Chapter 35

Elara's POV

"Freya," I said, my voice coming out sharper than I intended. She looked up from the fabric samples with immediate concern at whatever she saw in my expression.

"Elara? What's wrong?"

"That ring," I said, pointing to the silver and dark stone piece on her hand. My heart was pounding hard enough that I could feel it in my throat.

"Where did you get it? Is it common, that pattern? Something many people in these territories might wear?"

Freya glanced down at her own hand, clearly confused by the sudden intensity of the question. "This old thing? It belonged to my grandmother. Nightfall Hollow craftsmanship, though an older style. Not something you'd see made new anymore. Why do you ask?"

"I need to speak with Kael," I said, already moving toward the door. "Now, if you'll excuse me."

I found him in the guard house with Soren, still poring over the map from the search the night before.

The moment I described the ring I'd seen on Alpha Cross's warrior weeks ago at the border, the dark stone and the particular old style Freya had just confirmed as distinctly Nightfall Hollow craftsmanship, Kael's expression sharpened into something focused and grim.

"You're certain," he said. "It matches what Mathis described?"

"I think so. It caught the light strangely that day. I remember noticing it and thinking nothing of it at the time. But now, seeing Freya's ring, the shape feels right.

The same dark stone set into silver." I pressed my hands together, trying to steady the unease building in my chest. "If I'm right, it means whoever's connected to the old cause has ties reaching directly into Ashwood pack.

Not just through Alpha Cross corresponding with Mathis, but something older. Something already there before any of this began."

Soren straightened from the map and exchanged a look with Kael that told me they were both already following the same uncomfortable thread I was. "That would explain a great deal," Soren said slowly.

"Why Alpha Cross seemed to already suspect something about Elara's bloodline before Mathis ever reached out to him. Why he pushed for the rejection at the ceremony rather than simply waiting to learn more first."

"You think Alpha Cross is part of this old cause," I said. "Not simply someone Mathis recruited for convenience."

"I think it's possible he was already connected to it, long before Mathis ever entered the picture," Kael said carefully.

"Which would mean the push for your rejection wasn't only about protecting pack advantage, the way he claimed to Ryker.

It may have been about ensuring you never had the chance to bond with anyone capable of nurturing what you actually are."

The realization settled cold and strange in my chest because it reframed everything.

The ceremony. Ryker's cruel words in front of the whole pack. Even my own mother's mysterious arrival in Ashwood territory that Nyra had mentioned weeks ago as unusual enough to draw suspicion.

If Alpha Cross had ties to a group centuries old, patient enough to have waited generations for another chance at eliminating the Moon Heir's bloodline, then perhaps my mother hadn't simply wandered into Ashwood pack by chance at all. Perhaps she'd been hiding from exactly the kind of danger that had finally caught up to her daughter.

"I need to know more about my mother," I said slowly. "About why she came to Ashwood pack in the first place. If she was hiding from this old cause, if that's the real reason nobody in the pack ever spoke openly about where she came from, there might be answers there we haven't considered yet."

"Ryker might know something," Soren offered. "He's proven himself willing to help before, at real cost to himself. If Alpha Cross has been keeping secrets even from his own son, Ryker might have pieces of the truth without realizing their significance."

The thought of reaching out to Ryker again, of asking him to risk himself further against his own father, sat uncomfortably alongside the urgency of what we needed to know. Kael watched the conflict play across my face and squeezed my hand gently.

"We won't force him into anything," he said. "But if he's willing, a careful, quiet conversation might tell us more than any archive text could. Would you be willing to write to him? Explain what we suspect, and ask if he knows anything about your mother's arrival or about his father's ties to any old cause beyond what he already revealed?"

I nodded slowly, already composing the letter in my mind.

Careful and measured, respectful of the risk I was asking him to take without pretending the danger wasn't real. "I'll write to him tonight. Whatever's between us now, he's proven he wants to make right what he can.

I think he'd want to know this too, especially if it means finally understanding what his father's actually been protecting all these years."

The letter went out the next morning, carried by one of Soren's most trusted riders rather than any official Nightfall Hollow messenger.

The days that followed carried a different kind of tension than the weeks before.

Not the sharp fear of an active threat in the courtyard, but the slower, heavier waiting of uncertainty.

Wondering what answers might come, and whether those answers would bring us closer to safety or simply confirm how much further this danger actually reached.

Mira sensed the shift in mood despite my best efforts to keep the wedding planning light around her. She finally cornered me in the garden one evening, her expression far more serious than her usual easy warmth.

"You don't have to protect me from whatever's happening," she said, sitting beside me on the same bench where Kael had proposed. "I've known you your whole life, Elara. I can tell when something's eating at you, wedding excitement or not."

So I told her. The ring. The old cause. My suspicions about my mother. Mira listened with the same quiet attention she'd shown that very first day at the cottage. When I finished she took my hand, her grip firm and steady.

"Whatever this is," she said, "whatever you find out about your mother, about Alpha Cross, about all of it, you're not facing it without me. I don't care how old this cause is or how many centuries they've been waiting. They've never had to deal with the two of us together before."

Despite everything I laughed. The sound surprised me with how much lighter it made the weight in my chest feel.

I leaned my head against her shoulder, grateful beyond words for a friendship that had survived rejection and revelation alike.

Steady through every version of my life it seemed the world was determined to keep rewriting.