CHAPTER 2: The Return

The sun came up somewhere behind the clouds, turning the sky from black to grey without ever actually getting bright. I'd been driving for four hours, and my hands had cramped into claws around the steering wheel.

The backseat was quiet. Too quiet.

I glanced in the rearview mirror. Ash and Ryder were both asleep in their car seats, their little heads tilted at uncomfortable angles. Even unconscious, that terrible light pulsed under their skin. It had gotten brighter in the last hour.

The car smelled like stale french fries and the vanilla air freshener I'd hung from the mirror two years ago. Empty coffee cups rolled around the passenger footwell. Evidence of my human life, scattered and cheap and so incredibly far from the world I was driving back into.

My wolf stirred. Just a flicker, barely there, but it was more than I'd felt from her in months. She knew we were getting close to pack territory. She knew what that meant.

I didn't want to think about what that meant.

"Mama?"

Ryder's voice was small and scratchy. I checked the mirror again and found his eyes open, glassy with fever.

"Hey, baby. How are you feeling?"

"Hot." He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. "Where are we going?"

I'd been dreading this question for the entire drive. "We're going to see some people who can help you feel better."

"What people?"

"People from where Mama used to live. Before you were born."

Ash woke up at the sound of our voices. He looked worse than his brother, his skin almost translucent, the light beneath it branching like lightning. "I don't want to go to new people."

"I know. I'm sorry." My throat was tight. "But you're both sick, and these people can help."

Ryder coughed, a wet sound that made my stomach clench. "Is Daddy there?"

The question hit me like a physical blow. I'd told them about their father in the vaguest possible terms. A man who loved them but couldn't be with us. A man who didn't know they existed because it was safer that way.

All lies. Comfortable lies that let me sleep at night.

"Yes," I said quietly. "Daddy's there."

"Why doesn't Daddy live with us?" Ryder asked. It was the question he'd been asking since he learned to talk. "Tommy at daycare has a daddy who lives with him. Why doesn't ours?"

I couldn't answer. I just reached back and stroked his fevered forehead, feeling the heat radiating from his skin. "It's complicated, sweetheart."

"That's what you always say."

Ash was watching me in the mirror with those strange mismatched eyes, one green and one silver. Sometimes I thought he understood more than he should at three years old. Sometimes I thought he could see right through me.

"Are we going to stay there?" Ash asked. "With Daddy?"

"No." The word came out harder than I meant it to. "We're just visiting. Just until you feel better."

If they felt better. If Caden helped. If he didn't slam the door in my face the second he saw me.

The trees changed. I noticed it gradually, then all at once. The scraggly pines of the human territories gave way to the towering old growth forest of Silvermoon Pack lands. The air even smelled different here, rich with earth and rain and something else I couldn't name.

Home, my wolf whispered.

Not anymore.

But my body didn't seem to care what my brain thought. The closer we got, the more my wolf woke up. And with her came the mate bond.

It hit me like a truck when we crossed the invisible boundary into pack territory.

Pain lanced through my chest, sharp and immediate. The bond that had been dormant for three years suddenly flared to life, a rope of fire connecting me to Caden. I could feel him somewhere ahead, a magnetic pull that made my hands shake on the wheel.

Nausea rolled through me. Dizziness. My vision blurred at the edges.

"Mama?" Ash's voice was scared. "Mama, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." I forced myself to breathe, to keep the car steady. "Everything's fine."

It wasn't fine. My wolf was clawing at my insides, desperate to run toward the bond, toward our mate. The rejection had damaged her, damaged us both, but three years apart had only made the pull stronger.

I wanted to turn the car around. I wanted to floor it and get as far from this feeling as possible.

But Ryder whimpered in the backseat, and I kept driving.

The border checkpoint appeared around a curve in the road. Two guards in black tactical gear stood beside a gate I didn't remember being there three years ago. They straightened when they saw the car, hands moving toward weapons.

I stopped and rolled down the window. Rain misted in, cold on my face.

The younger guard approached cautiously. He couldn't have been more than twenty, with nervous eyes and a hand on his sidearm. When he got close enough to see my face, he froze.

"Miss Lena?" He looked like he'd seen a ghost. "But you're... we thought you were dead."

Of course they did. Easier to think I'd died than to wonder why the Beta's daughter had vanished without a trace.

"Tell Alpha Caden that his sons are dying." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Tell him I need five minutes of his time. Then I'll disappear again."

