"You never lied," Kidd said. "You just left things out."
Ithilien flinched—barely.
"You assumed."
"Because it was logical."
"Because it was convenient," she replied before she could stop herself.
The word struck him like a slap. She saw it clearly in his face: the way his expression hardened, the way the muscles in his jaw tightened, the way his shoulders shifted ever so slightly—as if his body had already prepared to strike before his mind had issued the command.
At that moment the hallway door creaked and Marco stepped back into the kitchen, phone still in his hand. He wore the expression of someone summoned by responsibility rather than drama.
"I have to go," he said without preamble, looking first at Ithilien, then at Kidd, as though he could assess tension faster than most people read the weather. "They need me at the hospital. If I get a response from RiverBend or manage to pull something from the system, I'll let you know. But for now…" He spread his hands in a gesture that looked less like helplessness and more like cool calculation. "For now we have to wait."
Kidd nodded. Ithilien did the same—too quickly, too smoothly, as if both of them had suddenly remembered they were supposed to appear normal.
Marco grabbed his jacket, gave them a brief look that might have been a warning or a request, and left. The door closed behind him, and once again the house belonged only to the two of them.
Ithilien turned back to the sink and began cleaning faster, louder, as though the noise could stop the thoughts slipping away from her control. Kidd stood too close. He didn't touch her, didn't speak, but his presence thickened the air around her—heavy, irritating. She could feel his gaze on the back of her neck, on her hands, on every tension in her shoulders.
"So…" he began at last.
"No," she cut in without turning around.
The tone caught him off guard. It wasn't cold. It was sharp.
"No?" he repeated, something that might have been amusement flickering in his voice—if it hadn't been so tight. Ithilien set the last plate down, turned off the water, and dried her hands slowly, as though every movement was a deliberate decision.
"We're not talking about it."
Kidd remained silent for a few seconds. Then, in a movement that felt completely out of place in that quiet kitchen, he reached for a plate from the drying rack. Ithilien didn't even have time to ask what he was doing.
The porcelain didn't crack.
It disappeared inside his hand.
The sharp crack echoed through the room as the plate shattered under the sudden pressure. Fragments scattered across the floor.
She turned instantly. Kidd stood there with his fist clenched so tightly his knuckles had gone white. Small shards of porcelain remained caught between his fingers, and a thin line of blood appeared along his skin. He didn't look like someone trying to frighten her. He looked like someone who had done it because the alternative was breaking himself.
Adrahil was close. Too close.
"Oh, great," Ithilien hissed, every trace of politeness evaporating like steam. "You have to destroy something to get my attention?"
His eyes flashed. In that moment there was no apology left in them, no diplomacy. Only authority. Instinct. Raw emotion he could no longer hide.
"Yes," he said hoarsely. "Because you're looking at everything except me."
The sentence was absurd which made it hit even harder.
Ithilien took one step toward him. Then another.
Until she stood so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body, see the movement in his throat as he swallowed, hear the slight shift in his breathing. The scent of jasmine mixed with the metallic tang of blood and something deeper, something more primal that filled the kitchen like smoke.
"Who exactly do you think you are?" she growled quietly. Beneath her skin Tauriel pulled back her lips in instinctive warning. "Did you think I was some poor, unfortunate she-wolf who lost her mate, so you'd show up and become my savior?"
Kidd didn't answer immediately. He looked at her as though he were fighting his own body, his own wolf—fighting the way her closeness felt like a provocation.
"No…" he started but she didn't give him space to finish.
"Do you even understand what a bond is?" Her voice sharpened, quickened, as if anger was dragging words out of her that she had kept buried for years. "It happens once in a lifetime. Wolves don't get second chances. It's not some beautiful romantic story. It hurts. It tears you apart from the inside. It makes you dependent. Trapped."
Kidd shuddered almost imperceptibly, as if each word struck him physically. He didn't step back.
"It's a cage," she hissed. "And no, I didn't lose him."
"So let me get this straight…" he began, Adrahil surged forward like a rising tide. He drew a deeper breath, as though trying to lock the wolf behind his ribs again. "Your partner. Your alpha. Is alive. And you're standing on my territory with his scent still wrapped around your pulse."
That was the moment her mask shattered completely.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" she snapped, the words cutting like glass.
For a split second Kidd looked as though he might answer with something equally brutal. Instead, his body betrayed him first. The tension in his shoulders. The subtle shift of his hands. The change in his breathing—hotter now.
Adrahil wanted movement.
Wanted her.
Ithilien felt it immediately, as though the air had thickened and pressed against her skin.
