Chapter 2

LYRA

Of all the people the Moon Goddess could have sent down that road, she picked him.

I stopped walking the moment I saw his face through the windshield.

Darian Wolfe.

My former best friend. My former lover. The only man I had ever trusted with the parts of myself I kept hidden from the rest of the world.

The same man who stood in front of the pack council, looked my father in the eye, and said yes. He believed I was capable of betrayal.

His eyes found mine and moved over me slowly.

The loose clothes. The leg I was favoring. The brand on my wrist catching the last of the evening light.

His expression didn't change once. "Get in," he said.

I almost laughed. "I don't need a ride."

"It's a long way back." His voice was flat. Decided. "It'll be dark before you make it on foot."

"I know these woods."

"You knew them three years ago." His eyes dropped briefly to my left leg and came back up. "Get in the car, Lyra."

I got in but it's not for him. I pulled the door shut and pressed myself against it and stared straight ahead through the windshield and told myself the burning behind my eyes was from the cold air.

It wasn't from the cold air I was not going to cry in Darian Wolfe's car.

I pressed my thumbnail into my palm and breathed.

He pulled onto the road without a word.

Silvercrest's territory stretched out on either side of us through the windows. Ancient pine forest, hills rolling toward the eastern ridge, the sentinel stones along the boundary glowing faintly amber as dusk settled over the pack lands.

I pressed my fingers against my sternum without thinking.

"Three years ago," Darian said, "....and you refused to say a single word."

I kept my eyes on the window as he continued. "You won't say anything to the council or your family or even me." His grip tightened on the wheel. "And now you're still hiding behind that same silence." He laughed, short and bitter and completely without warmth. "Are you still running from your crime, Lyra? Three years later and you're still running?"

I said nothing.

"I don't even recognize you anymore." His voice dropped and somehow that was worse than the sharpness.

"Do you remember how we used to stand on that ridge after training? You and I, completely exhausted, and we'd look out over the territory and swear we'd protect this pack with everything we had."

A muscle jumped in his jaw. "I kept that oath. I kept it every single day." He paused. "Where were you?"

My fists curled in my lap.

"My father is buried in the eastern memorial ground," he continued quietly. "My mother still sets a place at the table for him every full moon because she doesn't know how to stop. My younger brother joined the warriors at sixteen because he wanted to be everything my father was."

His voice finally cracked, barely, just a hairline fracture before it sealed back over. "He's sixteen, Lyra. He should be running through these woods laughing. Instead he's in armor because a battle that should never have happened took the man who was supposed to show him how to be one."

The burning behind my eyes got worse. I pressed my thumbnail deeper into my palm.

"You should apologize." Each word came out separate and deliberate. "To the families. To the warriors who survived and have to live with what they saw."

He turned to look at me fully, and his eyes were hard in a way that I had never once seen when we were together. "Apologize to my mother. Apologize to me."

I turned to look at him. "Apologise for what?"

He blinked. "What?"

"For what, Darian." I held his gaze. "Tell me exactly what I did."

"Have you lost your mind?" His voice rose for the first time. "The evidence was—"

"I didn't leak those plans."

The words came out before I could stop them.

I was never supposed to say that. I had made a promise and I had kept it for three years on a stone floor with broken bones and an empty chest and I was keeping it still.

But sitting in this car next to this man who had held my face in the dark and told me he trusted me more than anyone, listening to him talk about apologies like I owed the world one, something in me snapped clean through.

"I never went near your father's office," I said. "I never touched those plans. I never wanted a single wolf in this pack to get hurt and you know that. You knew me, Darian. You knew exactly who I was." My voice was shaking now and I hated it. "Did you believe it? Even for one second, did you genuinely believe I was capable of it?"

"The evidence—"

"Did you believe it?"

"Lyra—" He shook his head, his expression hardening into something that looked almost like pity, which was worse than the anger. "I understand that this is easier. I understand that after three years it's easier to keep telling yourself this story. But making excuses doesn't bring my father back." He turned back to the road and his voice went flat and final. "It doesn't change anything."

