Chapter Three: Chipmunk

The Voss house was never quiet in the mornings.

That was just the nature of living with the Voss family . Someone was always moving, always eating, always training in the backyard or arguing about training in the backyard or loudly recounting something that had happened during training in the backyard.

Mornings in this house were chaos and footsteps and the smell of whatever Liane was cooking and Leo's voice carrying through every wall like he had never heard of an indoor voice.

But this particular morning was different.

This morning everyone was standing in the upstairs hallway outside Elara's bedroom door, and nobody was saying anything above a whisper.

"Chipmunk." Aldric's voice was low. He had his hand flat against the door. "Chipmunk, please. Just tell me you're okay."

Nothing.

Not a sound from inside the room. Not movement, not a word, not even the creak of the bed.

Aldric looked at Liane. Liane looked back at him with her usual calmness although what she's feeling is entirely different . She had knocked three times already.

She had tried soft and she had tried gentle and she had tried leaving a cup of chamomile outside the door with a note.

The cup was still there. Untouched.

Leo was just standing there , his usual charming attitude and loudness was gone.

Caden was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, saying nothing, but his jaw was tight and his eyes hadn't left the door since they had all gathered here twenty minutes ago. That was how you knew Caden was worried.

Aldric knocked again. Three slow, deliberate knocks.

"Elara Rose Voss." His voice was firmer now, that deep authoritative rumble that made grown warriors snap to attention, but around the edges of it something was fraying. "I need to hear your voice. Right now. Please."

Silence.

"Aldric." Liane put her hand on his arm.

"She won't even…." He stopped. Pressed his hand flat against the door again. When he spoke again his voice had dropped so low it was almost just for the door. "Chipmunk. Whatever happened last night, whatever it is, we can fix it. We fix things together in this family. But I need you to open the door."

Nothing.

Leo made a sound that he immediately tried to cover by clearing his throat. He turned and looked at the ceiling.

Caden pushed off the wall. "I'll call Maya."

Maya arrived within fifteen minutes, still in her jacket, slightly out of breath like she had run part of the way. She took one look at the family assembled in the hallway and immediately she understood.

"She called you?" Aldric asked.

"No." Maya shook her head. "But I was going to come anyway. I've been worried since last night."

"What happened last night?" Liane asked. Her voice was very steady and very quiet. The voice she used when she needed the truth and knew it wasn't going to be easy. "Maya. Please."

Maya looked at the door for a moment. Then she looked at the family , at Aldric's barely contained worry, at Liane's steady eyes, at Leo who was trying so hard to look like he wasn't scared, at Caden who was watching her with that unreadable expression that somehow communicated everything.

She exhaled.

"She got rejected," Maya said. "Last night at the party. She found her mate and he rejected her."

The hallway went very still.

"Who." Aldric's voice came out flat. One word. No question mark. Just a demand dressed up as a word.

"She made me promise not to say anything." Maya held his gaze steadily and to her credit she did not flinch. "I'm sorry. I know that's not what you want to hear.

But she asked me and I'm not going to break that.

Aldric turned back to the door. And this time when he put his hand against it something in his shoulders changed , the warrior posture dropping, looking like a worried father.

"Baby girl." His voice came out rough at the edges. "I know you can hear me. I know you're in there and I know you're hurting and I know you don't want to talk right now and that's okay." He stopped and started again.

"But I need you to know that whoever he is, he's a fool. The biggest fool in this entire pack. And you…… you are the best thing in my world. You have been since the day you were born with those ridiculous little cheeks."

From somewhere inside the room, very faintly, came the sound of a breath that was almost a sob.

"There she is," Aldric said softly. "There's my chipmunk."

She didn't come out that day.

Or the next.

Liane left food outside the door three times a day and by the second day the plates were coming back empty which was enough to let everyone worry a little less.

Maya came every afternoon and sat outside the door and talked , not about the rejection, not about the party, just talked. About everything and nothing. Pack gossip. Something funny that happened on her way over. A story about Leo that she had witnessed that morning that she thought Elara should know about for future blackmail purposes.

On the third day there was a small knock from inside.

Then Elara's voice, quiet and rough from disuse. "Is there any of mom's soup left?"

Liane had a fresh pot ready within twenty minutes. She did not ask questions. She just handed it through the slightly open door and squeezed her daughter's hand once and let her be.

