Chapter Two: The Bond That Can't Be Broken

My room felt smaller than it had that morning. I sat on the edge of the bed with my shoes still in my hands and the party still going somewhere across the pack grounds, faint music carrying on the night air, and I tried to do the thing you're supposed to do when your life rearranges itself without your permission. I tried to be rational. I tried to list the facts. The bond exists and he knows it and he chose her anyway. She is three months pregnant. She knew. She must have known and she said nothing. She gave me that smile.

My hands started shaking and I put the shoes down carefully so I wouldn't have to think about why.

And then something else happened.

It started at my fingertips. A warmth. No. Not warmth exactly, more like pressure that had no source, building at the edges of my palms, and when I looked down there was light. Silver light, faint as a held breath, dancing at the tips of my fingers like static electricity that had decided to be beautiful instead of sharp.

I had never seen this before.

My wolf stirred and the light brightened for just a second and my heart slammed against my ribs and I pressed my hands down into my lap and held very still until it faded.

The room was dark. The music was still playing outside. Somewhere in the pack grounds, my sister was celebrating the life she had built on top of mine, and in the Blackwood estate corridor, a lightbulb was dark where it had popped when Alexander said my name.

I sat in the dark with silver fading from my hands, and for the first time in my life I understood that the thing they had been afraid of was never going to stay hidden. Not for her. Not for him. Not for any of them.

It was only waiting for me to stop being afraid of it first.

I didn't sleep.

I lay on my back staring at the ceiling with my hands folded over my stomach like a person in a coffin, which felt appropriate, and I listened to the pack grounds go quiet by degrees. The music first. Then the voices. Then the cars. Then nothing but wind through the window I'd cracked open because I needed to breathe and the room kept feeling smaller every time I closed my eyes.

By two in the morning the silver light had come back three more times. Each time I pressed my palms flat against the mattress until it faded. Each time it took a little longer to go.

I didn't understand what it was. I only knew it felt like something waking up that had been asleep for a very long time, and it did not particularly care that tonight was the worst possible night for that.

By morning, Sophia's room was empty.

Not just her things. The smell of her perfume, that specific vanilla-and-cedar scent she'd worn since we were fifteen, was already fading from the upstairs hall. I stood in her doorway for a moment. The bed was made. Nothing left on the dresser. She had not done this last night in a rush. She had packed days ago. She had known exactly when she would be leaving.

I shut the door quietly and went downstairs.

My father was at the kitchen table with coffee and his phone, scrolling through congratulatory messages from pack members. He did not look up when I sat down across from him.

"Sophia called," he said. "She's settled in the Alpha wing. Alexander is hosting a small family breakfast next weekend, and he'd like us both there."

"Both," I repeated.

"To keep things looking normal." He set his phone down. Finally looked at me. "That's all I'm asking, Serena. Keep things looking normal until this settles."

I watched him for a moment. This man who had raised me, who had taught me to ride a bike in the pack's east field, who used to fall asleep on the couch with one hand still holding his book. I watched him and I tried to find the version of him that would have looked at my face last night and asked if I was alright.

"She's my twin," I said.

"I know that."

"He's my—" I stopped. His eyes went sharp and fast and warning, and I understood without finishing the sentence that this conversation had a wall in it and I had just found it.

"Don't," he said. Quiet. Final.

I stood up. I didn't take the coffee he'd already poured for me. I went back upstairs and I sat on my bedroom floor with my back against the bed and my knees pulled to my chest, and I breathed through the specific grief of understanding that your father has chosen a side and it isn't yours.

I wasn't supposed to go to the pack grounds that afternoon. I went anyway.

I told myself it was just a walk. I told myself I wasn't looking for anyone. I was halfway across the east yard when I felt the bond pull sharp and directional, the way it had at the gathering, and I stopped walking with one hand braced against the oak tree at the yard's edge.

Alexander came out of the training building forty feet away.

He saw me immediately. Of course he did. The bond worked both ways.

He crossed the yard in long strides and I stayed where I was because I was not going to be the one who moved, not today, not after last night. He stopped two feet away. Close enough that the bond hummed steadily in the space between us, low and insistent, like a sound just below hearing.

He looked tired. Good, I thought, and then immediately hated myself for thinking it.

"You shouldn't be here," he said.

"I live here."

"Serena." He exhaled. Rubbed the back of his neck with one hand in the way people do when they are trying to find words that don't exist. "What happened last night, what you felt, I need you to understand that it doesn't—"

"Change anything?" I said. "Is that what you were going to say?"

His jaw tightened.

"Because I felt it too," I said. "I know you know that. I know you felt it the same second I did. And I'm not asking you to blow up your life, Alexander, I'm not asking you for anything. I just need you to stand in front of me and tell me honestly that you know what you did."

The silence between us stretched.

A sparrow landed on the fence post beside us, looked at both of us, and left. Somewhere across the grounds a group of young pack wolves were running drills and their laughter carried on the air, easy and unbothered and from a completely different world.

"I know," he said finally. Low. Barely a sound.

"Okay," I said.

I pushed off from the tree and walked away. He didn't call after me. The bond pulled taut with every step like a thread being drawn to its limit, and I kept walking anyway, because the only thing worse than feeling it was letting him see that I did.

That night, my wolf stirred again.

And this time, the silver light didn't fade.

It just waited.