Chapter 3: A Fathers Hope

Magnus Thorne hadn’t run in twenty years. Not since the night his mate vanished with their baby girl and never came home. Every day since, he moved through his pack house like a man dragging a weight he’d never managed to set down. Running meant hoping, and hope had burned him one time too many.

So when the door to his study slammed open, his heart just about stopped. Ronan, his son, stood there in a panic—shirt stained with blood, breath fast, eyes wild. The moment Magnus saw him, he was out of his chair and moving, the question already tumbling out. “Where? Where is she?”

“Healer’s room. Callum’s with her.” Ronan fell into step beside him, hands shaking as they tore down the hall. “Father, don’t—don’t get your hopes up. It could be nothing, probably is—”

“You don’t believe that,” Magnus cut him off. He didn’t need to hear the rest. Ronan’s silence said enough.

When they reached the healer’s room, Callum was hunched over a girl laid out on the table. He was scrubbing a wound on her arm with those old, steady hands of his, but the furrow in his brow told a different story. Magnus halted at the threshold.

He couldn’t step forward. Just stared.

The girl—she was so young. Pale as chalk, hair tangled with mud and leaves, half-dressed in shredded Luna robes from who-knows-where. Her collar had been tugged aside for treatment and there, on her collarbone, dark as ink, was a birthmark. The same shape his mate once traced in the dark, whispering about bloodlines seven generations deep, promising their daughter would have it too.

Magnus’s knees almost buckled.

“Hey, Magnus,” Callum said, his voice quiet and careful. He sounded like he was speaking to a skittish animal. “Come here a sec. Please. Just take a look.”

Magnus crossed the room in slow motion, every step taking a year off his life. He knelt at her side, and stared, and the more he looked, the more pieces fell into place. The jawline—Elara’s, no doubt. That pointed chin—his own mother’s. But the light arch of her brows, that was all Elara’s vanity; she swore it had nothing to do with family, just fate. He drank in the sight of her, like maybe something small and vital inside him could fill up again, if only he stared long enough.

His hand hovered over her birthmark but didn’t touch.

“It’s probably just a coincidence.” His voice cracked and he hated it. “Birthmarks aren’t unique, right? You’ve said that before, Callum. Every time someone found a lost girl with a mark, you told me...”

Callum met his gaze and didn’t blink. “I’m being dead honest. All these years patching up this pack—only ever seen one scar like that. Yours, Magnus. Right there on your chest. Patching you up over and over, I know every mark by heart.”

Magnus’s throat tightened until he could barely breathe. He looked at the unconscious woman and felt something twist, something raw and wounded and familiar. It didn’t make sense—this old grief, opened up and fresh as the day he’d first lost them. He’d told himself it had healed. It hadn’t. Seeing her cracked it wide open, and he had no armor left.

“How old is she?”

Callum squinted. “Hard to pin down exactly. Little older than twenty, I guess. Mid-twenties?”

It had been twenty-three years since the day Elara and his daughter went to the meadow and never came back. That number echoed in his brain—twenty-three. The same age his little girl would be right now.

Magnus tried to steady himself. He wanted to believe she was nobody, just a stray with the wrong mark. He tried to say it, to force the lie into the room: She could be anyone. The words felt empty, even as they left his mouth.

“Maybe so,” Callum answered, but his eyes wouldn’t leave her face. “Still—look for yourself. She’s got your jaw, Magnus.”

Magnus looked, and God, he saw it. He’d seen rumors, photos, girls who might’ve been her. None of them ever tore his heart open like this.

“Will she make it?” he asked, because that was safer.

Callum’s tone shifted. “She’s in bad shape. Not just from tonight. Someone’s been bleeding her for days, Magnus—on purpose. The attack just made it worse. She’s bone-tired, but if we can keep her here through the night, she’s got a shot.”

“Then we wait,” Magnus said. “We ask when she wakes. Until then, we wait.”

So he waited. Callum finished patching up and slipped out. Ronan sat by, silent and steady, bringing tea Magnus didn’t touch. The night ticked away, and Magnus never moved, just watched this girl—this ghost—breathe, daring himself to hope at all.

Finally, he let himself do it, inch by painful inch, like he barely trusted his own heart with something that fragile.

“Elara,” he whispered. He didn’t know if Ronan heard. “What if this is really her? What if the Goddess finally...”

He couldn’t say more. The hope was a knife in his ribs.

—

When Wren woke, it felt like clawing her way out of a black ocean. Her whole body ached. She felt weak, hollow, like she’d been wrung out and filled with stones. For a moment, her mind was blank—then, all at once, it crashed back. The grand hall. Kane’s cold eyes. Serena with that damn needle. Rogues in the woods. The blur of wolves bursting from the darkness.

