CHAPTER 2

Murielle's POV

I knew him before I even saw his face. The voice did it first, low and certain, the same tone he used to use right before an argument and right before he'd pull me close after one. 

Then the window caught the last of the light and I was looking at Dorian, dark blond hair pushed back from his face, the same cold blue-grey eyes that used to look at me like I was the only person worth looking at in any room.

My former best friend. My former lover. The man who'd stood in front of the pack council and told them exactly what they wanted to hear about me.

"I don't need a ride."

"Get in." He said it like it wasn't a request, and it never was, not with him. "It's a long walk. You'll still be out here when it's dark."

He wasn't wrong about the dark. I got in before I had to admit that wasn't really why, before the tears building behind my eyes got the chance to fall in front of him. That much, at least, I still had control over.

He pulled back onto the road. For a while neither of us said anything, and I let myself watch the pack house get slightly less small on the horizon instead of looking at him.

"Three years ago, you refused to say a single word," he said finally. "Are you still hiding behind that silence? Still running from your crime?"

I didn't answer.

"Do you remember what we used to swear to each other? Protect the pack. Protect each other." His laugh came out bitter, nothing like the one I used to know. "We carved it under the bench at the south training ring. You split your thumb on the knife and bled all over my sleeve, and you wouldn't let me take you to the healer until we finished the last letter. I don't even recognize you anymore, Elle."

I pressed my thumb against my knee. The scar was still there, thin and white, the one thing in three years that had stayed exactly as he left it.

"You should apologize," he went on, when I still didn't give him anything. "To the families. To mine. My brother's dead because of what you did."

I had known his brother too. He'd taught both of us how to hold a blade. My hands curled into fists in my lap before I could stop them.

"For what?"

"For what?" He actually repeated it back at me, disbelieving, like I'd said something absurd rather than the one true thing I'd kept buried since the trial. "Have you completely lost your mind?"

"I didn't leak the plan."

The words were out before I could stop myself. Three years of silence, gone in one sentence. I wasn't supposed to say that, not to him, of all people.

He didn't let me finish.

"Don't." His hand came up between us, sharp enough that I flinched back against the seat. "Don't you dare lie to me, not after what your silence cost my family. I buried my brother because of what happened that day. You don't get to rewrite that now, three years too late."

"I'm not rewriting anything. I'm finally telling you what actually happened."

"You know what the worst part is?" His laugh was uglier than the first one. "I stood in that hearing and told them everything I'd seen, because I believed it. Because eighteen years of knowing you meant more to me than any doubt. And now you want me to believe I was wrong to trust my own eyes?"

I stopped trying. Whatever I said next, he'd already decided what it meant before I'd said it.

We reached the pack house before either of us said anything else. Before I got out, he caught my arm.

"For what we had," he said, quieter now, and somehow worse for it. "I'll give you one day. Until tomorrow night. Come to me, apologize, and we can go back to how things were."

I almost laughed in his face.

Go back.

There was nothing left to go back to. Whatever version of me he wanted back had died in that cell long before he noticed she was gone.

Callum was standing at the entrance when I stepped out of the car. I still looked for him first, out of old habit, before I remembered there was nothing left in that habit worth keeping.

"Colette's already home," he said, before I'd even fully stood up straight. "Stop wearing that look in front of her. She feels guilty enough as it is."

Guilty.

There was nothing to laugh at in that one. I hadn't felt a single trace of that particular emotion since the day they locked the cell behind me, and I doubted I ever would.

I didn't say any of that. I'd learned there was no answer that satisfied him.

He picked a small stack of clothes off the side table and held them out, not quite looking at me while he did it.

"Wear these. Colette picked them out herself, she knew you wouldn't have anything decent. She's always thinking of you, unlike some people." A pause, colder than the first half of the sentence. "You know what you owe her in return."

I took the clothes. My arms were shaking by the time I had them.

"Colette wants to marry the Alpha King," Callum said, watching my face for something I refused to give him. "Whatever happened before, it's done. I'll deal with anyone, or anything, that gets in the way of her happiness."

I looked at him straight on, the first time I'd done that since the cell.

"I said I'd take the blame, and I have. I'm not going back on that. But you promised me something too, once I'd paid it. I've repaid what I owe this family. After tonight, I'm done."

His jaw worked once before he answered.

"You'd better mean that," he said.

He didn't leave after that. He followed me as far as the guest room off the hall, arms crossed in the doorway, like he still didn't trust me not to disappear the second his back was turned. I didn't have the privacy to argue about it, so I didn't.

The room was smaller than mine used to be. 

A narrow bed, a washbasin, a window that didn't sit quite right in its frame, a cracked mirror above the basin I hadn't meant to look into. Storm-grey eyes looked back at me, the same color they'd always been, though everything around them had changed enough that for a second I almost didn't recognize the rest of my own face. 

Colette's old dress was soft under my hands in a way nothing had been in three years, and for as long as it took to pull it over my head, I let myself pretend that was the only thing true about that night.

The sleeve caught on my elbow. I yanked it free too fast, and the fabric dragged up my forearm further than I meant it to.

"You've started putting on acts now?" Callum's voice, from the doorway, impatient.

I didn't understand what he meant until I turned and saw where he was looking.

He crossed the room before I could pull the sleeve back down, catching my wrist to hold my arm still.

He froze instead.

Old scars laid over fresh ones, all the way up. Some of them had healed wrong.

"You," he said, and for the first time since I'd walked out of that cell, his voice wasn't cold at all. "How did this happen?"