Chapter 5

POV: Wren

“You shouldn’t be out here.”

I didn’t turn around right away. I recognized the voice before I recognized that I should have been more careful about walking this far from the healer’s hut alone, cane or no cane, three days after being rejected in front of the entire pack.

“It’s still pack land,” I said, to the creek instead of to him. “Last I checked.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.”

I turned around then, because standing with my back to an Alpha felt like the kind of thing that could get misread even when I had no intention of misreading anything myself. He was standing maybe ten feet off, out of uniform, off patrol by the look of it, which meant he had no actual reason to be on this stretch of border either.

Neither of us said that part out loud.

“You’re limping worse than usual,” he said.

“I’m limping the same as usual. You’ve just never bothered to notice before.”

That landed somewhere I hadn’t quite meant to aim, and I watched it land, watched his jaw tighten in a way that should have felt satisfying and instead just made my chest hurt worse.

“Wren.”

“Don’t.” My voice came out sharper than I wanted it to, but I let it stay sharp, because soft was not a thing I could afford around him right now, not with my pulse doing something traitorous just from him saying my name like that, like it still meant something to him. “You don’t get to say my name like we’re friends. You made a decision. I’m living with it. That’s the whole story.”

“It wasn’t that simple.”

“It looked pretty simple from where I was standing.”

He took a step closer, close enough that I could smell him properly now, woodsmoke and cedar and something under that I had no name for, something that made the ember under my ribs flare hot enough that I had to lock my knees to keep from reacting to it.

“The council—”

“I don’t want to hear about the council.” I made myself hold still, made myself keep my chin level even though every part of me wanted to either walk away or close the last ten feet between us, and I genuinely couldn’t say which impulse scared me more. “I want you to explain to me why, if it wasn’t simple, you said it like it was. Loud enough for three hundred people to hear.”

He didn’t answer right away, and the silence between us was worse than anything he could have said, because I could see him building an answer and discarding it, over and over, like nothing he had was good enough to survive saying out loud.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally.

“Sorry doesn’t undo it.”

“I know that.”

“Then what are you doing out here, Kade?” His name felt strange in my mouth, too intimate for what we were supposed to be to each other now, and I said it anyway, half daring him to react to it. “Why does the newly engaged Alpha of Ashfall have time to go looking for the omega he rejected three days ago?”

“I wasn’t looking for you.”

“Liar.”

The word hit something in him, I watched it hit, watched his whole body go rigid the way mine had at the fire circle, and for a second neither of us said anything at all. The creek kept moving behind me. Somewhere in the trees a bird startled and went quiet again.

“I caught your scent,” he said, low, as the admission cost him something physical. “I told myself I was checking the fence line.”

“And now you’ve checked it.”

“Wren.”

“You should go back,” I said it even though my whole body was arguing with the words as I said them, even though the ember under my ribs had gone from a flicker to something closer to a low, steady burn that I didn’t trust myself to name out loud, not to him, not to anyone. “Bree’s probably still got wedding plans to finish going over with you.”

“That’s not fair.”

“None of this is fair. I’m allowed to point that out.”

He didn’t argue. He just stood there, close enough that I could see the exact moment his control started to slip, the way his eyes dropped to my mouth and then away, fast, like he’d caught himself doing something he’d promised somebody, maybe himself, he wouldn’t do.

“I keep thinking about the fire circle,” he said, quiet enough I almost missed it. “I keep thinking I should have felt relieved. Everyone kept telling me I did the right thing. I keep waiting to feel like they’re right.”

“And?”

“And I don’t. I haven’t. Not for one second since I said it.”

I hated how much that admission did to me. I hated it and I leaned into it anyway, half a step closer before I caught myself, close enough now that if either of us moved wrong we wouldn’t be two separate people standing on opposite sides of a rejection anymore, we’d just be two wolves standing too close to a fated bond that refused to care what the council had decided about it.

“That’s not enough,” I said, but it came out softer than I meant it to, and we both heard the difference.

“I know.”

“It doesn’t fix anything.”

“I know that too.”

Neither of us moved. Neither of us said anything else. The space between us had gone thin enough that I could feel the heat coming off him, could feel my own pulse answering it in a rhythm that had nothing to do with sense and everything to do with whatever fourteen years hadn’t managed to kill after all.

That was when the howl cut through the trees.

Long, low, rising at the end in a pattern I’d heard exactly once before in a nightmare I still didn’t like to think about, and every hair on my arms stood up at once, because I knew every voice in this pack, every single one, and that voice belonged to none of them.

Kade’s whole body changed in an instant, Alpha again, not the man who’d just admitted he couldn’t stop thinking about me, and he was already turning toward the sound before he spoke.

“Get back to the healer’s hut. Now.”

“That’s not one of ours.”

“I know.” His eyes found mine one more time, urgent, unreadable. “That’s exactly the problem.”