chapter 11

Elara's POV

Mira arrived at the cottage three days later, escorted by Tobias through the back trails that avoided the main border crossing, and the moment I saw her step through the door, mud on her boots and worry written all over her face, I crossed the room and pulled her into a hug so tight she made a small surprised sound against my shoulder.

"You're alive," she said, pulling back just enough to look at me, her hands gripping my arms like she needed to check for herself that I was really standing there in one piece.

"Tobias's message said you were safe, but I've spent three days imagining every terrible thing that could have happened to you out here."

"I'm alive. I'm safe." I squeezed her hands, and something in my chest loosened at the sight of her familiar face, the one piece of my old life that had followed me into this strange new one without asking anything of me in return. "I'm sorry I couldn't send word sooner. Things have been complicated."

"Complicated." Mira's eyebrows rose as her gaze swept the cottage, taking in the fine furniture, the quiet warmth of the fire, and landing finally on Kael, who stood near the window giving us space but watching the reunion with obvious interest.

"Elara, that's the Lycan King standing in the kitchen.

When you said things got complicated, I assumed you meant you were hiding in a cave somewhere, not that you'd apparently moved into a fairy tale."

Despite everything, I laughed, the sound surprising me with how easy it came, and Kael's mouth twitched like he was fighting his own smile at Mira's bluntness.

"It's a long story," I said.

"I have time. I told the pack I was visiting my cousin two territories over. I'm not due back for a week." Mira sat herself down at the table without waiting for an invitation, the same way she'd always done since we were children, comfortable enough in my presence to make herself at home wherever I was.

"So talk. All of it. Don't leave anything out, especially not whatever's happening with your wrist, because I saw you rubbing it just now like it hurts."

I glanced at Kael, and he gave me a small nod, like he trusted my judgment on how much to share with the one person who had never once made me feel small.

So I told her everything. The rogue attack, the mark, Nyra's records about Wren, the curse, Alpha Cross showing up at the border with warriors and thinly veiled threats.

Mira listened without interrupting, which was unusual for her, her expression shifting from shock to fury to something softer as the story went on, and by the time I finished, she reached over and took my hand, turning my wrist gently to study the mark for herself.

"A goddess's bloodline," she said quietly. "All this time, and nobody knew. Not even you."

"Nobody knew," I confirmed. "I spent my whole life being told I wasn't enough, Mira. And it turns out I might be the reason a curse gets broken, or the reason an entire kingdom falls apart, depending on who gets to me first."

"Ryker rejected the most important woman in three territories," Mira said, and there was something fierce and satisfied in the way she said it, enough that Kael actually laughed under his breath from across the room. "I hope he chokes on that for the rest of his life."

"Mira."

"I'm serious. Let him live with it." She squeezed my hand once, then let it go, her expression turning more serious. "But Elara, if word is already spreading like you said, you need to be careful.

My pack isn't the only one that's going to come looking, and not everyone who comes looking is going to care whether you say yes or no to whatever they want from you."

"I know." The weight of that truth had been sitting in my chest since the day Nyra found the scroll about Wren. "That's why I need you to be careful too. If anyone asks where I am, if anyone even suspects you know more than you're saying, I need you to think of yourself first. I can't lose you over this."

Mira's expression softened, and she reached out to squeeze my hand one more time. "You're not going to lose me. I've survived worse than nosy Alphas asking questions.

Besides," she glanced toward Kael with a small, knowing smile, "someone needs to make sure the Lycan King treats you properly.

I didn't spend three days worrying myself sick just to hand that job over to a healer with sharp eyes and no sense of humor."

"I heard that," Nyra called from the next room, and Mira grinned, unbothered, the first real moment of lightness the cottage had seen in days.

Later that evening, after Mira had settled into the small guest room Nyra prepared for her, I found Kael standing outside on the narrow porch, looking out at the tree line where the sun was just beginning to set behind the branches, painting the sky in soft shades of orange and gold.

"She's good for you," he said, without turning around. "I can see why you wanted her here."

"She's the only family I have left that actually feels like family." I came to stand beside him, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched, the mark on my wrist warm against the cool evening air. "Thank you. For letting her come. For trusting me to decide who to tell."

"You don't need my permission to decide things like that, Elara." He turned to look at me then, the last light of the sunset catching the silver in his eyes. "This is your life. Your choice, about who's in it and who isn't. I meant what I said in the library. I don't intend to take that away from you, not for anything, not even for the curse."

The space between us felt smaller again, the same charged quiet from days before settling over us, and this time neither of us pulled back when his hand found mine, fingers lacing together over the mark that had started all of this.

"What happens now," I asked softly.

"Now," he said, "we make sure Wren's story doesn't repeat itself.