Chapter Twelve: What Daniel Saw

Daniel came by that evening, later than usual, his coat still damp from the rain that had not fully let up since afternoon. He found me sitting behind the counter long after closing, staring at nothing in particular, the shop dim except for a single lamp I had not bothered to put out.

"You look like you have seen a ghost," he said, setting down the crate he was carrying, some new supply he had picked up on my behalf, the way he always did.

"Something close to it."

He studied my face a moment longer than was comfortable, and whatever he saw there made his easy expression sharpen into something more careful. "Tell me."

"A man came into the shop today. An Alpha, from a pack north of here." I kept my eyes on the counter, tracing the grain of the wood with one finger. "I knew him, before I came to Millbrook."

"Knew him how?"

I had not told Daniel everything about Silver Moon Pack. I had told him enough, over the months, that he understood I had left something painful behind me, but I had never given him the full shape of it, the mating ceremony, the rejection, the seven words that had sent me walking into the dark alone. It had felt, for a long time, like a wound better left wrapped than examined in front of someone else.

But Daniel had stood beside me through a fire and a threat and a year of quiet, steady kindness that asked nothing in return, and something in me decided, sitting there in the lamplight, that he had earned the truth.

"He was my mate," I said. "Or he should have been. He rejected me in front of his whole pack because he could not sense my wolf. That was the night I ran."

Daniel went very still.

"That was him," he said slowly. "The man in your shop today."

"Yes."

He did not say anything for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost the easy warmth I had grown used to, replaced by something harder, more guarded. "And what did he want?"

"He says Hale Holdings is buying land along his pack's border. He came to ask about the fire, about what I know."

"That is not all he wanted." Daniel's jaw was tight. "I saw the way he looked at this shop when he left. I was across the street. He stood in the rain for nearly a full minute before he finally walked away."

I did not know what to say to that, so I said nothing, and the silence stretched between us, heavier than it had any right to be.

"Elena." Daniel came closer, stopping on the other side of the counter, his eyes steady on mine in a way that made something in my chest tighten. "I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly."

"Ask."

"If he came back. If he asked you to return to his pack, to be his mate after all." His voice was quiet, careful, the voice of a man asking a question he was not certain he wanted answered. "Would you go?"

I thought about it, and I made myself think about it honestly, rather than reaching for whatever answer might be easiest to say out loud.

A year ago, I would have gone without a single moment of hesitation. A year ago, the word mate had meant everything to a girl who had spent her whole life being told she was empty, being told no wolf would ever want what little she had to offer.

But I was not that girl anymore. I had built a shop with my own two hands. I had learned to survive a fire, a threat, a year of silence from a wolf that had gone quiet inside me. I had learned, slowly and without meaning to, that I did not need to be chosen by someone else in order to know my own worth.

"I do not know," I said finally, because it was the truest answer I had. "A year ago I would have said yes without thinking. Now I am not certain the girl who wanted that so badly is entirely the same person standing here tonight."

Something in Daniel's shoulders loosened, just slightly, though the careful look in his eyes did not fully go away.

"That is a fair answer," he said quietly. "I only needed to know where I stood."

"Daniel." I reached across the counter and touched his hand before I had fully decided to, my fingers resting lightly over his. "You have stood beside me through the fire, and the threat, and a year of building something from nothing. That means more to me than I think I have ever properly told you."

He turned his hand over beneath mine, his fingers curling gently around my own, and for a moment neither of us said anything at all, the rain tapping softly against the window and the lamp burning low between us.

"I am not going anywhere," he said finally. "Whatever happens with him, whatever he wants. I want you to know that."

"I know."

He did not try to kiss me that night, though I think we both felt the moment hover close enough to touch. He simply held my hand a while longer, in the quiet, dim light of the shop I had built myself, and then he gathered his coat and told me he would come by in the morning to help me move the new supplies, the way he always did.

After he left, I sat alone behind the counter for a long while, my hand still warm where his fingers had held it, and let myself feel, honestly, the tangled mess of everything the day had brought.

Adrian, standing in my doorway with rain in his hair, looking at me like he was seeing something he had thrown away without understanding its worth.

Daniel, steady and patient, asking a question that mattered more than he let on, holding my hand like it was something worth holding.

And underneath both of them, quiet and uncertain, my wolf stirring faintly for the first time in a year, as though she too was trying to decide which direction her heart wanted to run.

I did not have an answer for her yet.

I was not sure, that night, that I wanted to look for one too quickly.