The lie was ash on my tongue. I met his gaze, forcing my eyes to stay wide, my ears still. "At uni. We went shopping. That's all. Nothing more."
I saw the exact moment the fracture appeared. It wasn't in a shout. It was in the slow, weary closing of his eyes, as if absorbing a blow he had long expected. When he opened them again, the deep brown was clouded with disappointment and a profound, protective sorrow.
He leaned back in his chair, the leather sighing as if sharing his burden. For a long moment, he said nothing, just studied my face—the face he had watched grow from a kit into a young woman he no longer fully recognized.
"Bella," he said finally, his voice a soft, gruff rumble. "When you were little, you would bury your nose in my fur after I came home from the northern territories. You would tell me I smelled like pine and cold rivers and safety." He paused, letting the memory hang between us, sweet and distant. "A bear knows scent. It is our first truth, before sight, before sound. It tells us everything."
He leaned forward again, his gaze unflinching. "You are covered in the scent of want. The heat of pressed bodies, the sharp. I can smell his restraint and your fear, and something else underneath it… a wildness in you that answers his." He shook his great head slowly. "You did not just go shopping."
He stood up, his shadow enveloping me. "You will go to your room. You will not see him again until I have spoken with his family, with his alpha line. I will know the panther who thinks he can mark my child with a lie still fresh on her lips." His voice did not rise, but its finality was absolute, the decree of a bear protecting his den. "Now go."
The plea tore from me, sharp and desperate. I lurched forward, catching the rough fabric of his sleeve before he could turn away. "Father, please… wait. Don't talk to his parents."
All the forced calm shattered. My ears pinned back tight against my skull, my breath coming in shallow, rapid pants. The thought of his formidable bear presence descending on Knox's family, of making this private, terrifying whirlwind into a formal clan dispute, filled me with a dread deeper than any fear of Knox himself.
He stopped. He didn't shake me off, but his arm was a tense, unyielding pillar under my grip. He looked down at my hand, then slowly back up at my face, his expression unreadable.
"Give me one reason," he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "One honest reason why I should not confront the parents of the panther who has clearly, and without my consent, begun a courtship ritual with my daughter under a veil of deception."
He leaned down slightly, bringing his weathered face closer to mine. The scent of earth and storm rolled off him. "Is it because you are afraid for him? Or is it because you are afraid of what you might have to admit, to me, and to yourself, if I drag the truth of this into the light?"
The words caught in my throat, a tangled knot of fear, shame, and a defiant, fluttering hope I couldn't explain. "I… it's complicated."