The Man Who Used to Rule

I found Callum two days later in the western hold — thinner, harder around the eyes, pacing a small guarded room like an animal that hadn't accepted its cage yet.

"Wren." His voice cracked on my name. "You're here. You actually came."

"For my mother's funeral," I said flatly. "Not for you."

"Wren, please. You have to understand what happened. Blackwood's forces were too strong, I never meant for anyone to—"

"You provoked a fight you couldn't win," I said, "and then you ran and let other people pay for it. My mother paid for it, Callum."

His face went pale. "I know. I'll carry that the rest of my life. But Wren — seeing you now, I understand how wrong I was. I should have handled you better."

"You should have. Four years too late to matter."

"It's not too late," he said, stepping closer, desperation in his voice I'd never once heard from him. "Selene and I — it's strained, since I lost my title. I've had time to think about everything I threw away. Maybe there's a way to—"

"Callum." I cut him off, cold and final. "There's nothing here to fix. I built an entire life without you."

Suspicion sharpened beneath his desperation. "What kind of life. You vanished for four years, Wren. Where did you go? What did you—"

The door creaked open. "Mama, Grandma Odessa says lunch is ready—"

Skye froze in the doorway, golden eyes wide, and Callum went utterly still, staring at a three-year-old whose eyes carried a color he clearly, immediately recognized — though not, I would soon learn, in the way I expected.

"Wren," he said, all trace of pleading gone. "Where did she get those eyes?"

"Mine," I said, steady despite my hammering heart. "She's mine, Callum. That's all that matters."

"That's not what I asked. I asked where she got those eyes. Because they're not mine, Wren. And they're not yours either." His voice dropped. "I've only ever seen eyes that color once before, in an old portrait my father kept locked away — a bloodline the Draystones were taught to fear generations ago. A bloodline everyone assumed was wiped out completely, in a massacre nobody in this region ever talks about above a whisper."

A second voice cut in from the corridor before I could answer. "Callum? Who's this?" Selene stood in the open doorway, arms crossed, eyes moving from me to Skye with the sharp, assessing look of a woman who'd spent four years wondering exactly who might come back to complicate a life she'd already fought hard to keep. "You said you didn't have anyone waiting on you when we bonded. Was that a lie, or just an omission?"

"Selene, this isn't—"

"Don't," she said, and something in her voice cracked despite the composure she was clearly working to hold onto. "I've spent four years married to a man stripped of his title, watching everyone in this pack blame me for a war I never asked for. Tell me right now if there's a child involved, Callum, because I deserve at least that much honesty before someone else hands it to me instead."

"There is," I said before Callum could decide which lie to try. "She's mine. Not his — not in any way that matters. So whatever the two of you are working through, that's not why I'm here."

Selene's eyes lingered on Skye a moment longer than comfort allowed, something calculating moving behind the hurt, and I understood in that instant that I'd just made an enemy who hadn't fully decided yet how dangerous she intended to be.

The room tilted sideways beneath me. Every offhand comment Odessa had ever made about Skye's eyes rushed back at once — not your coloring, not his either — and I understood, too late, exactly which thread I'd been too exhausted to chase.

"What are you talking about?"

Before he could answer, a shadow fell across the doorway.

"What bloodline?" Roman Blackwood asked, stepping in, his ice-pale eyes moving from Callum's stricken face to Skye's small, frightened one — and staying there.