IRIS POV
The word sits between them like something alive.
Mate. She's said it out loud and now it exists in the world and she can't take it back. Iris watches Kane's face transform. The vulnerability disappears. The softness vanishes. He rebuilds the walls so fast it's like they were never down in the first place.
"You don't understand what you're saying," Kane tells her. His voice is cold now. Distant. Like the man who just let her touch his scars doesn't exist anymore. "A mate bond is permanent. It's everything. It's forever."
"Then let it be forever," Iris says. She steps toward him but he steps back.
"You're human," Kane says harshly. "I will live for centuries after you die. I'll watch you grow old. I'll watch your skin wrinkle and your hair turn gray and your body fail. And I'll still be here looking exactly the same. The pain of losing you is already written. It's already guaranteed. That's not love, Iris. That's torture."
His words hit her like physical blows. She understands what he's saying. Understands the logic of it. But logic doesn't matter when your heart is screaming that he's wrong.
"What if I don't care?" Iris asks. Her voice is shaking. "What if forever with you is worth everything I'd have to give up? What if I don't want years and years of a normal human life if I can't spend it with you?"
Kane looks at her like she just said something incomprehensible.
"You will care," he says. "When you're forty and I'm still thirty-five. When you're sixty and your bones hurt from age. When you're dying and I'm still strong. You'll care then. You'll resent me. You'll hate me. And I'll have to live with that forever."
He walks away.
Just turns around and walks back into the darkness of the forest and leaves her standing alone in the clearing with her heart breaking in her chest. Iris calls after him but he doesn't stop. Doesn't look back. Doesn't acknowledge that she's falling apart right in front of him.
She sinks to the ground and cries.
Actually cries. Tears streaming down her face. Her body shaking with the weight of what she's just realized. She came to this forest searching for answers about her brother and instead she found her mate. The one person in the entire universe her soul recognizes as home. And he's walking away from her because he's too broken to believe in love.
She spends the entire next day trying to find him.
She walks the compound looking for Kane. Checks his quarters. Searches the offices. But everywhere she goes, he's already left. It's like he's made himself invisible on purpose. Like he's erasing himself from her life one moment at a time.
Except for the eyes watching her from the forest.
His wolf never leaves.
Iris catches glimpses of it throughout the day. Gold eyes watching her from between the trees. The massive black form moving parallel to her when she walks. His wolf following her like a guardian. Like a protector. Like his heart is refusing to obey the commands his mind is giving.
The conflict is written in every moment. Kane's human side trying so hard to push her away. Kane's wolf side completely unable to let her go.
That night Iris sits by the compound fence and lets herself fall apart.
She's not crying quietly. She's sobbing. Deep, wrenching sounds that come from somewhere inside her that's been broken since Marcus disappeared. All the grief she's been carrying. All the loss. All the hope that she'd find answers and it would somehow fix what was shattered when her brother died.
Instead she found something worse than answers. She found love. And it's impossible.
A voice speaks from behind her.
"He'll come around eventually."
Iris spins around to find Marcus Thorne standing there. The silver-haired man who helped her that first day. His expression is kind but knowing like he understands exactly what's happening between her and Kane.
"I don't think so," Iris says bitterly. "He thinks I'm going to resent him. That I'll hate him for being immortal."
Marcus sits down beside her on the fence. He's close enough that she can feel his warmth but not so close that it feels invasive.
"He's an idiot," Marcus says plainly. "But he's an idiot who's been alone for a very long time. An idiot who watched his parents die because their mate bond made them reckless. An idiot who's spent three hundred years convinced that love is a weakness."
"Then I'll convince him otherwise," Iris says. But her voice sounds hollow.
"You will," Marcus says. He turns to look at her and there's something in his expression that feels like hope. "I've known Kane since before his family died. I've watched him build walls so high that nothing could touch him. I've watched him run an entire pack with his heart completely locked away."
Iris looks at him, waiting for him to finish.
"But I've never," Marcus continues, "in all those centuries, seen him look at anyone the way he looks at you. His wolf recognizes you as his mate. And no matter how hard his human side fights it, his heart's already made the choice. He's going to fight this with everything he has. But he's going to lose. And deep down, I think he knows it."
Iris's chest tightens with something that might be hope.
"How do you know that?" she asks.
Marcus smiles sadly. "Because I recognize the look. I've seen it before. I've lived it. I was the same way with my mate before I finally accepted what we were to each other. Fear is just love wearing a different mask. And Kane is terrified of you."
He stands up and starts to walk away.
"Give him time," Marcus says over his shoulder. "But not too much. Because eventually the wolf is going to overpower the human. And when that happens, neither of you will be able to stop what comes next."
Iris sits alone on the fence watching the forest darken.
Somewhere in those trees, Kane's wolf is watching her. Waiting. Fighting against the chains his human side keeps trying to wrap around it. And Marcus is right. The wolf is going to win eventually.
The only question is what Kane is going to do when it does.