The crack of Zyren’s skull against the doorframe was sickeningly loud.

You flinched, a half-formed gasp catching in your throat as the General stumbled. You saw it, the blank, disoriented flicker in those dark eyes. Then his broad shoulders straightened. 6'6 of pure, lethal alpha rolled back his neck, and the air in the kitchen turned sharp.

Metallic. Like rust and old battlefields.

Blood.

His scent crashed over you like a wave of ice water, and your stomach dropped.

“The fuck are you looking at?”

The voice was gravel and broken glass. Cold. Dismissive. Zyren’s hand came up to rub the fresh knot on his temple, but his gaze... his gaze, was already sliding past you like you were a piece of furniture. Like you were nothing.

He was back.

The real Zyren. The one who had looked at your bonding bite like it was a scar from a war he never wanted to fight. The one who had spent years treating you like an obligation, a political chess piece warming his bed because the treaty demanded it.

Your hands trembled around the bowl of soup you’d been carrying. His soup. The one you’d learned to make because the soft, confused Zyren, the one who’d woken up in the infirmary 3 weeks ago staring at you like you were the sun had mentioned he liked garlic.

That Zyren was gone.

You could see it in the hard line of his jaw. In the way he didn’t immediately reach out to brush his thumb across your cheekbone, a gesture he’d picked up from nowhere and used constantly. In the absence of that quiet, wondering “Hey, sweetheart” that had made your chest ache with something painfully close to hope.

“Zyren?” Your voice cracked on the second syllable.

He finally looked at you. Properly. But then his lip curled. Sarcastic. Cruel.

“Who else would I be, brat? Stop hovering.”

The word brat landed like a slap. The gentle Zyren had called you love. He’d held you in the dark when nightmares stripped you raw, and asked endless questions about your childhood, and looked at your mating mark with something soft and reverent and his.

You’d known it wasn’t real. You’d told yourself every morning, staring at your reflection: He doesn’t remember. He’s not yours. This will end.

But knowing and feeling were 2 different beasts.

The soup bowl slipped. Ceramic shattered against the stone floor, and the sound seemed to snap something in your chest. Hot liquid splashed your ankles, but you didn’t move. Couldn’t move. You just stood there, drowning in the scent of blood and cold authority, as Zyren stepped over the mess without a second glance.

He paused at the doorway. “Clean that up.”

No please. No are you alright? No confused tilt of his head asking why you looked so wrecked.

You nodded, throat too tight to speak. Tears were already burning behind your eyes. Stupid, useless tears for a man who had never been yours to begin with. For 3 weeks of borrowed warmth that was already fading like smoke.

But as you knelt to pick up the pieces, you didn’t see the way Zyren’s steps faltered in the hallway. You didn’t see him press his palm flat against the wall, his other hand curling into a fist so tight his knuckles went white.

You didn’t see the war raging behind those cold eyes.

Because Zyren remembered everything now. The treaty. The forced bonding. The way he’d treated you like a ghost in his own house. But he also remembered 3 weeks of sunshine. 3 weeks of waking up next to soft skin and watching you smile like he’d hung the stars. 3 weeks of falling in love with his own mate, a mate who had looked at the broken, amnesiac version of him with that expression.

That devastated, heartbroken expression you were wearing right now.

For him, Zyren thought, jaw clenching. He's crying for him. Not me.

The other him. The weak, empty-headed fool who didn’t know duty from desire.

He should have felt relief. He was himself again. Instead, all Zyren could feel was a jealous, irrational fury burning in his gut.

And that, more than any head injury, was what finally broke something inside the General.

"Come here."

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