TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 216

Two hundred and sixteen

Cassidy POV

Kieran’s silence had begun to eat away at me. At first, I told myself he was busy. His installation preparations swallowed most of his schedule, and people constantly needed something from him. Plus, there were meetings and training sessions to become Alpha, those dreadful strategy meetings with older Alphas who still spoke to him like he was a boy playing dress-up in his father’s position.

Still, after two days without properly hearing from him, the silence started pressing against my nerves.

Kieran always showed up at the restaurant because he “missed my face,” and he would narrate his day like I had personally asked for every detail.

Now everything felt strained.

When he finally came around, he acted exactly the way he always had, which somehow made the distance feel

worse.

He still kissed me and held my hand while walking me through crowded streets, and wrapped an arm around my waist whenever other men looked too long in my direction. The gestures were all there, but something underneath them felt delayed, as though he kept remembering halfway through conversations that he was supposed to behave a certain way.

He listened while I complained about my mother overworking me at the restaurant, but halfway through my story, I realized he was staring past my shoulder at absolutely nothing.

A strange look crossed his face when I accused him of being somewhere else, then he forced out a small smile.

“Sorry. Long day.”

I remembered the lake party, and ever since Kieran had gone completely still after seeing Vanessa, he had never been the same. It wasn’t attraction. Attraction was easy to recognize. If anything, it looked closer to panic. I had caught him staring blankly at the dock while slowly swirling a drink around in his hand.

“Kieran,” I said, nudging his arm.

He jumped hard enough that liquid splashed over his fingers.

“Damn,” he muttered.

I laughed at first, but the look in his eyes stopped me.

“What’s wrong with you tonight?”

“Nothing.”

His answer came too quickly.

“You’re acting weird.”

“You’re looking at me weird.”

Vanessa left the party early, claiming she felt sick. At the time, I wanted to follow her outside and demand an explanation for whatever strange thing had passed between them, but I convinced myself I was imagining tension that didn’t exist.

She started acting strange too. After returning home, she should have been attached to my hip again, the way we

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always were whenever she visited from her maternal territory. Instead, she kept disappearing. She canceled plans and avoided long conversations. Every time I mentioned Kieran, something uncomfortable crossed her face before she smoothed it away.

“Maybe he’s overwhelmed,” she said. “You should tell him somewhere calm.”

I frowned. “Why are you talking like I’m about to ruin his life?”

Vanessa looked down at her hands. “Cassidy, I just mean… men react badly when they feel cornered.”

The comment unsettled me enough that I barely touched my food afterward. I kept clinging to the explanation that hormones were making me paranoid because every other possibility felt worse.

Days passed like that, Kieran trying too hard, Vanessa withdrawing, and me standing in the middle of both of them, wondering why everything suddenly felt fragile.

Eventually, Kieran showed up outside the restaurant one evening and told me he was stealing me for dessert. The drive to the old ice cream parlor near the river felt almost normal again. He teased me about how hard I worked. I shoved his shoulder when he complained about my mother liking him more than me. He even reached across the gear shift at one point just to hold my hand.

I kept thinking maybe this was us settling back into place.

The parlor looked exactly the same as always. Teenagers crowded the booths. Somebody kept feeding coins into the jukebox near the counter. Kieran watched me closely the entire time we sat together.

My fingers kept brushing against the pocket of my skirt where I had hidden the pregnancy test earlier that day. Every time he smiled at me, my pulse climbed higher.

I finally took it out and slid it across the table before I lost my nerve.

“I’m pregnant.”

Kieran looked down at the test, and every bit of color drained from his face. Then emotion crashed across his expression so suddenly it almost frightened me. He grabbed both my hands across the table and laughed shakily under his breath.

“Holy shit.”

His eyes looked glassy.

“I’m happy, Cass,” he said. “I swear I am. I’ll take care of you. I’ll accept the baby. I’ll accept all of it. I’ll do the right thing.”

“Accept?” I repeated.

Kieran froze.

“You said you’d accept the baby.”

“I just meant…”

“We’re getting married.”

His face sank, and fear crawled slowly up my spine.

“Why are you talking like the child needs permission to exist?”

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Kieran looked away from me toward the parking lot outside the window, where headlights moved past the glass. People around us kept eating and laughing while silence stretched across our table.

“Kieran.”

He rubbed both hands over his face.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

Every strange moment from the past week rose together inside my head so fast it made my chest hurt.

Kieran swallowed hard before finally speaking.

“When I met Vanessa at the party…” His voice roughened. “Something happened.”

I stared at him.

“She’s my mate, Cassidy.”

Everything inside me went still.

Every confusing moment suddenly fit together so perfectly that I almost felt humiliated for missing it earlier.

Vanessa leaving the party early. Kieran staring into space. The carefulness in both of them.

She knew I was carrying his child. She knew while sitting across from me, giving advice and pretending everything was normal.

Kieran kept trying to explain himself, but most of his words blurred together after that.

“I didn’t ask for this.”

“I love you.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

The ice cream between us melted slowly while I sat there staring at him.

My mind kept replaying one horrible realization over and over again.

Everybody around me had already started treating me carefully before I even understood why.

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