Chapter 4: Doubts and Brothers

News traveled fast in a pack house. By the time Wren had eaten her first real meal in days — soup, brought up by a quiet young servant girl who kept stealing glances at her collarbone — the whole of Silverpeak already knew that Alpha Magnus believed he might have found his long-lost daughter.

Not everyone believed it.

"Birthmarks are not so rare, Alpha," Elder Priscilla warned him in the study, arms crossed. "And she is wolfless, fully grown. No true-blooded Thorne has ever failed to awaken by adulthood. I only ask you to be careful. If word spreads that you paraded a stranger through a bonding ceremony out of grief, and it comes to nothing, it will cost this pack more than it costs you."

"I know the risk," Magnus said quietly. "That is exactly why we test, instead of simply declaring her my daughter on a resemblance and an old man's wishful heart. If the bond doesn't take, I will accept it, whatever it costs me. But I owe it to Elara's memory to find out. I won't turn away the chance."

Priscilla held his gaze a moment longer, then gave a short nod and let the matter rest. It was as much agreement as anyone was going to get from her, and Magnus knew it.

"When do your brothers arrive?" she asked, moving on.

"Tonight," Ronan answered for his father. "I sent word the moment we realized what we might be dealing with. Ezra and Cassian both said they'd come at once."

---

Wren was resting in the guest quarters — nicer than anything she'd slept in since childhood, all soft blankets and quiet warmth — when a knock came at her door. She sat up carefully, still sore, still exhausted in a way sleep hadn't fully cured yet, and called for whoever it was to come in.

It was Ronan. She recognized him now that he was in human form, though she hadn't seen his face clearly the night of the attack — tall, dark-haired, with the same pale grey eyes as his father, watching her now with a wary, searching expression that reminded her uncomfortably of how Kane used to look at her in the last weeks before the rejection, like he was trying to solve a puzzle he didn't fully trust.

"I wanted to check on you," Ronan said. "And to warn you, I suppose. My brothers are arriving tonight. Ezra and Cassian. They'll want to see you the moment they get in — they've been waiting twenty-three years for news like this, same as my father."

"You don't believe it," Wren said quietly. It wasn't a question.

Ronan's jaw tightened. "I don't know what to believe yet. I want to believe it. That's the problem — wanting something and knowing it's true aren't the same, and I've watched my father hope for things before that turned out to break his heart all over again. I don't want to see that happen to him a second time."

"I understand," Wren said, and she did, more than he probably realized. She had spent her whole life being someone other people didn't quite trust, didn't quite want, for reasons that had nothing to do with anything she'd actually done. "I'm not asking anyone to believe anything. I only agreed to the test because your father asked so kindly. If it turns out I'm not who you're hoping for, I won't hold it against any of you."

Something in Ronan's expression softened at that — not fully, but enough that she caught a glimpse of the man underneath the wary Alpha's son. "You're very calm about all this," he said. "Most people, told they might suddenly have a family after a lifetime alone, would be a little more —" he searched for the word. "Hopeful, I suppose."

"I've learned not to hope for things," Wren said simply. "It hurts less that way, when they don't come true."

Ronan studied her for a long moment, something unreadable passing behind his eyes. "That's a sad way to live," he said quietly.

"It's kept me alive this long," she answered, and didn't explain further, and he didn't push.

---

Ezra Thorne arrived first, just after sundown, striding into the pack house with the restless energy of a man who'd run the whole distance from his own territory rather than wait for a mount to be saddled. He was younger than Ronan by two years, sharper in the face, quicker in his movements, with the kind of watchful, assessing eyes that made most people nervous in negotiations.

"Where is she?" he demanded, before he'd even finished crossing the threshold.

"Resting," Magnus said, meeting him in the main hall. "Ezra. Slow down. Whatever happens tonight, tomorrow, in the coming days — nothing changes if you come in like a storm."

"Twenty-three years, Father." Ezra's voice cracked, just slightly, betraying the careful control he usually wore like armor. "Twenty-three years of watching you light a candle every year on the date she went missing. Don't tell me to slow down."

Magnus put a hand on his son's shoulder, quiet and steadying. "I'm not telling you not to feel it," he said. "I'm telling you to breathe first. Whoever she turns out to be, she deserves to meet her brother, not a hurricane."

Ezra exhaled, slow and shaky, and nodded once.

