LOGINChapter 85: Elara's POV "I'm going to talk," I say. "You're going to listen. All of it. Before anyone says anything back." I look at each of them in turn. "Agreed?""Yes," Ryker says.Ronan nods.Rafe says nothing. Which from Rafe means yes.I put my hands flat on my knees. I've been thinking about this for weeks. I know what I need to say. The only question has been whether I could say it clearly, from somewhere real rather than reactive, and I think... sitting in this living room on a Thursday afternoon with my son asleep down the hall and a burnt kitchen wall in my cottage and three men who ran into a burning building last night, I think I can."Six years ago," I say. "You used me. You took what you wanted from me and then you rejected me in the same breath, in the same building, while I was still..." I stop. Start again. "While I was still trying to understand what had just happened. You called me a distraction. You made clear that my lack of a wolf, my background, my father's a
Chapter 83' Rafe's PovShe changes my dressing at seven in the morning and again at seven in the evening.The morning one is businesslike, she comes out of the kitchen with her small kit, sits across from me at the table, unwraps, checks, rewraps. We talk about Ryker's breathing and Ronan's pain levels and whether the pack doctor should come by for a follow-up today. We drink coffee. She makes toast and puts a plate in front of me without asking whether I want it, which I notice and which I eat.The evening one is different.Not dramatically. Not in any way she probably notices. But the suite has been quiet all day in the way of a place where people are recovering, Ryker in his room with his phone and his Council correspondence, Ronan asleep until noon and then awake and complaining about the immobilization in a way that told me the pain had eased enough that he had energy for complaining, which was a good sign. Elara had gone to the cottage mid-afternoon to assess the damage proper
Chapter 82: Ryker's POV I wake up to the smell of coffee.For a moment I lie still and let my lungs do their inventory....better, significantly better, the tightness from last night reduced to something that requires effort to notice rather than effort to ignore. The oxygen unit is on the bedside table where Elara put it. I use it for twenty minutes, the way she told me to, before I reach for my phone.Six fifty-eight.Two messages from Elias. The fire service has completed their initial report — accelerant confirmed, positioned deliberately on the kitchen wall, consistent with professional placement rather than opportunistic arson. The Council has been notified. Victor Kane's legal team has already filed a statement calling it unrelated to the ongoing proceedings, which is exactly what Ryker would have done in their position and which is going to go exactly nowhere given the timing and the documentation we already have.I send three replies to Elias, make two decisions about the Co
Chapter 81: Elara's POV I wake up in a chair, for approximately three seconds I don't know where I am, and then the unfamiliar ceiling and the smell of a hotel room and the soft light coming through curtains I didn't close last night all catch up with me simultaneously. I'm in Ronan's room. In the corner chair. Wrapped in the blanket from the back of it, my feet tucked up, my neck doing something unpleasant from the angle I apparently slept in.Ronan is asleep in the bed. On his back, which I'd have told him to do if he'd been awake, easiest position for the shoulder. His breathing is slow and even. The immobilization I put on his shoulder last night is still in place.I check my phone. Six forty-two. I have three messages from Mom... the first checking in last night, the second this morning saying Landon slept well and has already asked twice about the fort, the third asking what I need her to bring from the cottage. I text back that Landon should stay put until I know more about
Chapter 80: Ronan's POV She's in the spare room, I've said it to myself three times since Ryker closed her door and I'm still not entirely convinced it's real. Elara is in the spare room of our hotel suite, having crossed the road from the garden wall where we were sitting and told us, in a brisk clinical voice that did not fully conceal the fact that her hands were shaking slightly, that she was coming with us for medically sensible reasons and could everyone please not make it into something.I am not making it into something.I am sitting in the living area of the suite with my arm in a sling that Elara fitted and double-checked before we got in the car, and I am watching Rafe rummage through the bathroom kit for a spare toothbrush, and I am very carefully not making it into something."Stop smiling," Rafe says, from the bathroom doorway."I'm not smiling.""You've been smiling for twenty minutes.""It's a grimace. My shoulder is in a sling.""It's not a grimace." He finds the to
Chapter 79: Elara's POV It didn't take much before I crossed over to their side, it takes approximately eight seconds and it is the longest eight seconds of my recent life, which is saying something given the last several weeks. The frost crunches under my feet. The fire service lights pulse blue and white around the cottage behind me. I'm aware, in the specific heightened way of someone running on adrenaline fumes, of every detail, the cold, the smell of smoke still on my coat, the way Ryker clocks me approaching before I've taken three steps and goes very still, the way Ronan stops talking mid-sentence and looks up, the way Rafe just watches, steady and unreadable and completely unsurprised.I stop in front of them.Nobody says anything for a moment."Right," I say. "Here's what's happening. The doctor said you'll heal faster with proximity to the bond. I've read the same research and he's not wrong." I keep my voice brisk and clinical because brisk and clinical is the only registe
Chapter 6“Mom, I don’t want to go back if they’re just going to make me say sorry for something I didn’t start.”Landon’s voice was small but edged with frustration as I helped him into his school uniform. My fingers paused on the buttons of his shirt, the bruise on his cheek still faintly visible
Chapter 5Ryker’s POV The scent of her still clung to the inside of my nose like smoke after a wildfire—sweet wild honey, soft vanilla, and that faint trace of defiance that had always driven me insane. Six years, and one accidental collision in a school hallway had ripped open every scar I’d trie
Chapter 4“Mom, please… just keep walking.”My voice came out as a broken whisper, barely audible even to my own ears. Landon’s small hand felt impossibly fragile in mine, his fingers sticky from the dried blood on his knuckles. I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to meet any of their gaz
Chapter 3“Take it back!” Landon’s furious shout cracked through the air the second I stepped into the principal’s office. My son stood rigid in the center of the room, small fists clenched at his sides, blood smeared across his knuckles and a fresh bruise blooming on his cheekbone. Opposite him,