"What are you trying to do?" she asked quietly, her anger now so pure it sounded almost calm. "Because if you think you can claim me with nothing but your temper—"
She stepped even closer. Her breath brushed his jaw. For a fraction of a second Kidd's control cracked. Desire surged through him—fed by anger, by proximity, by the challenge blazing in her eyes. Her jasmine scent flooded his senses.
Levi had once called them uncomfortable thoughts.
Fuck.
Kidd gathered every ounce of strength he possessed to keep from moving even an inch. Because he knew if he did—if he reached for her—he wouldn't stop. For one dangerous moment he imagined it far too clearly. The taste of her anger. The sound she might make if he touched her. His hand at the back of her neck. Her bent over the table—
He clenched his jaw hard enough for pain to cut through the thought.
Not now.
Not here.
But Adrahil kept pressing forward, and Ithilien watched him as if she were waiting to see whether the alpha of Oregon would be the first to break.
"I have no intention of being your savior," Kidd said at last.
He remained perfectly still, held upright by sheer force of will. Every muscle in his body felt tight, as if one wrong movement would break whatever fragile control he still had left.
Ithilien let out a sharp breath.
"Good," she replied. "Because I didn't come here to be rescued."
For a moment neither of them moved. They stood too close in the narrow kitchen, the tension between them stretched thin as wire.
Kidd's expression hardened.
"No," he said quietly. "You didn't. For people like you and him… there is no rescue."
Her eyes flashed immediately.
"What could you possibly know about it?"
Kidd let out a short laugh. The sound was rough, almost mocking.
"Oh, quite a lot."
He looked at her with cold, deliberate scrutiny, the way a wolf measures something it has already decided to challenge. Beneath that calm surface, wounded pride pushed the next words out of him before he could stop them.
"I know a coward when I see one."
Ithilien froze.
"How dare you speak about something you don't understand."
Kidd didn't back down. If anything, the quiet fury in her voice only sharpened his own.
"No, Ithilien," he said slowly, her name sounded so softly, almost deadly. "I don't understand what kind of man chooses someone else and still refuses to break the bond. I don't understand what kind of miserable bastard would condemn not only himself, but everyone around him, to that kind of torture."
His voice dropped, edged with contempt.
"For what?" He tilted his head slightly, studying her. "Who exactly is this alpha of yours? Did he confuse real life with some drama?" A cynical smile appeared on his lips. "An alpha?" Kidd shook his head once. "A man who does that doesn't deserve the title."
"You know nothing about him."
Her voice trembled slightly—not from weakness, but from the sheer force of the emotion she was holding back. Kidd didn't soften.
"I know enough," he replied. "I know he left you standing in the ruins of something he didn't have the courage to finish."
"He didn't leave me!"
The words came out sharp and fast, before she could stop them.
For a split second Kidd saw it, again. The crack.
Not in her composure—something deeper.
Adrahil felt it too. The wolf stirred inside him, instantly alert, drawn to that flash of raw emotion the way predators react to the scent of blood.
Ithilien realized what she had revealed the moment the words left her mouth. Her jaw tightened, and Tauriel rose beneath her skin like a silent warning.
"He chose his pack," she said more quietly. The anger was still there, burning behind every word. "Something you might understand if you weren't so busy measuring the world in territory lines and wounded pride."
Kidd's eyes darkened.
"Don't take me for a fool."
"I don't," she replied coldly. "I take you for someone who thinks every problem can be solved with dominance and threats."
That struck deeper than she intended. For a moment the room seemed to tilt.
Adrahil did not like her tone.
Did not like the lingering scent of another alpha on her.
Did not like the fact that she stood this close and refused to step back.
The wolf pushed forward under Kidd's skin, restless and territorial.
Kidd exhaled slowly, forcing it down.
"You're defending him."
"Of course I am."
"Even after he broke you?"
Her eyes flashed like lightning.
"I'm not broken."
Outside, thunder rolled across the hills, as if the storm had been waiting for that moment.
Kidd studied her in silence. She stood there with her chin raised, fury bright in her eyes, her scent sharp with emotion and something else beneath it—something stubborn, alive, unyielding.
And suddenly he understood something that made the entire situation far more complicated than he wanted it to be; She wasn't protecting the man.
She was protecting the bond.
Adrahil went very still at that realization. Kidd felt it like a shift under his ribs.
Dangerous and far more interesting than it had any right to be.
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, though there was no humor in it.
"You know what the worst part is?" he asked quietly.
Ithilien narrowed her eyes.
"I'm sure you're about to tell me."
His gaze didn't leave hers.