Cassian arrived an hour later, the youngest of the three brothers, softer in his features than either of his siblings, with an open, easy warmth that Ronan and Ezra had never quite managed to hold onto through years of Alpha responsibilities. He came into the hall already crying, unashamed of it, and pulled his father into a hug before he'd said a single word.

"Is it true?" he asked, voice thick. "Is it really her?"

"We don't know yet," Magnus said, though his own eyes were wet too. "The ceremony is tomorrow night. We'll know then."

"I want to see her," Cassian said. "Even if it's not — even if the test says no. I want to see her face. Please."

Magnus glanced toward the stairs, where Wren had appeared quietly at the top, drawn by the commotion, watching the scene below with wide, uncertain eyes. She looked so much like a woman braced for rejection that it made something twist painfully in Magnus's chest — how many times had this poor girl been made to feel unwanted, he wondered, that she stood there now like she expected these strangers to take one look at her and turn away?

"Wren," he called gently. "Come down, if you're able. There's some people who've been waiting a very long time to meet you."

She came down slowly, one hand still holding the edge of her borrowed robe closed at the collar out of old habit, though the mark was no longer something anyone in this house seemed to want hidden. At the bottom of the stairs, all three brothers turned to look at her at once, and Wren watched their faces change — first assessing, cautious, and then, one by one, something breaking open behind their eyes that looked achingly like recognition.

Cassian was the first to move, crossing the hall in three quick strides and stopping just in front of her, searching her face like he was trying to memorize it.

"You have her eyes," he said softly, voice breaking. "Mother's eyes. I was young when she died, but I remember her eyes."

Wren didn't know what to say to that. No one had ever told her she looked like anyone before — she had grown up with no family photographs, no relatives to compare herself to, nothing but her own reflection and the shame of a mark she didn't understand.

"I don't know if I'm her," she said quietly. "I don't want to give any of you false hope."

"Then we wait for the test," Ezra said, though his voice was rougher than he probably meant it to sound, standing just behind Cassian with his jaw tight and his eyes suspiciously bright. "But whatever happens tomorrow night — thank you for letting us hope, even for one more day."

Ronan, watching from across the hall, found himself thinking of the words Wren had said to him earlier. I've learned not to hope for things. It hurts less that way.

He hoped, more than he'd let himself hope for anything in years, that tomorrow night would finally give her a reason to stop believing that.

---

At Ashgrove, the elders wanted a wedding date set before the moon turned again.

"The pack needs certainty," Elder Rasmus told Kane, the two of them alone in his study while Serena rested elsewhere, claiming exhaustion from the pregnancy. "An engagement is not enough. They need to see their new Luna bound to you properly, sealed by ceremony, before doubts start creeping back in."

"There are doubts?" Kane asked, sharper than he meant to.

"Not about her," Rasmus said, though something in the way he said it made Kane wonder. "About you, Alpha. Half this pack watched you reject a fated mate three days ago. They need to see you commit fully to what comes next, or they'll start to wonder if you're still looking backward instead of forward."

Kane said nothing to that. He was, in fact, still looking backward — had done little else since the ache in his chest that first night, an ache that came and went now like weather, sometimes faint enough to ignore, sometimes sharp enough to stop him mid-sentence in the middle of pack business.

He found Serena later that evening in her chambers, and asked her plainly, "Where were you the night before the ceremony? Before you came to me, saying you needed my decision about the blood."

Something flickered behind her eyes — too quick to name, gone before he could be sure he'd seen it at all. "With the healer," she said smoothly. "Being examined, given how weak I'd been feeling. Why do you ask?"

"No reason." He didn't believe her. He couldn't have said why, exactly — nothing about her answer was strange on its surface — but the same instinct that had ached in his chest every night since Wren's exile prickled now at the back of his neck, small and persistent, refusing to be reasoned away.

"You've seemed distracted lately," Serena said, moving closer, sliding a hand up his arm with practiced ease. "Is it her? Are you still thinking about her?"

"No," Kane lied, and hated himself a little for how easily it came out.

Serena smiled, satisfied, and let the subject drop. Kane let her believe she'd won that small victory, even as the ache in his chest pulsed once, sharp and sudden, somewhere far to the south — though he had no way of knowing that at that exact moment, thirty miles away, Wren Thorne was standing at the top of a staircase meeting the family she never knew she had, feeling wanted for the very first time in her life.

He set the wedding date for one month out, because the elders demanded it, and told himself the hollow feeling in his chest would fade by then.

It did not.