Chapter 2 - Kaia

By the time the gates to Obscura fell out of view in my rearview mirror, I’d lost my patience long ago. 

The drive home was miles long, and roads well traveled; rutted and winding its way out of the mountains and into Stormhollow landings. It didn’t calm me, though. Not with my fingers white-knuckled on the steering wheel and jaw clenched until my ears hurt, Iris’s words echoing sharp and loud in my head. 

There is no this. 

Bullshit. 

I’d known since the Hunter’s Moon. Hadn’t suspected. Or questioned. Known. The moment her scent had hit me, crisp and clean and laced with blue and ice, a switch had flipped inside me. Hard. Not gracefully. Like a snare shutting. Like a revelation I couldn’t argue with. 

Iris Wren was my mate. 

And she’d stood there in that courtyard, eyes cool as steel and posture infuriatingly perfect, like she didn’t notice the world tilting on its axis every time I moved nearer. Like she didn’t feel the air thrum between us when our magic overlapped. Like she wasn’t reacting just as strongly as I was, but quieter. 

She was a wall slamming against me. Firm. Stubborn. And fucking aggravating. 

What was worse was I knew she knew it too. Could see it in the way her hands clenched white-knuckled at her sides when I closed the space between us. In the way ice bloomed across rock when I let frustration bleed through my magic. In the way she snapped at me like a cornered wolf instead of the detached academic she always pretended to be. 

She knew. 

Yet she wouldn’t say it. 

It pained me more than I wanted to acknowledge. 

The scent of Stormhollow hit me before the boundaries even. Pine. Wet earth. Ozone billowed low in the atmosphere like a warning. My shoulders dropped minutely in my seat, and my wolf shifted beneath my skin, bounding back and forth just like she’d done since the Moon. Home usually soothed me. Rooted me to reality. Tonight, it only marginally eased me. 

Slowing my speed, I merged onto the gravel road leading to the pack boundaries, crunching softly under my tires. Training grounds lay open in front of me, shadows stretching long in the waning sunlight. Snow dusted the furrow in areas where wolves would be sprinting across the grounds when spring came around. Usually, that view would fill me with an acute, settled pride. 

Tonight, all I could think about was Iris, stone cold in the winter air, glaring at me like I was something to be eradicated. 

She told me I thrived in chaos. That I ripped things open with curious fingers to see what bled, maybe she was right. I wasn’t graceful. Didn’t work softly. Went with instinct because flying by what you feel in your gut had kept me breathing when being gentle didn’t. 

But this wasn’t instinct. 

This wasn’t some bloody desire I could will away with space and stubbornness. 

This was knowing something down to your marrow. 

Thinking winter break was going to fix any of that made me grind my teeth together. Space didn’t weaken a mating call. Ignoring it didn’t make it go away. If anything, distance amplified it, dug its claws into you, fierce and punishing like an infected injury. 

I accelerated, and the buzz of anger crawled under my skin, wolf licking at my ribs in agitation like she wanted out, too. Iris could say what she wanted. Bar herself behind wards and laws and precisely worded sentences. 

It wouldn’t change facts. 

The Hunter’s Moon did not lie. 

And whether or not Iris wanted to admit it, I had nothing more to give, pretending she didn’t hear it, too. 

Stormhollow usually settled comfortably over my skin. 

Pack lands were alive with the familiar thrum of wolf-pine, mingling with the low drone of resting wolves, readying for winter, and routines easing back into comfortable patterns. I sat with the engine running longer than necessary, hands flat against the steering wheel, and breathing through the fluttering anticipation building beneath my ribs. It smelled like home. Pine and damp earth and something fierce and sure. 

It did not settle my wolf. 

The second I walked through the door, everyone felt it. Heads turned. A few of the older wolves gave me curious looks, small flicks of recognition that spoke volumes: I was off-pattern. I unconsciously stood straighter, easing my shoulders back, shifting the tension I was suddenly aware of back where it belonged. Or should have belonged. Everyone immediately fell back into familiar patterns, except me. 

Not tonight. 

Dad was in the communal room cleaning, sleeves pushed up, and boots kicked off in the entryway. His head tilted up at my appearance, eyes narrowing the second I stepped inside, a paternal expression devoid of rank but full of twenty-five years of knowing me better than anyone else on earth. 

“You look wrung out,” he said. 

I opened my mouth to snap something back, accused him of looking at me, but closed it again. Because he looked happy. Not happy home-from-school happy. Happy. His face actually looked relaxed. The deep lines at the corners of his eyes were smoothed out. He slouched in the way that I remembered from my childhood, rather than sitting or standing at rigid attention. Something about seeing him let loose tightened my chest in ways I didn’t have time to analyze. 

“Issues at school,” I said instead, waving a hand. “Midterms. You know how it is.” 

He watched me for another long moment, studying my face and my posture and the way I was shifting from foot to foot. “You’ve had worse semesters.” 

“I’m fine.” 

He hummed noncommittally, unsurprisingly unconvinced, but otherwise let it go. Dad was like that. Poke and prod when you needed him to. Stay quiet when it didn’t serve a purpose. 

I hung my bag near the top of the stairs and settled onto the couch, trying to tune into the life of my house. Everything sounded as it should. Crackling fire. Movement from another room. Quiet, reassuring presence of the pack just beyond what I could see. I should feel her settling now. 

My wolf did not. 

Instead, she prowled beneath my skin, quick and jittery, claws digging into the insides of my bones. It was that awful nagging sensation that had followed me all month, since the Hunter’s Moon. As if something fundamental had shifted and it refused to realign. 

