Chapter 3

Wren's pov

Elder Thane liked the sound of his own voice.

Tradition. Bloodlines. The future of the pack secured for another generation. Celeste stood through all of it with her chin up, trained for this moment since she could walk. I watched from my corner and tried not to look at Kade too often.

It did not work.

His eyes found mine every few minutes, quick, guilty, like he could not stop it even standing next to the woman he was about to claim. Grier noticed. Jaw tight, arms crossed, saying nothing.

"He keeps doing that," Grier said beside me.

"Doing what."

"You know what."

I did not answer.

Elder Thane finally got to the part everyone was waiting for. He raised his hands and the room went quiet, the kind of quiet where everyone wants the same thing at once. "Alpha Kade Calloway. Step forward and speak the words of intention before this pack."

Kade did not move for a second too long.

A few people near the front started exchanging glances. Then he stepped forward, and his voice came out steady, formal, nothing like the voice he had used with me in the driveway that morning. He spoke the old words, the ones every Alpha spoke before a claiming, promising to protect and provide and lead beside his chosen mate. Celeste's eyes shone with tears through the whole thing.

The actual claiming would not happen tonight. Not the bond, not the bite, not any of it. Tonight was only the promise, spoken in front of witnesses, the formal step before the real ceremony still weeks away. I had forgotten that until Elder Thane said it plainly, and something in my chest loosened just slightly at the reminder.

Weeks, not tonight.

The crowd began moving toward the tables set up along the back wall, and for a moment the whole hall shifted into motion, people embracing Celeste, congratulating Edwin and Vivian, the noise rising back into something festive. I stayed near my corner, and that was when Kade found me, breaking away from a cluster of elders congratulating him.

"Wren."

"You should not be over here."

"I know." His jaw was tight, his eyes tired in a way they had not been that morning. "I meant what I said. Midnight. The training barn."

"Kade, everyone can see you."

"I do not care."

"You should care. You just stood up there and promised yourself to my sister in front of the entire pack."

"I know what I did." Something flickered across his face, gone before I could name it. "That does not change what I need to say to you."

"Then say it now."

"Not here." His eyes flicked toward the crowd, toward Celeste laughing with a group of well wishers only a few feet away. "Midnight, Wren. Please."

He walked back into the crowd before I could answer, and I stood there a moment longer, my chest tight, before slipping out the side door.

I slipped out anyway, needing air, cold hitting me hard after the heat of the hall. I stood there gulping it like I had been underwater.

"Running away again."

Priya. Arms crossed, that same smile.

"I needed air."

"Sure you did." She stepped closer, heels crunching gravel. "Most people would be happy for their sister tonight."

"I am happy for her."

"You look like you are about to throw up. Or maybe that is just your face." She tilted her head. "I saw the way Kade looked at you earlier. In the driveway."

My stomach dropped. "You did not see anything."

"I saw enough." Her smile sharpened. "Does Celeste know how much time her mate spends looking at her sister?"

"There is nothing to know."

"Maybe not yet." She shrugged and stepped back toward the door. "I have a good memory, Wren. I remember things. Especially useful ones. And I will be watching you both very closely from now on."

She left me alone in the dark, my heart still slamming against my ribs.

I did not go back in right away. I walked the long way instead, past the training grounds, past the old oak tree Kade and I used to climb as kids, back before any of this stood between us. The bark was worn smooth in one spot where we always sat, and I ran my fingers over it without thinking, the way I always did when I passed this tree.

An old woman stood near the tree line, silver hair loose around her shoulders, watching me.

I did not know her. I would have remembered a face like that.

"You are out here alone," she said. Her voice was steadier than her frame suggested.

"I needed air."

"Everyone needs air tonight." She studied me. "You do not look like the rest of them in there."

"I am not."

"No." She said it slowly, like she was tasting the word. "You are not."

My skin prickled. "Do I know you?"

"Not yet." A small, strange smile. "But you will, Wren Ashby. Sooner than you think. There is more to you than this house has ever let you see."

"I do not know what that means."

"Not yet," she said again, and something about the way she repeated it made the words feel less like an accident and more like a promise. "Your family has kept things from you. Old things. The kind of things that do not stay buried forever."

"What things?"

"Things your mother buried the day you were born, and has spent every year since making sure stayed buried." Her eyes did not leave mine. "You feel it sometimes, do you not? A pull before something happens. A cold feeling in your chest right before something goes wrong."

My breath caught. I had never told anyone that. Not Maribel, not Kade, not a single soul in twenty six years.

"How do you know that?"

A voice called out somewhere near the hall, sharp and close. I turned toward it for half a second, just long enough to catch Maribel's voice calling my name. When I looked back, the woman was gone. No footsteps in the grass. No sound of her leaving at all, like the tree line had simply swallowed her whole.

I stood there a moment, pulse loud in my own ears, replaying what she had said. Old things. The kind of things that do not stay buried forever. My parents had never once talked about our family history beyond the usual pack stories everyone already knew, the founding, the old wars, the same handful of names repeated at every gathering.

Maribel found me a moment later, cutting through the dark with quick, worried steps.

"There you are," she said, breathless. "I have been looking everywhere. The ceremony is over. Vivian wants everyone back inside for the toast."

"I am coming."

She studied my face, the way she always did when she suspected I was hiding something. "You look pale."

"I am fine," I said, the same tired answer I always gave.

"Mm." She did not believe me, but she let it go, looping her arm through mine and leading me back toward the light and noise of the hall.

I looked back once toward the tree line before we reached the door. Nothing moved. No sign of the woman, no sign that she had ever been standing there at all.

But her words stayed with me the whole walk back inside, quiet and strange, settling somewhere deep in my chest like a stone dropped into still water.

Old things. The kind of things that do not stay buried forever.