CHAPTER 17

Morning came with gray skies and a stillness that didn’t belong. No birdsong. No rustle of wind through the tents. Just a quiet, heavy air that pressed into Aria’s chest like a warning.

She stretched slowly, sore from another restless night, and reached beneath her pillow to retrieve Nessa’s carved acorn.

Her fingers brushed something cold instead.

Metal.

She stilled.

The breath froze in her throat.

Slowly, she pulled it free, a knife, small but sharp, its hilt wrapped in worn leather. Tied to it with twine was a scrap of parchment, stained at the edges. One sentence, scratched in jagged letters:

“Run before you burn.”

Aria’s blood ran cold.

The blade trembled in her grip as she sat up fully, heart pounding loud enough to drown out thought. She turned the note over, no signature, no mark. Just that one line.

And the unspoken threat behind it.

Maela burst in moments later, her hands full of herbs and a sleepy Nessa trailing behind her.

“Morning, sunshine… oh gods,” she froze, eyes locking on the knife.

Aria didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.

Maela dropped the herbs and crossed the room in two steps. She took the knife carefully from Aria’s hands and examined the parchment.

Her face darkened.

“This isn’t a joke,” she muttered. “This is a message.”

“I found it just now,” Aria said quietly. “It was under my pillow.”

Maela’s jaw clenched. “You could’ve been stabbed in your sleep.”

“I wasn’t.”

“That’s not the point, girl,” she snapped, her voice shaking with barely controlled rage. “This is camp. Our camp. There are rules.”

“Apparently not for whoever left this.”

Maela turned on her heel. “I’m going to Kael.”

“Wait.”

But Maela was already gone, stomping out of the tent like a storm on two legs.

Nessa sat on the edge of the bed, watching Aria with wide, worried eyes.

“Who would want to hurt you?” she asked in a whisper.

Aria didn’t answer.

Because the better question was who wouldn’t?

Maela stormed through the camp like a fury, knife clenched in her fist. Rogues stepped aside quickly, murmuring behind her. Aria trailed after her, heart hammering.

They found Kael near the northern watchtower, speaking with Thorne and two others. He turned when he saw them, eyes narrowing as he took in Maela’s expression.

“We need to talk,” Maela said, no pleasantries.

Kael waved off the others, and they walked away without a word.

Maela thrust the knife at him. “Under her pillow.”

Kael took it, eyes scanning the note.

His expression didn’t change. Not even a flicker of surprise.

That scared Aria more than anything.

“You knew this would happen,” Maela said sharply. “Didn’t you?”

Kael didn’t answer. His thumb brushed over the blade, thoughtful.

“She could’ve died,” Maela hissed.

“She didn’t.”

“Kael…”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, finally looking at them. “Interrogate every rogue with a grudge? Half the camp would be in the circle.”

“That’s not good enough,” Aria said, stepping forward.

He turned to her. “Then what is?”

She blinked. “You’re the Alpha. You tell me.”

His face tightened. “This isn’t the first threat, Aria. It won’t be the last. You walk around like you’ve earned their trust after three trials, but this isn’t a game of survival. It’s politics. History. Fear. You threaten everything they believe in just by breathing.”

“So I should lie down and take it?” she snapped. “Let someone slit my throat in my sleep while you stand by and pretend your hands are clean?”

His jaw clenched.

Maela watched them both, eyes narrowing with a different kind of knowing.

“You need to stop pretending you don’t care,” Aria said, voice low. “Because you do. You show it when no one’s looking. When you think I won’t notice.”

Kael stepped toward her, knife still in hand. “You think this is about caring?”

“Isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer.

“I’m not Alina,” Aria whispered. “I’m not her, Kael.”

He went very still.

The tension between them crackled like lightning in dry air.

“I know that,” he said. “But when I look at you, sometimes I wish you were.”

That hurt more than the knife could’ve.

Aria’s throat went dry. “Then maybe I should’ve run when I had the chance.”

He looked at her, something raw flickering in his gaze. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because part of me believed you’d protect me.”

Silence.

Long. Heavy.

Kael’s hand lifted, almost of its own accord, and his fingers brushed her forearm, bare skin to bare skin.

And just like that…

She was somewhere else.

Not standing in camp.

Not in the now.

But inside him.

A boy knelt in blood.

Not his.

His mother’s.

His father’s.

Their bodies twisted, still warm. Fire licked the walls of their home. Screams echoed from the woods. And standing above them.

A man with Aria’s eyes.

Older. Hardened. Wounded.

Her father.

He said something to the boy, but the words were muffled, like underwater.

And then he was gone.

The boy… Kael, stared at the bodies.

And did not cry.

He just sat there, covered in blood, burning inside.

Aria gasped and yanked back from him like she’d been burned.

Kael stumbled too, eyes wide.

“What did you see?” he demanded, voice hoarse.

But Aria couldn’t speak.

Tears filled her eyes.

She didn’t know if they were hers or the memory’s.

Maela’s voice broke the silence. “What. Did. You. See.”

Aria shook her head slowly, hand clutched over her heart.

“He’s seen death,” she whispered. “And I think… it was by my father’s hand.”

Kael stared at her.

Not as a rogue.

Not as an Alpha.

But as a boy who never got the chance to grieve.

That night, alone in her tent, Aria lit a single candle. She didn’t sleep.

She couldn’t.

Not after realizing that Kael wasn’t her enemy.

He was her consequence.

And somewhere out there, her father’s sins were still hunting them both.

