“I have no idea,” I said honestly, still staring at my palm like it might spontaneously combust. “Are you okay? Can you make it back to town?”
“I'll live.” She pressed her hand against the worst of the cuts on her arm, blood seeping between her fingers. “But Nate, what you just did...”
“I don't know what I just did,” I interrupted, because acknowledging it would make it real, and I wasn't ready forwhatever this was to be real. “Let's just get you somewhere safe, okay?”
The walk back to town passed in tense silence, both of us jumping at every sound that might have been another rogue. But the forest felt different now. Protective rather than threatening, like something vast and patient was watching over us.
By the time we reached the edge of the pack's territory, Sienna was moving better, her supernatural healing already knitting the worst of the damage. But she kept glancing at me like I was a puzzle she couldn't solve, and I couldn't blame her.
I was starting to feel like a puzzle I couldn't solve either.
“Nate,” she said as we approached the pack house, voice careful in the way that meant she was trying not to spook a wild animal. “You should probably... I mean, Evan should know about this. About what happened back there.”
The way she said it made my skin crawl with implications I wasn't ready to examine. Like she knew something I didn't. Like what had just happened was significant in ways that went beyond a lucky break and some kind of freak atmospheric pressure situation.
“Know about what?” I asked, aiming for casual and landing somewhere in the neighborhood of defensive. “That I got lucky? That the thing decided I wasn't worth the effort?”
Sienna's look could have stripped paint. “Right. Lucky.”
She paused at the pack house door, hand on the frame like she was anchoring herself for something unpleasant. When she looked back at me, her expression was careful. Too careful.
“Just... be careful, okay? Sometimes things happen that we don't understand right away. Sometimes they're not as random as they seem.”
I stared at the door she'd closed between us, then down at my hands. They looked normal. Felt normal. Completely, utterly, boringly human.
29
BLOOD AND BROKEN GLASS
EVAN
Istood in the doorway watching Gideon work at his bench like nothing had changed, like the world hadn't tilted sideways and shown me truths that made my bones ache with the weight of what I'd never known.
His hands moved with that steady precision I'd always admired, tightening bolts and adjusting fittings like secrets were just another tool in his arsenal. Like decades of deception was just another day at the office.
“You lied to me.” The words came out rougher than I'd intended, scraped raw from a throat that still remembered howling. “All this time, you were more than a mechanic. More than whatever the hell you pretended to be.”
Gideon didn't flinch. Didn't even pause in his work. Just continued threading a bolt through a carburetor housing like my world hadn't just exploded into a thousand sharp pieces that couldn't be put back together.
“I did what I had to,” he said finally, voice carrying that gruff certainty that had always made me trust him. “Your father asked me to keep the truth buried until you were ready.”
“Ready?” The word tasted like ash and acid. “You don't get to decide when I'm ready. You don't get to play at being my mentor when you're hiding half the fucking truth.”
My voice cracked on the last word, and I hated how young I sounded. How hurt. Because this wasn't just anger burning through my chest like wildfire. This was betrayal, sharp and clean and cutting deeper than any rogue's claws.
The man who'd taught me everything I knew about engines and bourbon and keeping your mouth shut when it mattered had been lying to my face. Had watched me struggle with the weight of being Alpha heir while hiding knowledge that could have made the burden lighter.
Or maybe would have crushed me entirely. Hard to tell when the foundation of your understanding got ripped out from under you.
“Do Cal and Mason know?” I asked suddenly, the question burning through me like acid. “About what you really are?”
Gideon's hands stilled on his wrench. “No. And I plan to keep it that way for a while.”
“So just me, then. Just me who gets to carry the weight of knowing that everyone I trust has been lying to me.”
Gideon finally looked up, eyes meeting mine with something that might have been regret if I'd been generous enough to call it that. “I've buried too many Alphas to play at honesty,” he said, and there was something broken in his voice. “If I'd told you sooner, you would've run headfirst into the dark before you understood the cost.”
“And now?”
