WREN POV
My uncle's fingers are still digging into my arm.
I look down at his hand. Then I look up at his face. He is sweating. His eyes keep cutting sideways to Killian and then back to me, fast and nervous, like a man watching a fire get closer.
"Wren." His voice drops lower. "Come home. We'll talk about this tonight. Whatever you're thinking right now, you're upset, you're not thinking clearly"
"Let go of my arm," I say.
"Wren"
"Let go."
Something in my voice makes him release me. I don't know what it is. I've never spoken to him like that before. I've spent my whole life in this pack being careful, being small, being the girl who doesn't cause trouble because trouble means being noticed and being noticed means people asking questions about the wolfless girl that nobody ever has good answers for.
I am done being careful.
I step back from my uncle and turn to face the clearing fully. Callum is watching me with an expression I have never seen on him before. Tight. Guilty. Like he is hoping I will make this easy for him. Like he is hoping I will nod and smile and slip away quietly so everyone can get back to celebrating.
He has known me for ten years and he still thinks I'll make it easy.
I turn to Killian Voss.
Up close, he is even more still than he seemed from a distance. Most powerful wolves have an energy to them, a constant low vibration of dominance that makes the air around them feel charged. Killian has the opposite. He is so controlled, so completely settled inside himself, that standing near him feels like standing in the eye of a storm. Everything wild is there. You can feel it. But none of it is loose.
He is watching me with those pale eyes and he is not rushing me. Not performing patience for the crowd. Actually waiting. Like whatever I decide is genuinely mine to decide.
I think about what my life looks like if I stay.
I think about waking up tomorrow in my uncle's house, in the pack that just watched my heart get broken and clapped. I think about Callum at pack dinners with Sable. I think about being the wolfless girl, getting older, getting quieter, the pack finding me less and less interesting until I disappear into the background entirely. I think about my uncle's face three weeks ago when I told him Callum had made me a promise. He nodded and said that was nice. He already knew. He looked me in the eye and he already knew what tonight was going to look like.
The people in this clearing are not my family. They never were. I was just too grateful to be included to notice.
Then I think about the other side of this.
This man killed my parents. I was six years old and I lost everything in a single night and his name is the reason why. I grew up with nothing. I grew up quietly terrified of a name. And now that name is standing in front of me, offering me a way out, and the mate bond between us is so loud in my chest it is almost a sound.
My wolf is not afraid of him. My wolf, who has never reacted to anything in eighteen years, is straining toward him like he is water and she has been thirsty her entire life.
I don't trust that. I don't trust any of this.
But I also understand, very clearly, that I have two choices. Stay in the wreckage of the life I thought I had, or walk into the unknown with a dangerous man who might be my mate.
At least the unknown is somewhere new.
I straighten my spine. Square my shoulders. Look Killian Voss directly in his pale, winter eyes.
"I'll come with you," I say. "Not because I trust you. Not because of the bond. Because I choose to. That's the only reason that matters."
Something moves in his expression. Fast, like he didn't mean to let it show. "Understood."
"And I have questions."
"You can ask them."
"All of them?"
He holds my gaze. "All of them."
I nod once. "Then let's go."
The crowd parts for us. Of course it does. Nobody is going to step in front of the Lycan King. Killian walks beside me, not in front, not half a step behind the way pack males walk with females they consider lesser. Beside. Equal. I notice that. I file it away.
The torchlight slides past us. I keep my eyes forward. I am not going to look at anyone. Not at the elders with their shocked faces. Not at Sable, who I can feel staring at me from somewhere to the right. Not at my uncle, whose silence behind me is the loudest thing in the clearing.
We are almost at the doors.
Almost.
"Wren."
Callum's voice.
It hits me right in the middle of the chest, the way it always has. Ten years of history in two syllables. The boy who held my hand. The boy who made me feel like I wasn't broken. The boy who looked me in the eye three weeks ago and lied through his teeth and slept fine afterward.
Every muscle in my body wants to turn around.
I think about his face when he reached for Sable's hand. The way he didn't even look for me first. Not one glance. Not one moment of hesitation.
I keep walking.
"Wren, please"
I push through the pack doors and out into the dark, Killian one step beside me, the night air cold and sharp and clean after the heat of the clearing.
The doors close behind us.
I breathe.
I breathe again.
Killian says nothing. He doesn't fill the silence with reassurance or explanation. He just walks, and lets me exist in the quiet for a moment, and that one small thing cracks something open in me that I was not expecting.
I blink hard. Not crying. I am absolutely not crying.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"North," he says. "My territory."
I nod. I stare at the dark tree line ahead of us. The mate bond hums steadily between us, warm and constant, completely unbothered by everything I just walked away from.
"You said I could ask all my questions," I say.
"Yes."
I pull in a slow breath.
"Then tell me something." I turn and look at him, the moonlight catching the sharp lines of his face, the scar above his eyebrow, the careful stillness of him. "My parents. The night their pack was destroyed."
His jaw tightens. Almost invisible. Almost.
"Were you there?" I ask. "Personally. Were you actually there?"
He looks at me for a long moment.
"Yes," he says quietly. "I was there."
The word lands like a stone in still water, and the ripples it sends through me are so big and so cold that for a second I cannot feel anything at all.
Then, from somewhere in the dark behind us, I hear my uncle start to shout. Not at me. He is shouting at someone else. A voice I don't recognize. Two voices. The sounds of a struggle.
Killian stops walking. Every line of his body changes in an instant, from controlled to something coiled and sharp. He turns back toward the pack. His eyes are no longer pale. They are glowing. Silver white and furious.
"Get behind me," he says.
"What? Why? What's"
"Wren." His voice is very quiet. Very serious. "Get behind me right now."
And from the darkness between the trees, something moves toward us that is not a wolf.