25. Her
“Z-Zinnia?” Seff repeated in a shutter, blindsided by the shift in Kiran’s tone. “Selene asked that name too… Are you going to ask if I know Calla? Who are they?”
Seff went through a spectrum of emotion, seesawing between anger and fear. *Confusion* perched in its center waiting to lean this or that way to knock one or the other off. It chose anger in light of Kiran asking the same damn thing as Selene as if they’d planned it—and with the same unabashed desperation, Alphas stripped to their most vulnerable cores.
But *Calla* was not what Kiran wanted to hear. Iron walls slammed down to hide that core, abandoning his gentle acts in favor of wordlessly snarling as he seemed at a loss of what to do with his limbs—he didn’t want to touch her even though it was clear he had the intention of doing so in his frustration. Seff bared her own teeth in a half-smile at the realization. “I almost fell for it,” she growled before he could get a word in first.
It wasn’t totally true, but it wasn’t totally false. Something deep, deep inside her told her that maybe Kiran could keep his word and be kind enough that she could see goodness in him. This baring of the soul was a chink in armor, but he kept patching it. What would ever make him not keep hiding the weakness?
“Don’t *ever* say that name again,” he snarled, chest heaving, arms pinned at his sides.
“Why?” she spat back. It was a risk, provoking him. But he was the only one Seff was mad at, the only one she needed to take her anger out on.
Kiran brought his face mere inches from Seff’s and she thought he might kill her at that moment. Instead he growled, “I killed her for a reason. I never want to relive that.”
He straightened abruptly. “If you want to fuck Selene, be my guest. Just know it will be Allium’s death sentence.”
Anger tipped into rage like the flip of a switch. “No.”
Kiran’s eyes flashed deadly gold. “No?”
“No,” Seff repeated. “If you want me to stay, you’ll *protect* Allium. If you hurt her in any way, I walk straight over to Selene *with* Allium.”
Kiran’s smile drew up with such deliberate slowness that it took Seff that long to see just how stupid the challenge sounded.
“Sweet wolf, you are still a child. Your naivety amuses me so. If I let you leave my orchard…” He leaned down toward her again, forcing her back into the corner. She didn’t want to cower, but at this moment she had no choice. “What makes you think I won’t start a war?”
“Over…over *me*?”
“Yes, *you*,” he said with sudden irritation, slamming his palm on the wall beside her head. “*You*—”
There was another slam—the main door. Allium stood on the threshold.
*“Her?!”*
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