I rubbed my shoulders, forcing slow, steady breaths. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. Stupid grounding techniques they forced me to practice when I was younger. They worked on everything. 

This was not everything. 

My father’s eyes flicked towards me from across the room, quiet as he resumed cleaning, but his recent ease hung heavily in the air between us like an unfinished conversation I didn’t want to have yet. I found myself wondering, briefly, what had changed for him. What finally knocked the battle stiffness from his shoulders when I felt like mine were made of knives. 

“Go to bed,” he said suddenly. “We’ll talk later.” 

Relief washed over me, and I nodded, already drifting towards the stairs. As soon as my feet hit the second floor, however, my wolf reacted. Pulled against my body like she knew something I did not. I pressed a hand over my heart, fingertips digging into my shirt, willing her to be quiet. 

I hadn’t felt this distracted since the Moon. 

And then the image of Iris standing stiff as a board in our courtyard, trying to convince herself and me that this wasn’t happening, burst into my mind. 

Home was supposed to comfort me. 

Instead, it just reminded me that whatever weirdness had manifested at Obscura was coming home with us. 

Sleep did not come easily. 

I lay awake listening to the house settle, every creak and sigh too loud in the quiet. My wolf never fully stilled, pacing in slow, deliberate circles beneath my skin like she was waiting for a signal I could not give her. By the time dawn crept through the window, pale and cold, I had already resigned myself to the fact that whatever was wrong was not going to burn itself out overnight. 

The smell of breakfast finally dragged me downstairs. 

The kitchen was warm, sunlight catching on the worn wooden table, steam rising from a mug in my father’s hand. He looked rested. Calm. Still carrying that quiet, infuriating happiness from the night before. It only made the tension coiled in my gut tighten further. 

“Morning,” I muttered, grabbing a plate and sitting across from him. 

“Morning,” he said back, watching me over the rim of his cup. Too closely. The silence stretched longer than normal, not uncomfortable exactly, but deliberate. Careful. 

I took a bite of toast and immediately wished I hadn’t. My appetite vanished as soon as he set the mug down and folded his hands together. 

“We need to talk,” he said. 

There it was. 

His tone was wrong. Not stern. Not angry. Measured, like he was choosing each word before letting it loose. I stiffened automatically, running through possibilities. Grades. Training assessments. Some pack issue I had missed while away. None of them fit the way his gaze softened when it landed on me. 

“This isn’t about school,” he continued, confirming it before I could ask. 

My stomach dropped anyway. 

He inhaled slowly, then said, “The Hunter’s Moon this year…” 

I froze. 

Every muscle in my body locked as that night rushed back uninvited. Silver light. A scent that had cut through everything I thought I knew. A certainty that had rooted itself in my bones and refused to leave. My wolf surged hard enough to make my fingers curl against the table. 

“…it changed things,” he went on. 

Fate. 

He did not say the word yet, but it hovered between us, heavy and inevitable. My heart started to pound, each beat too loud in my ears. This was not a lecture. This was not advice. This was something else entirely. 

I swallowed hard. “Dad,” I said, my voice rougher than I meant it to be. “What are you saying?” 

He looked at me then, really looked at me, and whatever he saw there made his expression soften further. “I’m saying this has nothing to do with your grades. Or your training. Or anything you did wrong.” 

The relief never came. 

Because I already knew what was coming. 

And whatever it was, it was about to change everything. 

He didn’t rush it. 

Dad had never been one to sugarcoat his words, cushion truth amongst niceties, but he wasn’t malicious either. He waited until I met his gaze, until I was strong enough to hear him. 

“I took a fated mate.” 

It hit me like a physical attack. Breath stuck in my throat, and every noise in the kitchen muffled beneath sudden cotton. Wolf stilled from his pacing, replaced by intense, knife-edged focus that made the hair on my neck stand. 

A mate. 

Not lover. Not girlfriend. Destiny. 

“She’s a witch.” Dad continued cautiously. “She’s from Aetherwind.” 

My body locked. 

My chest condensed until it felt like my fingers were ripping from my palms. Wolf roared to life under my skin, not in aggression or lust but recognition. Instinct ignited white hot and suddenly clicked into place. 

No. 

Was not. 

“You didn’t have a choice,” Dad said, clearly thinking I hadn’t heard him properly. “It happened during the Hunters’ Moon. Believe me, I fought it. Swore it wasn’t real. But fate really doesn’t give a shit about what’s convenient.” 

The name followed. 

“Raelyn Wren.” 

Bond sealed. 

Not slowly like other mates. Not gentle or tentative. It seized tight around my heart and pulled. Pulled something deep inside me that clicked - an undeniable truth refusing to be ignored. My breath caught, and my vision whited out for a second as everything clicked into place all at once. 

Iris. 

I saw her face. Clear as day. Cool blue eyes and a chill smile. Straight-backed and unmovable. The way her magic had arced when we collided. How my wolf had gone rampant the moment he caught her scent. 

It all fit together now. 

Swim as I might, there was no denying the shape of those piercing blue eyes now burned into my mind. 

Of fucking course. 

Of course, fate would do this to me. 

He was still talking, but I couldn’t hear him. Something about leases and timelines and how long they’d known each other. Words fell from his mouth, but I couldn’t swallow any of it. Instead, I felt the bond knot within me, weave itself through my insides, unraveling my world with each syllable. 

Iris Wren wasn’t just my mate. 

But she was going to be my sister, too. 

My fucking stepsister. 

Because fuck fate if this was its idea of a joke.