“We’ll go slow,” I promise. “On your terms. But I need you to be honest with me. Always.”
She nods.
My pulse starts to race. There’s a question that’s been stalking me for a while now—since I saw two faces after I was shot, and both felt like home to me.
I pull back just enough to look her in the eye.
“Brylee,” I say quietly, deliberately. “I need to ask you something.”
She stills.
“Are you Teddie?”
16
BRYLEE
The question cleaves straightthrough me.
Are you Teddie?
Time doesn’t stop—but it fractures, splintering into sharp, uneven pieces that lodge beneath my skin. The hospital room blurs at the edges, whites bleeding into grays, like my mind is throwing up fog to soften the impact of the moment I’ve been running from since the day I pulled my brother’s uniform over my head and became a lie with a pulse.
Ridge is watching me too closely. Not with suspicion. Not with anger.
With patience.
Waiting is somehow worse. Waiting means he already knows the truth lives somewhere between us, feral and dangerous and starving to be seen.
My lungs burn. I realize I haven’t breathed since he asked.
“Yes,” I say.
The word is small. Fragile. It feels like glass in my mouth. But it lands between us like a gunshot, loud and final and impossible to take back.
Ridge doesn’t move. Not a muscle. His eyes darken, sharpening into that lethal alpha focus that once made entire rooms at Eros Academy fall silent, that had instructors stepping aside and cadets straightening without realizing why. His hand tightens around the edge of the bed, knuckles whitening, tendons standing out like cables under strain.
But he doesn’t look away from me.
“Yes,” I repeat, my voice steadier now that the truth has cracked the dam and there’s no point pretending I can hold it back anymore. “I’m Teddie.”
The silence stretches. Thick. Heavy. It presses against my ears until it hums.
Ridge exhales slowly, carefully, like if he breathes wrong, something vital will shatter.
“Your brother,” he says.
Not a question.
“Teddie is my twin, as you know.” I nod. “The prince. The heir. The alpha everyone thinks is strong enough to rule a kingdom someday.”
My hands tremble in my lap. I lace my fingers together, nails biting into skin, trying to anchor myself in the present instead of the years of lies stacked like corpses behind me. Ridge notices anyway. He always notices.
“He’s dying,” I say.
The word feels obscene. Permanent. Like I’ve spoken a curse into the room.
“Terminal,” I continue, because once I start, I can’t stop. “His organs are failing one by one, slow and cruel. And no one outside our family knows—though our parents like to pretend he’s perfectly fine. I don’t know if they’re delusional or if they simply want it to be true so badly that they’re willing it to become reality. The people see a golden prince who smiles and charms and waves from balconies. They don’t see the way his hands shake when he lifts a glass. Or how he coughs blood into silk handkerchiefs and smiles through it.”
