Chapter Six: The One Who Came Looking

I felt him before I saw him.

It was strange, the way my new instincts worked, senses sharpened by blood I hadn't even known existed inside me a few months ago. I was walking back from the eastern training grounds near Ashgrove territory, my muscles sore from a full day of drills, when the air itself seemed to shift, thick and heavy, the way it does right before a storm breaks.

I stopped walking.

Marla, a few steps ahead of me, stopped too, her whole body going rigid the way it did whenever real danger was near.

"Someone's here," she said quietly, scanning the treeline.

I already knew who.

I could feel it in the low pull behind my ribs, an ache that had nothing to do with training and everything to do with a bond that was supposed to be severed the night I was exiled. Bonds like that weren't supposed to still exist. Reyes had declared it broken in front of the entire council. And yet, standing there in the fading afternoon light, I felt it flare to life like a struck match, undeniable and impossible to ignore.

Xavier stepped out from between the trees.

He looked thinner than I remembered, shadows carved deep beneath his eyes, his usually neat dark hair falling messy across his forehead like he hadn't slept properly in weeks. He wore no pack colors, no marks of status, nothing that identified him as anything other than a man who had walked a very long way to find something he wasn't entirely sure he was allowed to look for anymore.

"You shouldn't be here," Marla said sharply, stepping slightly in front of me, every line of her body braced for a fight.

"I know," Xavier said, his voice hoarse, like he hadn't used it in days. His eyes found mine over Marla's shoulder, and for one unbearable second, neither of us moved. "I just needed to know if the rumors were true."

"What rumors," I asked, proud of how steady my voice came out, considering my heart was slamming against my ribs hard enough that I was half convinced he could hear it from where he stood.

"That you're alive," he said. "That you survived. That whatever you are now, it's real, and not just some story rogues are spreading to justify getting paid to hunt shadows in the woods."

"And if it is true," I said carefully, "what exactly did you plan on doing about it?"

Something in his expression cracked, just slightly, the same way it had the night of my exile right before he said nothing at all. "I don't know," he admitted. "I told myself I just wanted proof you were safe. That's all I let myself believe the entire walk here."

"Safe," I repeated, and I felt something hot and furious rise up my throat before I could stop it. "You want to know if I'm safe? You stood in that hall and said nothing while Reyes stripped my title and threw me out with nothing but the dress on my back. You didn't ask if I was safe then."

"I know," Xavier said, and to his credit, he didn't flinch away from the accusation, didn't try to soften it or explain it away the way I half expected him to. "I've thought about that night more times than I can count. I've relived it so many times I could probably recite every word spoken in that hall word for word."

"Then why didn't you stop it?"

His jaw tightened, and for a long moment he said nothing, staring at the ground like the answer was buried somewhere in the dirt between us. "Because Camille came to me privately, two days before that meeting," he finally said. "She showed me things. Documents, testimony from pack members, things that seemed to confirm everything she was accusing you of. I didn't believe it fully, not in my gut, but I believed it enough to doubt myself, and doubting myself was enough to keep me silent when silence was the worst thing I could have possibly done."

"You let manufactured evidence outweigh years of actually knowing me," I said quietly.

"Yes," he said simply, no excuses hidden in the word, just plain, painful acknowledgment. "And I have hated myself for it every single day since."

Marla shifted slightly beside me, not fully lowering her guard but softening it just enough to signal she was letting me handle this on my own terms. I appreciated that more than I could say in the moment, the quiet trust that I could stand in front of the man who had once promised to burn the world down for me and not fall apart all over again.

"What documents," I asked instead, forcing myself to focus on the practical thread buried in his confession rather than the emotional wreckage threatening to pull me under. "What exactly did she show you?"

Xavier's brow furrowed slightly, like he was surprised by the question, like he expected anger or tears rather than strategy. "Testimony from two pack members claiming they witnessed you threatening Camille privately. A letter supposedly written in your handwriting, admitting you'd manipulated the council against her return. I remember thinking the handwriting looked slightly off, but I convinced myself grief could explain small inconsistencies like that."

