The boy with my eyes

"His name is Finn," Caden said. He is four years old. He has been with a family in the Greywood territory since three weeks after he was born.

I sat down.

Not because I chose to. My legs made the decision without asking me.

Four years old. The same age as Luca. Which meant that while I was raising a child that was not mine, my actual son was growing up in a house with strangers who knew exactly who he belonged to and said nothing.

Who placed him there, I said.

Elder Theron.

I looked up.

Caden was watching me with that steady, careful attention he gave everything. Not cold. Just controlled, the way a person gets controlled when they have learned that showing too much too fast costs them.

Theron knew who I was, I said.

He has known since before you were born. He served your father's council. When King Aldric died and the bloodline was hidden for your protection, Theron was one of three people who knew where you were placed. Caden pulled a folder from the desk drawer and set it in front of me. When you fell pregnant inside the Voss Pack, he intervened. He took the child before Damon could use him the same way he used you.

I opened the folder.

Inside was a photograph.

A small boy. Dark hair, messy, sticking up at the back. He was sitting in a garden with his knees pulled up, looking at something off camera, and his profile was so familiar it felt like looking at an old photograph of myself.

My throat closed.

I had carried him for nine months inside Damon's house. I had labored for eleven hours while Damon's mother stood outside the door and told the midwife to make sure the child was healthy. Not me. The child. I had held him for approximately four minutes before they told me there were complications and took him away and when I woke up they said he had not survived.

They told me he had not survived.

I had grieved him. A quiet, private grief that Damon never acknowledged and I never spoke about because inside the Voss Pack you did not talk about things that made you inconvenient.

My wolf made a sound in my chest that was not a growl and not a cry but something raw that sat between both.

He is alive, I said. My voice came out flat. Not because I was not feeling it. Because I was feeling too much of it and the only way to stay upright was to keep my voice level.

He is healthy, Caden said. The family who has him are good people. Theron vetted them himself. Finn does not know yet. They were told to wait until contact was made through official channels.

He has been waiting for me to come, I said. Theron. This whole election, the letter, all of it. He engineered it.

He created the conditions, Caden said carefully. He could not force you to move. He could only make the information available and hope you were ready.

And if I had not been ready.

Caden did not answer that. Which meant the answer was not one I wanted.

I closed the folder. I pressed my hand flat on top of it and breathed through my nose until the pressure in my chest settled into something I could carry.

I want to see him, I said.

After the council hearing. It is in four days. If you go to Greywood territory before your claim is formally registered, Damon can argue interference and use it to challenge the filing.

You are telling me to wait.

I am telling you the order of operations. His voice was even but not dismissive. Four days. Then I will take you to him myself.

I looked at him across the desk. This man who had known about my son for fourteen months. Who had built a folder, filed papers, and set up a room for me three days before I arrived. Who said yes to my proposal before I finished making it because he had already decided long before I walked through his gate.

I did not know what to do with him yet.

He was not Damon. Damon had used my ignorance. Caden had used my absence, which was different, but I was not sure yet how different or whether the line between the two was as clear as he thought it was.

But my son was alive.

Finn. Four years old. Dark messy hair and my exact profile and four years of a life I had not been there for.

I stood up. I picked up the folder.

I am keeping this, I said.

It is yours.

I walked to the door. Stopped.

The family he is with, I said. Are they wolves?

Yes. Greywood pack. Mid-ranking. Good home.

Does he know what he is?.

A pause. He knows he is different. They have not told him the full truth.

I nodded once and opened the door.

Sera.

I stopped.

Damon filed a counter-petition with the council this evening, Caden said. Two hours ago. He is claiming your lineage documents are fraudulent and requesting a full identity tribunal before the election proceeds.

The cold thing in my chest sharpened into something with edges.

I turned around slowly. He moved that fast.

He has been preparing for the possibility that you would run. Caden's jaw tightened slightly. He always knew this day might come. He just did not expect you to come here.

He thought I would fall apart, I said.

Yes.

I thought about Damon's face in the study that morning. The calm. The complete absence of fear. The way he had told me about Luca with the same expression he used to discuss pack finances.

He had built seven years of control over me and he believed it would hold even after it broke.

He did not know me at all.

What does the tribunal mean for our timeline, I said.

It means the council hearing in four days just became the most important four hours of your life, Caden said. And it means Damon will be in that room.

The folder was solid and warm in my hands from where I had been gripping it.

I looked at Caden one more time.

Good, I said. I want him in that room.