She’d gone through hell. She knew that much. She lay unmoving, just breathing, and tried to string her scattered thoughts into something solid.

The ceiling above her was wooden beams crossed by weak sunlight. Not a place she recognized.

“Easy.” A man’s voice, close but gentle. “You’re safe. This is Silverpeak pack house. Rogues caught you near our border—my son’s patrol brought you in last night.”

Wren turned. An older man was sitting right beside her bed. His face looked carved from stone, silver streaking his dark hair. His eyes, a soft grey, never left her face. There wasn’t anything threatening about him—but he looked like a man one sharp word would shatter.

“Silverpeak,” she echoed, barely a whisper. “I don’t know that pack.”

He just looked at her, searching her face for something. He wrestled with his own words, fumbled, tried again. “Would you... do you mind telling me your name?”

Her lips were dry. “Wren,” she said hoarsely. “Wren Hale.”

For a second, his face lit with hope—then it faded, tangled with confusion. But he nodded, letting the name roll over his tongue. “Wren. That’s a good name.”

She hesitated. “Who are you? Why do you even care?”

Magnus Thorne looked at her, hungry for answers, hungry for anything. The silence stretched. When he spoke, he sounded worn out and unfinished. “I’m Magnus Thorne. I lead this pack. Twenty-three years ago my mate took our daughter to a field. Rogues found them. My mate died. My baby girl… nobody ever found her.”

Wren froze.

“I don’t get it,” she whispered, but her heart was beating so hard it hurt. She knew—some part of her had known since she locked eyes with the wolf who dragged her out of the woods. Something was coming. Something real.

Magnus looked at her collar, at the mark on her skin she usually hid but hadn’t bothered with after the healer saw to her.

He pointed, voice rough. “Every Thorne, seven generations back, has a mark like that. I have one. My daughter used to.”

Wren’s hand crept to her collarbone, covered the mark that had always made her an outsider, had cost her a pack, a husband, everything.

“I don’t have anyone,” she said quietly. “I grew up in an orphanage. No family. No one.”

Magnus’s voice dropped even lower. “I know this is a lot. You’re a stranger. I’ve got no right to drag you into my mess. But—please. There’s a way to know. Will you let us try? I have to try. I can’t just... I have to know.”

She studied him—this alpha with grief cut so deep it didn’t look like it ever healed—and something flickered in her chest. Not hope, not yet. She didn’t trust hope. But it was something.

“Okay,” she whispered. “You can find out.”

Magnus finally let out a shaky breath, and tears slipped down his cheeks. He didn’t hide them.

“Thank you,” he said softly. “No matter what, thank you for giving me a chance. That’s more than I ever thought I’d have.”

—

The garden was empty except for Serena, curled up on a bench with her hand resting on her stomach. Kane found her there and watched until she noticed him.

She shifted as soon as she saw him—a soft, worried look appearing, all concern and sweetness. Kane caught the switch. He wondered if he’d ever noticed how fast it happened before.

“Kane,” she said, smoothing her dress as she stood. “You look awful. Did you sleep at all?”

He hadn’t. His mind was stuck on Wren.

Serena’s smile faltered for half a second, then came back. “You aren’t her keeper anymore,” she said, almost gently. “You did what you had to.”

But Kane stared at her, not letting go. “I felt something last night,” he said quietly. “At the feast. Fear, pain, but... not mine. Is that how it works, when the mate bond breaks? Just a speech in front of everyone and that’s it?”

Serena’s lips stayed in a polite curve but her eyes closed over. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said smoothly. “Feelings fade, Kane. You know how these things are.”

He wanted to believe her—wanted the pain in his chest to just be guilt. Wanted to think it would pass. But deep down, he knew better. It was the same certainty he’d felt when he first met Wren—that she was his. No matter what. That bond had never really gone away.

“I sent people to scout the border,” Kane muttered finally. “I just wanted to make sure she got out. That she was safe.”

Serena’s eyes went cold for a moment. “You sent her away, Kane. Let her be. She deserves to start over without you looking back.”

“All I wanted was to know.” He shook his head, left her with nothing else to say.

For two days, the patrols brought back nothing—no sign of Wren, no clues, not even a disturbance. Kane kept telling himself it was good news; she must’ve made it through fine. But the emptiness inside him just grew, no matter how hard he tried to fill it with excuses. The truth was, he’d sent her away, and the cost was bigger than he’d ever imagined. The ache wouldn’t leave him alone.

He didn’t know this, and there was no way he could have, but Wren was long gone now—already thirty miles off, with three brothers and a father who wanted her around more than Kane’s pack ever had.