Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Somewhere To Fall Apart

WREN'S POV

I ran.

I didn't stop, didn't look back, didn't care that the rain had started soaking straight through what was left of my ruined dress. My chest burned, my legs ached, but none of it mattered next to the hollow ache where the bond used to be, a wound so deep I couldn't tell anymore where the pain ended and I began.

Julian rejected me.

He never loved me at all.

The thought looped over and over, cutting a little deeper each time it circled back, until I could barely breathe past it. Every step away from the packhouse felt like putting more distance between myself and the girl I used to be, the one who'd believed, right up until tonight, that she was loved. That she belonged somewhere.

I passed the tree line at the edge of Ravenhollow's border without slowing down, branches catching at my ruined dress, mud soaking through what was left of my shoes. The rain came down harder the deeper into the woods I went, cold enough to sting, but I welcomed it. It was easier to focus on the cold than on the emptiness spreading through my chest like something had been carved out of me and left hollow.

I had nowhere else to go. No one else who'd want a wolfless, broken girl showing up soaked and sobbing on their doorstep in the middle of the night.

Except one person.

My grandfather.

Silas had always been the one person in my life who never once made me feel like a disappointment for not shifting, never once looked at me the way the rest of the pack did, like I was some kind of mistake the Moon Goddess had made and forgotten to fix. He'd taught me to shoot a bow before I could properly throw a punch, had sat with me through every failed shift attempt without a single word of pity, just steady patience and an occasional gruff joke to keep me from crying in front of him.

By the time I reached his cabin at the edge of the woods, I was shaking so hard I could barely knock. My clothes clung to my skin, my teeth chattering, my whole body trembling from more than just the cold. The porch light wasn't on. I hadn't told him I was coming. I hadn't told anyone anything, hadn't even known where my feet were carrying me until the familiar outline of the cabin appeared through the trees.

"Grandpa!" My voice cracked as I pounded on the door, my knuckles raw against the wood. "Please, it's me!"

Silence for one long, terrible second. Then the unmistakable click of a shotgun being cocked from inside, a sound I'd heard often enough growing up to recognize instantly, even through a door, even through the roar of rain against the roof.

I froze, hands still raised, breath caught somewhere in my throat.

"Who's out there?" Silas's voice came rough through the door, alert in a way that told me he'd been awake, maybe expecting trouble, though I had no idea what kind.

"It's Wren!" I choked out; my voice barely holding together.

A pause. Then the door swung open, revealing my grandfather in the doorway, sharp eyes scanning me head to toe, the tension in his shoulders easing only slightly when he saw it was really me and not whatever he'd been braced for.

"Wren?" His voice softened instantly, the shotgun lowering but not disappearing entirely. "What happened to you?"

I stumbled inside past him, and the warmth of the cabin hit me all at once, the familiar scent of woodsmoke and old paper and the herbal tea he always kept on the stove filling my lungs like something out of a memory I desperately needed right then. My legs finally gave out somewhere near the hearth, and I sank to my knees on the worn rug, sobbing in a way I hadn't let myself do since I was a child.

Silas shut the door fast, set the gun aside, and dropped down beside me without hesitation, his hand finding my shoulder. "Hey. Hey, look at me. Talk to me, kid."

I tried to speak, but my throat had closed up completely, and all that came out for a long moment were more tears, my whole body shaking with the effort of trying to hold myself together.

"Julian," I finally managed, the name tasting like ash in my mouth. "He rejected me."

Silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. Then Silas exhaled hard through his nose, muttering something under his breath that sounded like a curse older than I was.

I wiped my face with a shaking hand, the movement doing nothing to actually stop the tears. "He chose Ivy. In front of everyone. He said he'd rather die than be bonded to me."

My grandfather's face went dark in a way I rarely saw, the kind of quiet fury that made him seem twice his size. He rose without a word and grabbed his shotgun off the wall like he intended to march straight into Ravenhollow and settle the matter himself.

"No, Grandpa." I caught his arm before he could reach the door, my grip weak but insistent. "It's done. Please, I don't want you doing anything. I just needed somewhere to fall apart that wasn't in front of all of them."

His eyes softened as he looked down at me, and after a long moment he set the gun aside again and pulled me into a tight hug instead, one hand smoothing over my rain soaked hair the same way he used to when I was small and scared of thunderstorms.

For a moment, held against him, I let myself believe the worst of the night was over.

But something felt wrong underneath the relief of being held, a prickling awareness at the back of my neck that had nothing to do with grief. I pulled back slightly, wiping my eyes, glancing toward the dark window and the rain streaked glass beyond it.

"Grandpa, do you ever feel like something's watching this place?"

His expression flickered, just for a second, something I might have missed if I hadn't spent my whole life learning to read every shift in his face. He turned toward the fireplace instead of answering right away, adding another log to the fire with more focus than the task really required.

"Why do you ask that?" he said finally, not turning around.

"I don't know." My voice was barely above a whisper. "I just feel like something's wrong. Like it has been for a while now."

He stared into the flames for a long moment, the firelight carving deep shadows into the lines of his face, making him look older than I'd ever seen him look. "You might be right about that."

A chill crawled down my spine that had nothing to do with the rain still dripping off me onto his floor.

"What do you mean?"

He turned to face me fully, his expression unreadable in the flickering light, something heavy and reluctant behind his eyes. "Sit down, Wren."

I obeyed, unease settling low in my stomach, the last of my tears drying on my face as something colder took their place.

Silas let out a long, heavy breath, the kind that usually came before bad news, the kind I'd learned to brace for over the years.

"There's something I should have told you a long time ago.”