chapter 5

Calla's POV

Something moved inside me.

In the hollow place where my wolf used to sit, curled and warm under my ribs.

Something small and stupid and impossible twitched, like a limb that's been asleep too long, remembering it still belongs to a body.

I froze.

The coals had stopped burning me an hour ago, or a day ago, I couldn't tell anymore, time didn't work right in this room, but that twitch was new. That twitch hadn't been there before.

"Hello?" I whispered it at my own wrist, at the dark stain where the mark used to glow gold. Stupid. Talking to a scar.

"Are you still in there?"

Nothing answered. Of course, nothing answered. I pressed my palm flat against my sternum and held my breath and waited, and when nothing else moved, I let the breath out, shaking and told myself I'd imagined it, because the alternative was hope, and hope in this room was just another way to bleed.

I closed my eyes. That was the mistake. That was always the mistake, because the second the room went dark behind my eyelids instead of in front of them, he was there.

Calix.

Not the Calix who left a car outside a clinic weeks I hadn't lived through yet. The Calix from three years back, drunk on his brother's good wine, laughing too loud at the head of that stupidly long table with the family crest carved into it, everyone's Sunday-best smiles on, and Draven's hand warm on my knee under the tablecloth like that meant anything.

"To the Luna," Calix had said, standing, raising his glass, and I remember thinking, oh good, he's finally going to say something kind, because he never did, and I was tired of waiting for it.

He hadn't been.

"To the Luna," he'd said again, slower, uglier, "who managed to convince my entire family that a bond reading conducted in private, by one elder, with no witnesses, somehow makes her worth more than every woman in this pack who actually earned her place." He'd swayed a little.

Nobody stopped him.

"Convenient, isn't it? A ceremony nobody saw. A bond nobody can question. Funny how that worked out for a girl with no name and no dowry and no family left to ask any questions on her behalf."

The table had gone silent the way rooms go silent right before something breaks.

"Calix."

Someone, an aunt maybe, hissed his name as that alone would fix it.

"What?" He'd looked around at all of them, grinning as if he were the only one brave enough to say what everyone else was thinking. "Am I wrong? Or should I call her what she actually--"

He'd said it. I'm not writing the word again, I don't have to; it lived in my chest for three years rent-free, it's still there now, curled up next to the wolf that might or might not still exist.

And Draven. My mate, my Alpha, the man whose ring I wore, whose bond mark I carried, who had sworn in front of the Moon Goddess herself that nothing would ever touch me while he was breathing ……

Draven had looked down at his plate.

He hadn't said a word. Not one. He'd picked his fork back up like his brother hadn't just gutted me in front of forty witnesses, and the silence had stretched so long that eventually somebody's cousin started talking about the weather, actual weather, like that was a thing that mattered, and the dinner had just... continued. Around me. Without me.

I'd excused myself twenty minutes later and thrown up in the west wing bathroom and told no one, not even Jade, because who was there to tell? My mate had heard it and said nothing. His silence had been its own verdict.

The memory let go of me the way a wave lets go when it's done dragging you under, and I came back to the cell gasping, actual air, actual coals under my knees, actual present tense, thank God.

That's when I heard it.

Not inside my head this time. Outside the door. Footsteps, fast, uneven, someone half-running down the corridor that led to this room, and my whole body went rigid because nobody ran toward the suppression cell. Nobody wanted to be caught anywhere near it.

"--can't be in here, sir, you don't have clearance for--"

"Move." A voice. Low. Careful in a way that felt wrong for how fast the feet were moving, like whoever it was had trained themselves out of raising their voice a long time ago and hadn't quite learned it back. "I'm not asking twice."

I knew that voice. I knew it from somewhere older than this pack, older than this marriage, from a version of my life where two people used to be close enough that the family joked they were basically the same person, before he'd started disappearing through side doors whenever I walked into a room, before I'd learned not to ask why.

Soren.

My mouth opened before my brain caught up.

"Soren?"

It came out as barely more than air, my throat wrecked from the smoke and the crying and God knew what else, but I said it again anyway, louder, uglier, and cracked.

"Soren, is that you? Please, please tell me that's--"

The footsteps stopped.

Right outside the door. Close enough that I could hear breathing, fast and unsteady, close enough that whoever it was had to be standing with a palm flat against the metal, the same way I had my palm flat against my own chest a minute ago, both of us reaching for something through a wall that wouldn't let either of us through.

Then the guard's voice again, sharper now, panicked.

"Sir, if the Alpha finds out you tried to access the--"

"I don't care what the Alpha finds out."

My body froze, the muscles in my legs locked and immobile. That was not the tone of a man who had vanished three years ago for good because he hadn't given a damn.

That was the tone of a man who had been trying to hide something for three years now and was at his limit.

"Soren!"

I stumbled to my feet again, not even noticing the red-hot coals biting through my hands as I moved closer towards the door. I could smell the smoke, the steel, and under it all, something I suspected was me.

"What you know….. whatever you have been hiding…you have to tell me now because I don't know how long I-" The lock turned over.

Not unlocking, turning over as it does right before entering a code, and I heard him breathe out on the other side of the door, one steady breath like he was settling himself down before he does something he would regret, or for a choice he wouldn't regret, and placed both hands on the wood and waited for the door to open. It didn't.

I heard another set of footfalls down the corridor. Running, getting closer, harder and more urgent, and then a familiar, though even more welcome voice that I know even better than my husband's cried out his name in warning.

Draven.

And the lock halfway turned stopped turning.