The candle flame danced quietly on the small table beside Aria’s cot, casting long shadows along the canvas walls of her tent. Wax dripped in slow rivulets, puddling like spilled tears as the silence pressed in all around her.

She hadn’t slept. Couldn’t.

Not after what she’d seen.

Her father… her father kneeling over Kael’s family like it had been nothing. Like lives were currency he could spend freely.

Aria wrapped her arms around herself, knees tucked to her chest. Her cloak still smelled like smoke from the trial ring, and underneath that, faintly, the scent of the wild river where she had once danced with Nessa. It felt like a lifetime ago.

The flame flickered, as if reacting to her thoughts.

"You are your own fire," her mother had once whispered in a memory half-forgotten. "But fire can heal or destroy. Choose wisely, Aria."

A knock snapped her upright.

Soft.

Hesitant.

She crossed the tent in bare feet and opened the flap.

Kael stood there, moonlight streaking across his hair and illuminating the taut lines of his jaw. His hands were balled at his sides.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he said without preamble.

She didn’t move. “Then why are you?”

Kael’s eyes lifted to hers.

Haunted. Raw.

“I saw your candlelight,” he said after a beat. “And I couldn’t sleep either.”

Aria stepped aside.

He hesitated, then entered.

The tent suddenly felt smaller, tighter. Every breath she took tangled with his presence, and when she turned to face him, the heat that had been simmering beneath their arguments, their silences, their brief touches… it pressed close.

He didn’t sit.

Neither did she.

They just stood there, the weight of shared truths hanging in the air between them like smoke that refused to clear.

“You saw it all,” he said, his voice low.

Aria nodded. “I saw enough.”

Kael looked away. “I hated him. Your father. I wanted revenge. For years, it was all I thought about.”

“And now?” she asked.

Kael’s brow furrowed. “Now… I look at you and wonder if hate was just the armor I wore to keep from breaking.”

Her heart lurched.

He turned back to her. “You didn’t ask to be born into this. But neither did I.”

“No,” Aria whispered. “But here we are.”

Silence.

Long. Intimate.

“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” Kael added, quieter now. “About Alina.”

Aria’s breath caught.

“I don’t want you to be her,” he said. “I just… see ghosts when I look at you. And sometimes I can’t tell what’s real.”

Aria stepped forward, her bare toes brushing his boots. “Then touch something real.”

His hand lifted slowly, hesitant, and touched her cheek, just the tips of his fingers brushing the curve of her jaw. A shiver raced down her spine.

“You feel real,” he murmured.

She closed her eyes. “Then maybe that’s where we start.”

Kael’s breath hitched, and for a moment, it felt like the world narrowed to the space between their mouths. One inch. Two. His forehead touched hers.

“I’m not ready,” he whispered.

“I’m not asking you to be.”

“But I want to be,” he said, and it sounded like a confession carved from stone.

Her heart cracked open.

“I should go,” Kael said, but he didn’t move.

Aria opened her eyes, and their gazes locked.

Tension buzzed between them like a drawn bowstring.

Then he stepped back.

“I’ll keep the knife,” he said, eyes flicking to the table.

Aria nodded.

“And if another threat comes?” she asked.

Kael’s eyes darkened. “I’ll bury it.”

He left with the candlelight still flickering behind him and the scent of his skin lingering in the air.

She didn’t sleep for a long time after that.

But when she finally closed her eyes, her last thought wasn’t of death or fire.

It was of Kael’s hand on her cheek, and the quiet promise of something neither of them had dared hope for:

A beginning.

The next morning

The camp stirred sluggishly under a cloud-heavy dawn. Smoke curled from breakfast fires. The scent of roasted roots and wild onions wafted through the air.

Aria washed her face at the basin outside her tent, the cold water shocking her out of the last threads of restless dreams.

“Up early?”

She turned to see Thorne, the gruff guard who’d once helped her track footprints near the river.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she replied honestly.

He grunted. “That’s when the best thinking happens.”

Aria dried her hands on her cloak. “You believe that?”

“I believe people don’t lie to themselves when the stars are out.”

She gave him a small smile.

Thorne nodded toward the edge of camp. “Rogan’s gathering votes soon. You should show your face.”

“Will it change anything?”

He studied her. “Maybe not. But neither will hiding.”

She nodded. “Thank you, Thorne.”

He scratched his beard. “Don’t thank me yet. Just don’t die.”

Aria found Maela near the central fire pit, sharpening a blade.

“I heard you didn’t sleep,” Maela said without looking up.

“You hear everything,” Aria muttered.

Maela smirked. “You don’t survive rogue life by sleeping through whispers.”

They shared a quiet moment before Maela’s smirk faded.

“Whatever happens today,” she said, “you’re stronger than they think.”

Aria looked down at her hands. At the bruises that had faded. At the scars that remained.

“I’m starting to believe that.”

Before she could move toward the circle of elders gathering beyond the fire, Nessa ran up and threw her arms around her waist.

“I made you something,” she whispered.

Aria looked down. It was a woven band of wildflowers and thin threads of bark braided into a bracelet.

“It’s for luck,” Nessa said.

Aria kissed her forehead. “Then I’ll wear it proudly.”

She walked to the circle of elders, head high.

Rogan stood at the center, arms crossed, flanked by Ezek and two others.

Kael stood at the edge of the ring, silent as stone, but when her eyes met his, something passed between them.

A thread.

A flame.

A vow unspoken.

Rogan’s voice rang out.

“The vote begins.”

Before the first hand was raised, a howl echoed through the trees. Sharp, urgent, and close.

All eyes turned to the forest.

And Kael whispered, “That’s not one of ours.”