Chapter 21

Elara's POV

Weeks folded into each other after Vesna's departure, quiet in a way that let me settle further into Nightfall Hollow than I'd expected to so soon, though Kael's warning stayed lodged in the back of my mind, a low hum of caution underneath even the softest moments.

And I found myself watching Elder Mathis more closely than I let on, noting the way he always seemed to know things before anyone told him, the way his questions during court gatherings circled a little too neatly toward whatever Kael and I had been discussing in private.

"You're doing it again," Kael said one afternoon, finding me in the library with my eyes fixed on the doorway rather than the book open in front of me. "Watching the hall like you expect Mathis to walk through it any second."

"Can you blame me?"

"No," he admitted, settling into the chair across from mine. "But I don't want Vesna's warning to become the only thing you see when you look at this place. You deserve to actually live here, Elara, not just survive it."

He had a point, one I turned over for the rest of the afternoon, and by evening I'd decided he was right, that constant vigilance without any joy folded into it wasn't a life worth protecting in the first place, so when he suggested a walk through the castle gardens after dinner, I said yes without hesitation, grateful for an excuse to think about something other than court politics for an hour.

The gardens at night were nothing like I expected from a kingdom known mostly for fear, winding paths lit by soft lanterns, night blooming flowers releasing a sweetness into the cool air that reminded me faintly of the wildflowers Mira used to weave into my hair when we were girls, before either of us understood how much the world outside our small pack would eventually ask of us.

"I didn't expect this," I admitted, trailing my fingers along a low hedge as we walked. "Something this soft, tucked inside walls everyone describes as terrifying."

"Most people never get close enough to see past the walls," Kael said. "It's easier to fear a kingdom you've only heard about from a distance than one you've actually walked through." He glanced at me, something warm in his expression. "I used to think that suited me fine. Fear kept people at a distance, and distance kept them safe from whatever the wolf might do if it ever slipped free completely."

"And now?"

"Now I'm standing in my own garden at night, walking beside the one person who's never once looked at me like something to fear, and I find myself wondering why I ever thought distance was the safer choice." He stopped walking, turning to face me fully under one of the soft lantern lights, and something in his expression made my breath catch, careful and open in a way that still surprised me every time he let his guard down this completely. "I've spent a hundred years convincing myself I didn't deserve this. Any of it. The garden, the quiet evenings, someone who chooses to stay even when the choice is difficult."

"You do deserve it," I said softly. "You've deserved it for a long time, Kael. You just didn't have anyone around who was willing to prove that to you."

He reached up, cupping my face gently, and when he kissed me this time, it carried a different weight than the morning after the full moon, slower, more certain, like a question he'd finally stopped being afraid to ask out loud. I kissed him back with everything I'd been carrying since the forest, the fear and the hope and the strange, steady certainty that had grown in me every day since, until the garden around us blurred into something distant and unimportant compared to the warmth of his hands and the mark pulsing bright between us.

When we finally broke apart, both of us breathless, he rested his forehead against mine, exactly the way he had that first morning, and I felt the words rising in my chest before I'd fully decided to say them.

"I love you," I said, quiet but certain, the truth of it settling easily into place now that I'd finally let it out into the open air between us. "I don't know exactly when it happened. Somewhere between the forest and the full moon, I think. But I do. I love you, Kael."

Something shifted across his face, raw and unguarded, and for a moment he simply looked at me like he couldn't quite believe the words were real, like a man who'd waited a century for something he'd stopped letting himself hope for.

"I love you too," he said, voice rough with the weight of it. "I think I've loved you since the moment you looked at an injured stranger in the forest and worried about him instead of running for your own safety. I just didn't have a word for it yet. Didn't think I had any right to it."

We stood there a long moment, wrapped in the quiet of the garden and the soft glow of the lanterns, and for the first time since the night of my rejection, the ache that Ryker's cruelty had carved into my chest felt entirely healed over, replaced instead by something steady and sure, something no one's rejection could ever touch again.

Neither of us noticed the figure watching from the shadowed archway near the garden's edge, until the soft click of a door closing carried faintly across the quiet night air, and Kael's head turned sharply toward the sound, some old, careful instinct rising fast beneath the warmth of the moment.

"Someone was there," he said quietly.

By the time we reached the archway, whoever it had been was already gone, leaving nothing behind but the faint, familiar scent of a court robe that could have belonged to any number of Nightfall Hollow's elders, and the uneasy certainty, settling cold in my chest, that our private moment hadn't been quite as private as we'd believed.