CHAPTER SIX - The Weight of Returning

I stayed at my parents' house that night, sleeping in my old bedroom that had been preserved like a shrine. Band posters I'd loved at seventeen still clung to the walls. My old sketchbooks lined the shelves, spines cracked from years of use. Even my threadbare stuffed wolf—a gift from my father when I'd had my first shift—sat propped against the pillows.

It was like stepping into a time capsule of the girl I used to be.

I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Skyler's face. The gauntness. The shadows under his eyes. The desperate hunger in his gaze when he'd looked at me.

*He looked back.*

His words haunted me. I wanted to believe he was lying, that this was some elaborate manipulation. But the bond didn't lie. Through that cursed connection, I'd felt his anguish. Real. Raw. Consuming.

Good, the bitter part of me thought. Let him suffer the way I did.

But another part—a part I tried desperately to silence—whispered that his pain brought me no satisfaction. That seeing him so broken had cracked something open inside me I'd thought sealed forever.

Around three in the morning, I gave up on sleep. I wrapped myself in an old hoodie and padded downstairs, careful not to wake Ronan. The kitchen was dark and quiet, illuminated only by the pale moonlight streaming through the windows.

I made tea because my hands needed something to do. Chamomile, the same blend my mother had made me countless times when I couldn't sleep as a teenager. The familiar ritual was soothing, grounding me in the present even as memories threatened to drown me.

"Couldn't sleep either?"

I jumped, nearly dropping my mug. Ronan stood in the doorway, wearing sweatpants and a rumpled t-shirt, his hair sticking up at odd angles.

"You scared me," I said, pressing a hand to my racing heart.

"Sorry." He moved into the kitchen, grabbing his own mug and pouring himself coffee from the pot that was always kept warm. "I heard you come down. Figured you might want company."

We sat at the kitchen table in companionable silence for a moment. Outside, an owl hooted somewhere in the darkness. The house creaked and settled around us, familiar sounds that brought both comfort and pain.

"I saw Skyler at the hospital," I said finally, the words tumbling out before I could stop them.

Ronan's hand tightened around his mug. "Yeah?"

"He looks..." I trailed off, not sure how to describe what I'd seen. Broken? Destroyed? Like a man barely holding himself together? "Different."

"He is different." Ronan's voice was careful, measured. "Has been for about five years now."

I looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

My brother studied me for a long moment, as if weighing how much to say. Finally, he sighed. "Something happened to him around the time you left. Nobody knows what. He won't talk about it. But he changed. Got darker. Meaner. His wolf started acting up—going feral during patrols, challenging pack members for no reason."

My stomach twisted. I knew exactly what had happened to him. The rejected bond. It was eating him alive, just as it had been eating me.

"The Alpha's been worried," Ronan continued. "Some of the pack members have been saying Skyler's too unstable to remain Head Enforcer. That he's becoming a liability."

"And what do you think?" I asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.

Ronan was quiet for a moment. "I think my best friend is in pain, and I don't know how to help him. He's always been intense, always carried darkness in him. But this... it's like watching someone slowly self-destruct and being powerless to stop it."

Guilt crashed over me. Not because I'd done anything wrong—Skyler had rejected *me*, had shattered my heart without a second thought. But because some part of me had wanted him to suffer, had taken a grim satisfaction in imagining his regret.

Now, faced with the reality of his deterioration, I felt no triumph. Only a hollow ache.

"He asked me about you once," Ronan said quietly. "About six months after you left. We were on patrol, and out of nowhere he said, 'Is she happy?' I didn't know who he meant at first. Then he said your name, and I realized... I realized he'd been asking about you all along. In small ways. Casual questions he tried to make sound offhand."

I set down my mug with shaking hands. "What did you tell him?"

"That I didn't know. That you'd called Mom for Christmas and sounded fine, but you wouldn't tell us anything real." Ronan's eyes met mine. "Want to tell me why you really left, little bird?"

The question hung in the air between us. I could feel the weight of five years of secrets, of pain I'd carried alone because I couldn't bear to share it. Ronan was my brother. He deserved the truth.

But the words wouldn't come.

"I can't," I whispered. "Not yet. I'm sorry."

He nodded slowly, disappointment flickering across his face. "When you're ready, then. But Wren... whatever happened between you and Skyler—"

"How did you know it was about him?" I asked sharply.

"Because I'm not blind. I saw the way you looked at him for years. And I saw the way he refused to see it." Ronan leaned forward. "I also saw the way he's been looking for you in every woman he's met since. The way he tenses every time someone mentions Seattle. The way his wolf howls sometimes in the middle of the night, and the whole pack can hear the loneliness in it."

Tears pricked my eyes. I blinked them back furiously. "He made his choice."

"Yeah. And it looks like it's killing him." Ronan reached across the table, covering my hand with his. "I'm not saying you have to forgive him. I'm not even saying you have to talk to him. But whatever this is between you two... it's not over. Not for him. And I don't think it's over for you either."

I pulled my hand away. "You're wrong."

"Am I?" His gaze was too knowing, too perceptive. "Then why can't you sleep? Why are you sitting here at three in the morning, looking like you've seen a ghost?"

Because I had seen a ghost. The ghost of the man I'd loved. The ghost of the girl I'd been. The ghost of a future that had died before it could begin.

"I should get back to bed," I said, standing abruptly. "Long day tomorrow."

Ronan didn't argue, but I felt his eyes on me as I rinsed my mug and headed for the stairs.

"Wren?"

I paused, turning back.

"For what it's worth," he said softly, "I'm glad you're home. Even if it's just for a little while."

I managed a weak smile. "Me too."

But as I climbed the stairs and slipped back into my childhood bed, I wondered if that was true. Being back in Ironvale felt like pressing on a bruise that had never fully healed. Every corner held memories. Every familiar face brought questions I couldn't answer.

And Skyler... God, Skyler was everywhere. In the hospital hallway. In Ronan's worried words. In the bond that pulsed between us like a living thing, refusing to die no matter how much I wanted it to.

My wolf whimpered softly in my mind.

*Go to him*, she pleaded. *He needs us.*

*No*, I told her firmly. *We're not doing this again. We're not going to be the girl who loves him more than she loves herself.*

But even as I thought it, I knew it was a lie.

Because that's exactly who I still was, deep down. The girl who'd loved Skyler Voss with every fiber of her being. The girl who'd had her heart shattered and had spent five years trying to convince herself she was over it.

The girl who, despite everything, still felt the pull of the bond like a hook in her chest, dragging her toward the man who'd destroyed her.

I didn't sleep for the rest of the night.