“Nate,” he said, my name carrying weight in the quiet room. “You understand what you witnessed tonight. What it means.”
It wasn't really a question, but I nodded anyway. “War.”
“War,” he agreed. “The kind that doesn't have rules or boundaries. The kind where civilians become casualties just by existing in the wrong place at the wrong time.” His eyes—Evan's eyes, I realized with a jolt—fixed on mine. “The kind where humans who get involved tend to end up very dead, very quickly.”
Beside me, Evan went perfectly still. Not the relaxed stillness of someone at ease, but the coiled tension of a predator preparing to strike. I could practically feel the protest building in his chest, the desperate need to protect me from choices I was already making.
“I know,” I said quietly.
“Do you?” Daniel's voice remained conversational, but there was steel underneath it now. “Because knowing and understanding are different things, son. Knowing is academic. Understanding is visceral. It's the difference between reading about war and watching your friends die.”
The words settled into the space between us like lead weights. I thought about the rogue that had been bearing down on me tonight, jaws wide enough to snap my spine. I thought about the smell of burned fur and the sound of bones breaking. I thought about Evan's face when he'd shifted back to human form, painted with blood that hadn't all been his own.
“I understand enough,” I said finally.
Daniel studied me for a long moment, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was seeing things I didn't even know I was revealing. “The pack accepts you now. Whathappened tonight, the way you handled yourself... they'll follow my lead on this.”
Something warm and dangerous unfurled in my chest. Acceptance. Belonging. The thing I'd been chasing since I was seventeen years old and stupid enough to think geography could fix what was broken inside me.
“But acceptance comes with responsibilities,” Daniel continued. “It means when we fight, you fight. When we bleed, you bleed. When we die...” He shrugged, the gesture somehow more terrifying than any threat. “Well. Pack takes care of pack, even in death.”
“Dad,” Evan said, voice rough with warning.
Daniel held up a hand, never taking his eyes off me. “I'm not trying to scare him away, son. I'm making sure he knows what he's signing up for.” He leaned forward slightly, and I caught a glimpse of the predator that lived beneath the careful human facade. “Are you ready for that, Nate? Are you ready to fight beside wolves against things that will show you no mercy? Are you ready to kill to protect this family?”
The question hung in the air like a blade waiting to fall. I could feel Evan's tension ratcheting higher beside me, could practically hear his heart hammering against his ribs. He was waiting for me to break, to run, to choose the safe path that would take me away from him and everything he was.
I thought about my camera, about the stories I'd spent years trying to tell through borrowed light and stolen moments. I thought about the empty apartment waiting for me back in Chicago, about the life I'd built that had never quite felt like home.
Then I thought about Evan's hands on my face in the quiet moments after crisis had passed. I thought about the way his wolf had recognized something in me that I hadn't even known existed. I thought about standing in a room full of predators andfeeling, for the first time in my adult life, like I was exactly where I belonged.
“Yes,” I said, and my voice didn't shake. “I'm ready.”
The smile that spread across Daniel's face was sharp enough to cut glass. “Good.”
Evan turned to stare at me then, and the expression on his face was something between admiration and absolute horror. Like he was seeing me clearly for the first time and wasn't sure whether to kiss me or strangle me with his bare hands.
His eyes held mine, dark and dangerous and full of the kind of love that could destroy worlds if you let it.
26
BELONGING
EVAN
The apartment felt smaller with Nate in it, like his presence expanded to fill every corner with restless energy and that particular brand of stubborn determination that had gotten us both into trouble since we were teenagers. He kicked off his boots by the door with the casual familiarity of someone who belonged here, who had every right to make himself at home in the space I'd built around the careful architecture of solitude.
Except tonight, that familiarity felt like a lie.
Tonight, everything felt like a lie.
I hung my keys on the hook by the door, buying myself a few seconds to figure out how to have a conversation I didn't want to have with the one person I couldn't bear to hurt. The pack meeting was over, the immediate crisis contained, but the weight of what was coming pressed against my shoulders like a physical thing.
War. Actual fucking war, with casualties that would be measured in more than bruises and hurt feelings.
And Nate—Nate who'd looked Daniel in the eye and declared himself ready to fight, who'd stood in that room full of predators and claimed his place like he had any right to it—Nate was going to get himself killed.
“Beer?” I asked, already heading for the kitchen because movement was better than standing still, better than looking at him and seeing everything I was about to lose written in the determined set of his jaw.