The guard's eyes flicked to the backseat, to the two small figures glowing in their car seats. His face went pale. "His... I need to call this in."

"Do it fast. We don't have much time."

He backed away, speaking urgently into his radio. I couldn't hear the conversation, but I saw his expression shift from shock to something like panic.

The older guard came over, looked at me, then at the boys. His jaw tightened. "You should have called ahead."

"Would he have answered?"

The guard didn't reply.

We waited. Twenty minutes that felt like hours. I watched the clock on the dashboard tick forward while my sons burned with fever in the backseat. The light under their skin was so bright now I could see it even through their clothes.

"Mama, I don't feel good." Ryder was crying, quiet tears that broke my heart. "I want to go home."

"Soon, baby. Soon."

Ash wasn't crying. He was too still, his breathing too shallow. And then his whole body went rigid.

"Ash!" I unbuckled and twisted around, reaching for him. His eyes had rolled back in his head. His small limbs jerked in the confines of the car seat.

A seizure. He was having a seizure.

"Help!" I screamed at the guards. "Someone help him!"

The older guard was already on the radio, shouting for medical. I got my seatbelt off, climbed into the back, my hands shaking as I tried to keep Ash from hurting himself.

"It's okay, baby, you're okay, Mama's here." I was crying now, couldn't stop it. "Please, please be okay."

The seizure lasted thirty seconds. It felt like a lifetime.

When it finally stopped, Ash went limp. His breathing came in harsh gasps. The light under his skin flickered like a candle in the wind.

I heard an engine. Tires on gravel.

A black SUV pulled up to the checkpoint, sleek and expensive. Everything my beat up sedan wasn't. The door opened, and my whole world narrowed to a single point.

Caden.

He looked different. Older. Harder. His black hair was shorter than I remembered, his shoulders broader. He wore dark jeans and a grey henley that showed off muscles I didn't remember him having. But his eyes were the same. Forest green, intense, currently locked on my car with an expression I couldn't read.

Then he moved, and I saw her.

Vivienne stepped out of the passenger side like she was walking a red carpet. Designer dress, perfect makeup, blonde hair that probably cost more to maintain than I made in a month. Her hand was on Caden's arm, possessive and confident.

My stomach turned to ice.

She was still here. Still with him. Still playing Luna to his Alpha.

I'd known it was possible. I'd known he'd moved on. But seeing it was different. Seeing them together made three years of pain fresh and immediate.

Caden was walking toward my car now. Vivienne tried to follow, but he said something that made her stop. Her perfect face twisted with confusion and annoyance.

I forced myself to move. Unbuckled Ash from his car seat, lifted his limp body into my arms. He was so hot it hurt to hold him, but I wasn't putting him down. Not now. Not when I had to face this.

I opened the car door and stepped out into the rain.

Caden stopped ten feet away. His eyes went to Ash first, taking in the small boy burning with fever in my arms. Then to me. And something in his expression cracked.

"Lena." My name came out rough, like he'd forgotten how to say it. "You're alive."

I couldn't speak. Three years of words stuck in my throat. Three years of pain and anger and grief and desperate hope I'd tried so hard to kill.

His eyes dropped to Ash again. Really looking this time. Taking in the black hair that matched his own. The sharp features. The way the light pulsed beneath translucent skin.

"This is..." He couldn't finish the sentence.

"Your son." My voice shook. "His name is Ash. And that's Ryder in the car. They're three years old. And they're dying from Luna Fever because the mate bond you rejected is killing them."

Caden's face went white.

Behind him, Vivienne's perfectly made up eyes went wide with shock that quickly turned to something uglier.

"You have to be joking," she said, her voice sharp. "Caden, she can't seriously expect you to believe—"

"Go back to the pack house, Vivienne." Caden's voice carried an Alpha command that made everyone in hearing distance flinch. Including me.

Vivienne's mouth opened and closed. "But—"

"Now."

She looked between us, her expression furious, then turned on her expensive heels and stalked back to the SUV. The door slammed hard enough to make me wince.

Caden took a step closer. "Let me see him."

Every instinct I had screamed at me to run. To protect my son from the man who'd thrown us away. But I didn't have that luxury anymore.

I shifted Ash in my arms so Caden could see his face.

Caden reached out, his hand trembling. His fingers brushed Ash's fevered forehead.

The light under Ash's skin exploded outward in a wave of silver and gold that knocked Caden back three steps. Power crackled through the air, making my hair stand on end.

Ash screamed.