Chapter 5 : Beta Rowan

She found him again the next morning, this time without the pretense of wandering into the training yard by accident.

Rowan was alone for once, working through a set of forms with a practice blade, movements precise and unhurried in a way that reminded her, uncomfortably, of the way Lucian moved through a crowded room — controlled, deliberate, nothing wasted. She watched from the fence a while before he acknowledged her, though she had no doubt he'd clocked her presence the moment she arrived.

"You're becoming a regular fixture out here," he said, not breaking his form.

"I like watching people who know what they're doing."

"Is that meant to be a compliment?"

"An observation," she said, and caught herself borrowing the word from Lucian a beat too late to take it back.

Rowan's blade paused mid-arc. He straightened, studying her with the same careful weighing he'd given her in their first conversation, except this time there was less hostility in it and something closer to genuine curiosity underneath.

"You've picked up his phrasing," he said. "Interesting."

"I don't know what you mean."

"You do." He set the practice blade aside and crossed to the fence, close enough now that the conversation felt deliberately private, even in an open yard. "I've known Lucian since we were both young enough to still be losing sparring matches to our mothers. I know how he talks. I know when someone's started talking like him without noticing."

Nyra didn't have a response for that, and the silence stretched long enough to become its own kind of answer.

"How long have you known him," she asked instead, redirecting because she didn't trust where the first thread would lead if she followed it.

"My whole life." Something in Rowan's face softened, the wariness easing into memory. "We were pups together. I watched him become Alpha at twenty-three, younger than anyone expected, right after his father died — not gently. There was a fight for it. Lucian won, and then he spent the next two years proving to a lot of very skeptical wolves that winning a fight and deserving the position weren't the same thing, and that he could manage both."

"He doesn't talk about that."

"He doesn't talk about most of it." Rowan's jaw tightened slightly. "He carries things quietly. Always has. It's part of why people trust him — he doesn't perform his pain for sympathy the way some alphas do. But it also means most people who spend time around him never actually see what it costs him to hold all of it together."

Nyra thought of the study, the low fire, the particular exhaustion she'd seen in his face during their first real conversation there — except that hadn't happened yet in this version of things, and she caught herself reaching for a memory that belonged to a version of events that hadn't occurred. She pushed the thought aside, uneasy at how easily her mind had reached for closeness that hadn't been earned yet.

"Why are you telling me this," she asked instead.

Rowan was quiet for a moment, weighing something. "Because I think you're starting to see him. Not the Alpha. Him." His eyes held hers, steady, searching for something she wasn't sure she wanted him to find. "And because I've watched a lot of people get close to Lucian over the years for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do with actually caring what happens to him. I'd like to think you're not one of them. I'm not entirely sure yet."

"That's fair," she admitted, and it cost her more than she expected to say it plainly instead of deflecting.

Something in Rowan's posture eased, just slightly, like her honesty had answered a question he hadn't asked directly. "He's never let anyone stay this long," he said, quieter now, less like a warning and more like he was working through the thought himself as he said it. "Not since—"

He stopped.

Nyra waited, watching him visibly decide whether to finish the sentence, and watching him choose, in the end, not to.

"Since what," she pressed, gently enough that it wasn't quite a demand.

"That's his to tell you. Not mine." Rowan straightened, some of the earlier guardedness returning, though it felt different now — less suspicion of her specifically, more the general caution of a man protecting someone he loved from a story that wasn't his to hand out. "Just — be careful with him. Whatever you are, whatever you're not telling us. He doesn't let people in easily. If you're going to be the exception, be a good one."

He walked back to his forms without waiting for a response, and Nyra stood at the fence a while longer, turning the unfinished sentence over in her mind, wondering what name belonged in the space where 'since' had trailed off into silence, and hating how much she already wanted to know.

---

She didn't get her answer that day, or the next.

But she found herself watching Lucian differently after that conversation — not for exits, not for weaknesses, not for anything her training had ever taught her to look for. She watched the way he moved through his own halls like a man carrying something heavy that no one else could see the weight of, the way Rowan had described, and she understood, uncomfortably, that some part of her had started wanting to help carry it.

She caught him alone that evening near the stables, checking on a mare that had thrown a shoe earlier in the week, running a steady hand down its leg with a gentleness that had nothing performative in it — no audience, no reason to soften himself for anyone's benefit but the horse's.

"Rowan says you've never let anyone stay this long," she said, before she'd fully decided to say it at all.

Lucian's hand stilled against the mare's leg. He didn't turn right away.

"Rowan talks too much," he said, but there was no real heat in it.

“He says there's a reason why."

"Rowan talks too much," Lucian said again, finally facing her, and whatever careful patience usually lived in his expression had shifted into something more raw.

"I’m not asking you to tell me." The words sounded like a lie immediately there were out of her mouth.

They hung in the cold evening air between them, and for a long moment Nyra thought he wouldn't respond. She was considering the conversation over when he spoke again.

"Someday," Lucian said finally, quiet, subdued. "Not today."

But why? He owed her nothing.

His eyes held hers, seemingly reading her thoughts.

"I'd wait until I trust you enough to say it right. Until you trust me enough to understand."

He turned back to the mare before she could answer, and Nyra stood there in the stable's lamplight with a question she hadn't expected to care about the answer to.

And an ache in her chest that had everything to do with the growing, uncomfortable certainty that she wanted him to trust her enough.

That she wanted to trust him in return.

What was happening to her?