He had not answered the question.

He was never going to answer the question.

I turned back to the window and pressed my forehead almost to the glass and breathed through my nose and did not say another single word for the rest of the drive.

The Pack House gates appeared ahead, iron and stone, the Ashbourne crest carved above the arch, the silver wolf frozen mid-leap beneath its eternal full moon.

Darian pulled through the gates and stopped the car in the courtyard and neither of us moved.

Then he said, "You shouldn't have come back."

I turned to look at him. "This pack was healing." He kept his eyes forward, his hands still on the wheel.

"It was slow and it was painful but we were getting there. People were learning to live with what happened." He exhaled through his nose. "And now you're here. Walking around with that face and bringing everything back up again."

He finally looked at me and his eyes were tired in a way that went deeper than sleep could fix. "For the sake of what we were to each other, I'm giving you one day. Come to me tomorrow, apologize to my family properly, and maybe—" He stopped. "Just come tomorrow."

I stared at him and almost asked him what things. What version of us he thought still existed after everything. Whether he had any idea what it meant to sit in a prison cell for three years waiting for someone who claimed to love you to stand up and say wait, something about this is wrong.

I reached for the door handle instead.

"I'll see myself in," I said and stepped out but walked straight into Kael.

My brother stood at the base of the entrance steps with his arms folded. For one humiliating half second my heart did its thing. That small stupid flicker of hope.

Then I heard Darian's car door open behind me.

Kael's face shifted immediately. He lifted his chin in acknowledgment, warm and familiar. "Darian."

"Alpha Kael" Darian nodded back then they both looked at me.

"Go inside," Kael said.

I climbed the steps without looking back.

Kael caught up in the entrance hall, falling into step beside me like I was something he was managing. "Selene's already home. She's been upset since she heard about your release." He glanced at my face.

"Drop that look before she sees you. She already feels guilty enough."

I stopped walking and almost scoffed.

The last image I had of Selene was her standing safely behind Kael while they dragged me out in chains. She had not looked guilty. She had looked like someone watching a problem solve itself.

Kael reached the side table and pushed a folded stack of clothes into my arms without ceremony.

"She picked these out this afternoon. She knew you wouldn't have anything decent." He looked at me steadily. "She's always thinking about you. You know what you should do in return."

I looked down at clothes chosen by the girl who destroyed my life.

"The Alpha King arrives in three days as well," Kael continued, his voice dropping into the register that meant the conversation was already over.

"Selene will be his mate. I'll personally deal with anything that stands in the way of her happiness." His eyes met mine. "Anything."

I met his gaze. "I kept my promise. Three years, Kael and not one word about Selene. I've repaid every debt I owe this family." I held his stare. "From today, I'm free."

Something moved across his face. Irritation, mostly. Like furniture he had arranged carefully had decided to move on its own.

He sneered. "You'd better mean that."

"I do."

"Good." He turned away. "Check the guest room upstairs and change. Dinner at seven."

The guest room was clean and impersonal and smelled like a life that belonged to someone else. I sat on the bed for exactly thirty seconds, then stood and reached for the hem of my prison sweater when the door swung open.

"I forgot to mention—"

I spun around, grabbing for the sweater instinctively, pressing back against the wall.

Kael stopped mid-sentence.

My arm was already raised over my head. My back was flat against the wall. My whole body braced for impact the way it had learned to over two years of understanding what fast movement in a small room meant.

His jaw tightened. He crossed the room slowly this time and took my wrist. Pushed my sleeve up firmly to the elbow.

His hand stopped.

The room went completely quiet.

It was not one scar. It was never going to be just one.

Whip lines crossing over rope burns crossing over bite marks crossing over bruising that had calcified into ridged tissue, broken open, healed wrong, broken again.

Layer over layer over layer. Years of it. Every single inch documented in raised silver skin that could not be performed and had never once been asked for.

Kael's grip went slack.

"You—" His voice came out stripped of everything. "How did this happen?"

I looked at my brother.

At the horror sitting raw and exposed in his expression.