"I never wrote any letter," I said flatly. "And I certainly never threatened her."

"I believe you," Xavier said, quiet but firm. "I believed it the moment I saw the way you carry yourself right now. The old you would have broken down explaining yourself to me. This version of you isn't explaining anything. She's simply stating fact and letting me deal with the consequences of ignoring it."

Despite everything, despite the anger still simmering hot beneath my ribs, something in his observation landed somewhere true and unexpected. He wasn't wrong. The girl who used to soften every hard truth to keep the peace around her wasn't the one standing in these woods anymore.

"Why did you really come here, Xavier," I asked. "Not the polished version. The real one."

He looked at me for a long moment, something raw and unguarded flickering behind his eyes. "Because the pack has felt wrong since the night you left," he said. "Camille sits in your old seat at council meetings, but she doesn't fill it the way you did. Reyes has grown paranoid, obsessed with rumors of rogue attacks near contested borders, snapping at anyone who questions his decisions. Damien barely speaks anymore. Kade has thrown himself into training so hard our healers worry he's trying to hurt himself through sheer exhaustion. Ronan disappears for days at a time, and no one knows where he goes."

"Sounds like everyone is falling apart beautifully without me," I said, and the bitterness in my own voice surprised even me.

"I'm not telling you this to earn your sympathy," Xavier said quickly. "I'm telling you because something is wrong, and I think Camille knows more than she's letting on. She's grown twitchy lately. Defensive. She started asking pointed questions about rogue sightings a few weeks back, questions that felt less like curiosity and more like fear."

I exchanged a quick glance with Marla, who gave the smallest, almost invisible nod. This matched exactly what Farris had told us weeks earlier, Camille personally searching for confirmation, terrified enough of the rumors to abandon subtlety.

"What do you want from me, Xavier," I asked finally, exhaustion beginning to creep into the edges of my anger. "Forgiveness? Absolution? A promise that everything can go back to how it used to be?"

"No," he said, surprising me with how quickly and firmly the answer came. "I don't deserve any of that, and I'm not foolish enough to ask for it. I just needed to see with my own eyes that you survived. That whatever they did to you didn't destroy you the way I feared it might, alone out here with nothing."

"I'm not the same person you rejected," I said quietly.

"I can see that," he said. "And for what it's worth, whoever you're becoming now, she's terrifying in the best possible way."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing at all, letting silence stretch between us the way it had that final night in the hall, except this time, the silence didn't feel like abandonment. It felt like two people standing on opposite sides of something neither of us fully understood yet, unsure whether the space between us could ever be bridged, or whether it even should be.

"You need to leave," Marla finally said, breaking the moment with practical urgency. "If you were followed, even accidentally, it puts everything we've built here at risk."

"I wasn't followed," Xavier said. "I made certain of that before I even considered coming this far."

"Make certain of it again on your way back," Marla said firmly. "And know this, whatever loyalty still lingers in you toward her, it means nothing if it isn't backed by action next time it matters."

Xavier nodded slowly, his eyes finding mine one final time before he turned to leave. "For what it's worth," he said quietly, "I hope whatever you're building out here is strong enough to burn that entire hall down when you finally decide to return."

Then he disappeared back into the treeline, leaving me standing there with my heart pounding and my thoughts tangled in ways training had never quite prepared me for.

"That was reckless of him," Marla said once he was gone, though her tone held less anger than I expected.

"He said Camille is getting nervous," I said, ignoring the emotional wreckage still settling in my chest in favor of the strategic thread that actually mattered. "Nervous enough to ask pointed questions to people outside her own pack."

"Nervous people make mistakes," Marla said thoughtfully. "Mistakes we can use."

I looked toward the treeline where Xavier had vanished, unable to fully untangle the mixture of anger and grief and something dangerously close to hope twisting together in my chest.

"He's not wrong about one thing," I said quietly.

"What's that."

"When I go back," I said, watching the last of the daylight fade behind the trees, "that hall is going to burn, one way or another."

Marla studied me for a long moment, then finally allowed herself the smallest, satisfied smile.

"Then let's make certain," she said, "that you're the one holding the match."