Leo celebrated this development by immediately trying to talk to Elara through the door for forty five minutes straight until Caden physically removed him from the hallway.

By the end of the first week she came out.

Not fully herself , anyone who knew her could see that. There was something quieter about her now, and she looked a little thinner .

But she came downstairs for breakfast. She helped her mother in the clinic .

She sat on the porch with Maya and they talked in low voices while the sun went down and nobody interrupted them.

She was trying. The whole family could see her trying and it was one of the bravest things any of them had ever watched.

Aldric never pushed for the name. He wanted it , anyone could see the fury sitting just beneath the surface every time the subject got anywhere near the topic but he held it back because Elara had asked him to and what Elara asked for, Elara got.

And then Aldric came home one Tuesday evening.

He came through the front door the way he always did , big and certain, filling the doorframe, dropping his jacket on the hook by the door. Elara was in the kitchen helping Liane with dinner. Leo was at the table. Caden was just coming downstairs.

Normal. Everything was almost normal.

"You hear the news?" Aldric said, pulling out his chair. His voice was easy. The tone of someone passing along information that meant nothing in particular to him. "Ethan Caldwell finally found his mate apparently. Some girl from another pack. They're announcing the engagement tonight at the pack hall."

The spoon in Elara's hand went still.

"Good for him," Leo said, not looking up from his phone.

"Alpha's pleased about it. Strong alliance apparently. The girl seemed….."

"Excuse me," Elara said.

Her voice came out perfectly normal. She set the spoon down on the counter with a quiet click, wiped her hands on the dish towel and walked out of the kitchen.

Aldric stopped talking. He looked at the empty doorway. Then slowly he looked at Liane.

Liane's eyes had closed briefly. When she opened them they were very careful.

"Aldric," she said quietly.

He looked at the doorway again. And understanding moved across his face ,slow and terrible, like a storm rolling in from the horizon. His hands flattened on the table.

"No," he said. Very quietly. "No, I didn't…."

"Don't," Liane said. "Not right now."

Upstairs, very faintly, a door closed.

She came to them three days later.

All four of them. She asked them to sit down in the living room and she stood in front of them with her hands clasped in front of her and her chin up in that way she had that quiet, stubborn dignity that had always been the most Elara thing about her.

"I got a scholarship," she said. "Before graduation. A full scholarship to study medicine at a university in Edinburgh, Scotland. I didn't accept it because I wanted to stay here." She paused. "But I think it's better If I do."

The room was quiet.

"Edinburgh," Leo said. "That's in…."

"Scotland. Yes."

"Elara" Aldric started.

"I need to go, Dad." Her voice didn't waver. "I need to go somewhere that is not here for a while. I need to be somewhere that I can just be me without, without all of this." She stopped. Swallowed. "I know it's far. I know it's not what any of us planned. But I need this."

Aldric looked at her for a long time.

He stood up.

He crossed the room and he pulled her into his arms and held on.

"Okay," he said into her hair. Rough and quiet. "Okay, chipmunk."

And that was that.

Liane cried quietly into a tissue and then immediately started making a list of things Elara would need. Caden disappeared for an hour and came back and without a word handed her his old watch, the good one, the one their grandfather had given him and said "so you don't forget to call."

Leo was loudly and dramatically devastated for approximately twenty minutes and then spent the rest of the evening sitting pressed against her side on the couch watching whatever she wanted on television without complaining once.

She left on a Friday morning.

The whole family stood in the driveway. Maya was there too, red eyed but smiling, squeezing Elara's hands and whispering something in her ear that made Elara laugh despite everything.

Aldric was last. He held her face in both his enormous hands , the hands that could break things, that had protected so much and he looked at her for a long moment.

"You call me," he said. "Every day."

"Every day," she agreed.

"And if anyone over there gives you trouble….."

"Dad."

"I'm just saying. Scotland is not that far."

She laughed. It was a real one, small and watery but real. She stood on her toes and kissed his cheek.

And then she picked up her bag and she walked toward the car and she did not look back because if she looked back she was never going to leave.

Behind her she heard Leo say, very quietly, "She's going to be okay. Right?"

And she heard her father's voice, steady and certain the way it always was.

"She's going to be more than okay."

She held onto that the whole way to the airport.