what Samuel said. It’s standing in front of me now, her heart beating under my palm, because the crack he’s pulling at and the mark on her wrist are the same thing. I take her hand from her wrist and hold it in mine instead.

“Listen,” I say. “To all of it” and I give it to her start to finish, the same way he gave it to me.

Then the rest. “They needed love willing to break itself,” I say. “That’s what the Ascent was for. It was built to take everything so they’d know the real thing was in me before they spent it. I wasn’t buying you back, Harper. I was paying off something the whole world owed and nobody told me.”

She doesn’t let go of my hand but when I’m finished she stands there for a moment. “Benji.” She waits until I look at her. “What you feel for me is real, it was real long before any of them needed it to be. It was real every day after. None of what they did with it belongs to them.”

“They used it.”

“They used it. They never made it.” Her mouth eases out of the line it’s been in since she got here. “You climbed that thing for me. Whatever they knew, you’re the one who climbed it. That part is yours and I’m keeping it.”

Samuel is still at the pasture’s edge. “The debt is settled,” he says. “Nothing further will be asked of you for it.”

“That’s it?” I ask.

“That’s it.” He looks at the two of us for a moment longer. Then his voice drops. “Nyxiana is my granddaughter. She’s learning the other half of this tonight, in her own realm, in her own way.”

His wings open. The light gathers in around him the same way it did when he arrived. Then the pasture is darker than it was and there’s only the two of us standing in it. She stays exactly where she is while my breathing comes back down. Neither of us says anything. Her hand stays in mine.

“I had it worked out,” I tell her. “I’d braced for something physical. Pain. A scar. Something taken from me that I could look at with the knowledge that it was over.”

“And instead?”

“Instead they took the part where fighting for you was mine.” My voice comes out low. “I never knew that was still on the table.”

Her thumb moves once across my knuckles. “Dane needs to hear this tonight,” she says. “Not in the morning. All of it, the old history included. If that crack is opening like he described, this pack is standing a lot closer to it than anybody’s told them.”

“Agreed.”

“And Benji.” She waits until I look at her again. “You’re telling him with me standing there. Not on your own in his office at midnight.”

“All right.”

We start back across the grass toward the lodge. At the north rail the horses have settled, gone back to the grass with their heads down, only one is still watching the trees. I’ll tell Dane about that too, along with the bond hauling backward before she ever called my name, and a mark going hot on my mate’s wrist for a reason nobody can explain yet. The windows of the lodge are lit. We go in together.

Chapter 37

Nyxiana