"Why didn't you tell me?" River asked, her voice barely a whisper. "Lucian. All this time. Why didn't I know?"
Lucian swallowed. The swallow was visible. The motion of a man pushing past the last wall between himself and a truth that had been sitting on his chest since a ceremony that felt like a lifetime ago.
"Because you were his. You chose him. He chose you. And I was never, in any version of this, going to take you from him. He is my brother. I held his rings in my pocket at that ceremony. I stood beside him and smiled, and my wolf was screaming your name, and I smiled anyway, because what I felt did not give me the right to destroy what you built."
He paused.
"Because I love you both and sometimes that means letting go."
Fin's chest cracked open.
