Kaelen's POV
This should have been finished.
I had made that promise to myself. I married Lyra. I tried moving ahead with my life. I constructed barriers around the pieces of my soul that still throbbed whenever memories of Genevieve and our past surfaced.
Lyra ruled those spaces now.
Yet seeing her standing there demolished those barriers like they were constructed from tissue paper.
It revealed that some part of me still clung to her.
My chest constricted. My hands trembled uncontrollably. And I understood, with absolute certainty, that remaining here would devastate Lyra. Yet I couldn't force myself to leave. I couldn't make myself turn around and return to the ballroom where my mate waited, ready to reassure her that everything was buried now.
Perhaps this concerned closure. Perhaps it didn't. I had lost all certainty.
