Chapter 3

AYDEN

"You're doing that thing with your jaw again," Lucian says, dropping into the chair across from my desk.

"What thing?"

"The thing where you clench your teeth so hard…I'm surprised you have any teeth left." He drops a folder onto my desk. "The Hollow Pine representatives arrive tomorrow. Alpha Darius is bringing his Beta and two pack elders."

"That’s fine. The rooms are ready."

I flip the folder open without really looking at it, going through the motions of running my pack the way I've run it every single day for the last five years. It was steady, efficient, and I was in control of every detail so nothing slips through that could be used against us. 

Stormfang has been circling closer to our borders for months now, testing every weak point they can find, and an alliance with Hollow Pine is exactly the kind of leverage we need if this turns into something worse than skirmishes.

"Darius wants full terms signed by the end of the week," Lucian continues, tapping the folder. "Joint patrols, shared warning systems, resource support if either territory gets hit hard. It's a good deal for both sides."

"Then draft it and I'll sign it." 

"You should read it first."

"I trust you read it right."

He gives me a look, the same one he's given me a hundred times over the years, somewhere between exasperated and fond. It was the look of a man who's spent a decade cleaning up after an Alpha who buries himself in work so he doesn't have to feel anything else. I let him have the look. I don't have the energy to argue about paperwork today.

"There's one more name on the list you should know about." Lucian watches me carefully, the way he does when he's about to say something he knows I won't like. "Samantha Nonis."

The pen in my hand cracks clean in half.

Ink bleeds across my fingers and I don't move to wipe it off. For one long second the office goes completely silent except for the sound of my own pulse, loud and unwelcome in my ears.

"She left Hollow Pine's pack lands five years ago," I say, keeping my voice level even though something in my chest has gone completely still. "Why would Darius bring her here?"

"She didn't leave, Ayden. She joined Hollow Pine. Built a life there…a business.” Lucian said.

“Darius trusts her, and the town trusts her. He wants her at the table." Lucian added.

I haven't heard her name spoken out loud in this office in five years. I made sure of that. I banned it, quietly, the same week I sat in my room and drank until I couldn't remember the sound of her voice anymore, though the trick never actually worked. Every warrior in this pack learned fast not to mention her, not because I ordered it directly, but because the one time someone did, I put my fist through a wall and nobody wanted to test that again.

"She's coming here," I repeat, mostly to make it feel real.

"Tomorrow afternoon."

I stand up and walk to the window, looking out over the pack lands that I've spent five years bleeding for. Warriors are running drills down by the training yard, and somewhere further out, patrols are walking the border line that Stormfang keeps testing like a dog worrying a fence. I built all of this on the promise I made myself the night she left, that I would never again let anything slip through my hands because I hesitated.

I told myself I did the right thing. I told myself a hundred times a day for five years that Elder Frois was right, that a pack cannot survive with a weak Luna during wartime, that Samantha deserved better than being married to a decision I never should have let anyone else make for me.

I have never once believed it, not for a single day.

"How does she look?" I ask, and hate myself for asking.

Lucian is quiet for a moment, choosing his words the way he only does when he's protecting me from something. "She looked tired…strong.” I hear him pause and continue, “She looked like she’s been carrying something heavy for a long time and stopped asking for help."

Something about the way he says it makes my skin prickle, like there's a piece of information sitting just behind his words that he isn't handing me. Lucian has never lied to me, not once in the years he's stood at my side, but he's very good at only telling me part of a truth when he thinks the rest of it will do more harm than good.

"Is there something else?” I ask.

He hesitates. That hesitation tells me more than anything else could.

"You'll see for yourself tomorrow," he says, and leaves before I can push him further, closing the door behind him with more care than the moment seems to require.

I sit alone in the office for a long while after that, listening to the pack move outside my window , warriors calling to each other across the training yard, the distant sound of someone's laughter carrying up from the packhouse kitchens. Ordinary sounds. The sounds of a life I built to convince myself, and everyone around me, that I was fine. That the Alpha who rejected his mate five years ago had simply become a stronger leader for it.

Nobody in this pack has ever asked me if it was worth it. I've wondered, more than once, if that's because they already know the answer and are kind enough not to make me say it out loud.

I stand at that window long after he's gone, staring out at nothing, and for the first time in five years I let myself remember exactly what it felt like the night she walked away from me , the way her hand had pressed against her stomach for just one second before she caught herself, like she was protecting something instinctively before she'd even decided to.

I told myself back then it meant nothing. Grief does strange things to a body. People hold themselves in all kinds of ways when they're breaking apart.

I think about the last five years the way I always do when her name resurfaces, in places I can't fully control. The empty house I built around myself after she left, room by room, the way a man builds a fortress when he's afraid of what might get in. The way Elder Frois still sits on the council, unbothered, while I carry the weight of a decision he talked me into like it's mine alone to bear.

I remember every rumor that reached me over the years , that she'd built a business, that she seemed happy, that she never once tried to reach out and ask for anything from Moonclaw, not money, not protection, not even an apology. I told myself that silence meant she'd moved on completely. I told myself I should be glad.

I was never glad. Not for a single day.

Tomorrow she walks back onto this land, and some old, stubborn part of me that I thought I'd killed off years ago is already awake and pacing beneath my skin, waiting.

I am about to find out how wrong I was.