Chapter 4

Wren's POV

Callum doesn't yell. He never yells. That's almost the worst part, because I've learned that quiet is when he's most dangerous, and tonight he's quieter than I've heard him in years.

"Pack your things," he says, once the Nightfall delegation has gone to their guest quarters for the night and it's just the two of us in the study, the fire burned down to embers behind him. "You leave at dawn."

"I heard."

"Do you understand what you just cost me?"

I don't answer right away, because I genuinely don't know what the right answer is, the one that won't make this worse. "I didn't do anything," I finally say. "I poured wine."

"You didn't do anything." He laughs, short and humorless, and pours himself a drink he doesn't need. "Five years, Wren. Five years of me managing this, keeping you contained, keeping the elders from asking questions they don't need answers to, and one dinner with the wrong Alpha and it's all just handed away like it never mattered."

"Managing me," I repeat. "Is that what you call it?"

"I call it mercy." He turns, and for one unguarded second there's something underneath his composure that looks almost like panic, before he smooths it back into place. "Nobody else would have kept you this close after what happened. You'd have been exiled. Or worse. I gave you a home."

"You gave me a binding and a mop." The words come out before I can stop them, five years of silence cracking all at once, and I brace for the consequence, whatever it is tonight, but he looks at me, tired and strange, like he's seeing something he doesn't want to look at directly.

"You have no idea what I've protected you from," he says quietly. "None. And now you're walking straight into Nightfall territory with a binding that Vane already noticed, and I can't do a single thing to stop it, because I signed the contract myself."

"Then tell me," I say. "Tell me what actually happened that night. If you've been protecting me from something, tell me what it is."

"You want the truth." He sets his glass down harder than he means to, I think, because he winces at his own sound. "The truth is that our parents are dead, and you're alive, and there's a version of this family's story where the elders decided that wasn't a coincidence worth investigating too closely. I built you a life out of what was left over. You could try being grateful for once instead of interrogating me like I'm the one who did something wrong."

"I never said you did something wrong." My voice shakes despite everything I do to hold it steady. "I asked you what happened. That's not the same thing."

"Isn't it?" He looks at me for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes, and then he laughs, short and humorless, like the sound surprised even him. "Five years, and you still think there's a version of that night that makes any of this easier to hear."

Something flickers across his face, gone before I can name it. "You started a fire you couldn't control," he says, the same story I've heard for five years, except tonight, for the first time, it comes out flat, rehearsed, like a line he's tired of delivering. "That's what happened. I've told you a hundred times."

"Tell me again," I say. "Look me in the eye and tell me again."

He doesn't. He looks at the fire instead, and pours himself another drink, and I realize I'm not going to get anything more out of him tonight, maybe not ever, and something in my chest goes cold and certain in a way it never has before.

He's lying. He's been lying the whole time.

I don't sleep that night. I pack the little I own into a single bag, gray uniforms and a few things from before, before the fire, before the binding, a small carved bird my mother gave me that I've kept hidden under a floorboard for five years because Callum would have taken it if he'd known, called it a fire hazard, called it anything to have an excuse.

Maren finds me while I'm folding what little I own into the bag, standing in the doorway of the small room I've slept in since the fire, watching me with an expression I can't quite place.

"You're really going," she says.

"Doesn't sound like I have much choice."

"No." She steps inside, closing the door behind her, and lowers her voice the way she did in the hallway that morning, like even now, even with Callum two floors away, the walls of this house might carry her words straight to him. "But for what it's worth, I think it's the best thing that's happened to you in five years."

I fold the last uniform into the bag, more out of habit than any real intention to wear it again. "You don't know anything about him. Alpha Vane."

"No," she agrees. "But I know your brother. And I know a man doesn't add a stranger to a legal contract in front of his entire pack council on a whim." She reaches into her apron pocket and presses something small and cool into my palm before I can protest, the little carved bird my mother gave me, the one I thought I'd hidden well enough that even Maren didn't know about it. "Take it. Wherever you're going, take something of hers with you. You've earned that much."

I don't trust myself to answer, so I hold the bird tight enough that its wings press marks into my palm, and Maren pats my cheek once, gentle, the way I imagine my mother might have if she'd lived long enough to watch me grow into whatever this is, and leaves without another word.

Dawn comes gray and cold, and I'm standing at the front gate with my bag when the Nightfall convoy pulls up, three black vehicles and a handful of wolves I don't recognize, and Callum stands beside me on the steps like he's seeing off a distant cousin instead of a sister he's kept as a servant for half a decade.

"Behave yourself," he says quietly, close enough that only I can hear. "Whatever Vane wants from you, give it to him. Don't make yourself interesting, Wren. Interesting people ask questions, and questions get people hurt."

It sounds like advice. It isn't. It's a threat wearing advice's clothes, the way everything from him has been for five years, and I understand it perfectly.

"I'll try to be as boring as possible," I say, and pick up my bag before he can answer.

A woman steps out of the lead vehicle to meet me, sharp-eyed, dark hair pulled back tight, moving like she's assessing every threat in a hundred-foot radius without seeming to try. "Wren?" she asks.

"That's me."

"Sable. I'm Rhydian's Beta." She looks past me, at Callum on the steps, with an expression that could strip paint. "You ready?"

I look back at the house I grew up in, the hallway I've scrubbed a thousand times, the window of the room that used to be mine before it became a storage closet, and I feel something that surprises me. Not grief. Not fear.

Relief, sharp and guilty, like I'm not allowed to feel it.

"Yeah," I say. "I'm ready."

We pull out of the gate as the sun comes up fully over the ridge, and I don't look back once, not even when I feel Callum's eyes on the back of the car the entire length of the drive.