LOGINGEMMA“I told her to give me time. I told her I’d figure out a safe way.” I closed my eyes for a second. “Then two days later Gwyneth called the council together, and Dahlia was standing in front of everyone with her bags already packed. She was accused of stealing some important medicine. It was a lie, and everyone in that room knew it, and nobody said a word. Me included.”“I used to tell myself I was protecting you,” I said to Ethan. “That if I stayed quiet, you’d be safe. That’s what I told myself for years. And the more time went by, the harder it was to say the truth out loud, until it felt like I’d buried it too deep to ever dig up.”“So you let it stay buried,” Ethan said.“Yes.”He nodded once, slowly, like he was still trying to process everything. Then he looked at the ground. My heart broke even more.Freya wiped her face with the back of her hand. “Okay,” she said. Her voice shook, but she pushed through it. “That’s awful, Gemma. It really is. But we can be angry later. R
GEMMAI hadn’t said her name out loud in over twenty years. It had sat in my throat all that time like lead.Saying it now, on my own porch, in front of my son and the girl who felt more like a daughter to me than anyone born of my blood, was like ripping a bandage off a wound I’d told everybody had healed. It hadn’t healed. It had just waited.“Her name is Dahlia,” I said.Nobody moved. A moth kept bumping against the porch light, going tick, tick, tick, and I’d never hated a sound so much in my life.“She used to work in the clinic by the border,” I went on. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “She was the best healer I ever knew. Sharp as a tack, funny, and stubborn as a mule. Before Gwyneth had her exiled for asking too many questions.”Freya’s face went white, like all the blood in her had been drained. “The clinic,” she said. “She was Wren’s mentor.”Ethan hadn’t said a word. He was looking at me the way he used to when he was ten years old and I’d promised to come to his g
FREYAMy hands were steady when I typed back, even though nothing else in me was.Freya: Who is this?The reply came quickly—too quickly, in fact—as if whoever it was had been sitting there this whole time, just waiting for exactly this moment.Unlmowm: Someone who's tired of watching Gwyneth win. Meet me alone.Ethan said no before I even finished reading it out loud. His tone sounded so flat and final, like the word alone could keep me safe just by existing."Absolutely not," he added. "Not after everything that’s already happened. Not after Corin or even Annie."I understood his anger, and I shared every last bit of it. We had trusted people before, people who'd smiled at us, then turned around and used what we told them to hurt us and the people we loved. I wasn't blind to that. But I also understood something Ethan didn't seem ready to hear, and it had been building in me for a while now, long before this message ever showed up on my phone.I was done being protected. I wanted to
ETHANFreya was quiet the whole ride back. She sat with her head against the window, staring out at the dark trees blurring past, her jaw clenched, her mind working faster than she wanted to admit out loud. I recognized that silence. She was using it to protect herself. It meant she was already three steps ahead of me, planning something I wasn't going to like."We're not telling anyone about Wren," she finally said without turning her head. "I need to meet her myself first."I understood the instinct behind it. Every single person we'd trusted with a secret over the last year had either betrayed us or nearly gotten killed for knowing too much. Corin. Annie. Even Gemma had ended up hurt more than once just for knowing too much. I understood why Freya wanted to keep this one thing just between the two of us, at least for now.But something about leaving Gemma out of it felt wrong. Especially with Micah still missing.Gemma had spent the last few weeks bruised, poisoned, and lied to by
FREYAWe killed the flashlights and pressed ourselves into the dark, Ethan's hand finding mine. Above us, boots kept moving on the gravel. My wolf clawed at the inside of my chest, desperate to run, fight, or do anything but crouch here helplessly while somewhere out there my son was still missing.The footsteps stopped directly above the hatch.I stopped breathing.Every muscle in my body locked up. I stared at the thin line of light around the edge of the hatch door, waiting for it to swing open, waiting for a face that I didn't want to see to appear. My hand tightened around the folder against my chest.Then a voice called out, muffled but familiar in a strange way, like I'd heard it once before somewhere and just couldn't place it.A name. Not mine or Ethan's.I felt Ethan's grip on my hand loosen just a little, though he still didn't move."White Wolf pack," he breathed, so quiet I almost missed it. "They're looking for their own missing scout."I let his words sink in slowly, my
ETHAN"Wren."I said it before I could stop myself. The name just fell out of my mouth, like it had been there waiting for the right moment to escape. Freya's eyes locked on mine, and I felt the weight of what I was about to say settle heavily in my chest."Her name is Wren," I said again, slower this time. "She runs a small clinic near the border of the White Wolf pack. The kind of place wolves go when they don't want questions asked."Freya's mouth opened, then closed again. She was waiting for me to explain, and I didn't blame her. I wasn't sure I could explain it properly even to myself."I've been there twice," I said. "Chasing leads on suppression herbs people were buying up on the black market. She's quiet. Has sharp eyes. Doesn't talk more than she has to." I shook my head, trying to line it all up in my mind. "I never thought twice about her. Not until right now, staring at these initials, matching them to a letter she once signed on a supply order.""Are you sure?" Freya ask
ETHANShe was staring at me like I'd dropped out of the sky, which wasn't that far from the truth.I'd been running a patrol route through the back edge of the territory, nothing unusual, just burning off that restless energy that came with settling into a new place. I'd been in this city for less
FREYA "You're seriously not going to show up, are you?" I muttered, staring at the empty seat across from me. The chair had been empty for over an hour. The candle between us had burned down by at least half, and the waiter, bless his heart, had stopped asking if I wanted to order. I picked up my
FREYAThe meeting was set for the following morning.Orin had booked a private room at the Lodge, which was the closest thing our pack had to a proper meeting venue. It was all exposed timber and stone hearths and the permanent smell of pine resin and old smoke. It wasn't the glass-and-steel corpor
FREYAHe walked in the next morning like it was any other day.I was in the kitchen when I heard the front door, and for one second my whole body went still, the way it always did when I was deciding something without actually deciding it. Then I picked up my mug and kept drinking my tea.Brian cam







