“Because it's mine. My craft. My power.” Rafe's voice went sharp with something that sounded almost like hurt. “Everyone kept looking for Silas, kept assuming the big bad witch was behind everything. Nobody thought to look at the wounded stray bleeding on their doorstep.”
“Your pack,” Michael said, and his voice was steady despite the blood soaking through his shirt. “The Ash Hollow wolves. You said they were killed by rogues.”
Something flickered across Rafe's face. Gone too fast to read.
“I said a lot of things.”
“Rafe.” Michael took a step forward, and I wanted to pull him back, to put myself between him and the monster wearing a familiar face. “What really happened to your pack?”
Silence stretched across the clearing. The corrupted ward stones pulsed with sickly light. And when Rafe spoke again, his voice was different. Quieter. Almost conversational.
“They were weak,” he said. “Small pack, small territory, small dreams. Content to hide in the mountains and pretend the world wasn't changing around them. Content to let other packs grow strong while they stayed the same.”
“That's not an answer.”
“Isn't it?” Rafe's eyes met Michael's, and something passed between them. Recognition, maybe. Or the ghost of it. “Silas found me when I was nineteen. Saw something in me that my pack never bothered to look for. He taught me magic. Real magic. The kind that doesn't bow to pack bonds or Alpha authority or any of the rules wolves pretend matter.”
“He used you,” I said.
“He made me powerful.” Rafe's voice went hard. “And when I was strong enough, when I'd learned everything he could teach me about death magic and corruption craft... I went home.”
“You killed them,” Michael whispered. “Your own pack. You killed them yourself.”
“They were useless to me.” No emotion in Rafe's voice now. Just flat, cold fact. “Silas needed a tragedy. A believable survivor who could walk into Hollow Pines bleeding and broken and make you all feel sorry for him. My pack's death bought me that story.” His smile returned, sharp and wrong. “They finally served a purpose. First time in their miserable lives.”
Horror clawed up my throat. This wasn't just betrayal. This was something broken at a fundamental level. Something that had looked at family and seen nothing but tools to be used and discarded.
“Rafe.” I made my voice gentle. Careful. The voice I used with wounded wolves, with pack members drowning in grief they couldn't process. “Whatever Silas did to you, whatever he promised... it doesn't have to end like this. You can still choose differently.”
“Choose what? Your pack?” Rafe laughed, and the sound was jagged. “You never wanted me, Daniel. Not really.”
“That's not true.”
“Isn't it?” He moved closer, and I saw his hands trembling. Saw the way his jaw tightened like he was fighting something inside himself. “I gave you everything. Made myself exactly what you needed. And you still chose him.”
His eyes tracked to Michael. Something complicated moved through his expression. Jealousy and longing and a hatred so deep it had eaten through whatever good might have once existed.
“I saw the way you looked at him,” Rafe continued. “From the very beginning. Before you even knew what you were feeling. And I thought... I thought if I was patient enough, useful enough, if I just kept being exactly what you wanted...” His voice cracked. “But I was never going to be enough, was I? Not when he was standing right there being good and kind and everything I couldn't fake convincingly enough.”
“Rafe.” Michael's voice was gentle. “It doesn't have to be this way. Whatever happened to you, whatever Silas twisted inside you... there's still time. You can still walk away from this.”
Something shifted in Rafe's expression.
For one heartbeat, just one, I saw the man underneath. The wounded wolf who'd stumbled into our territory bleeding and desperate. The one who'd laughed at Jonah's jokes and helped Sienna with her training and looked at the pack like he was seeing something he'd always wanted and never believed he could have.
“Michael.” Rafe's voice went rough. Almost human. “I... I didn't want...”
“I know.” Michael took another step forward, hand extended like he was approaching a frightened animal. “I know you didn't. Silas did something to you. Put something inside you that isn't really you. But you're still in there, Rafe. I can see it.”
Rafe's hand lifted. Reached toward Michael's like he was going to take it.
Then his expression shattered.
The warmth drained from his eyes, replaced by something cold and calculating and absolutely empty.
“Almost,” he said, and his voice was wrong now. Layered with something that didn't belong to him. “You almost had me, Michael. That gift of yours, that desperate need to see good in everyone... it's beautiful, really. Silas warned me about it. Said you'd try to save me right up until the moment I put a knife in your heart.”
He turned away from Michael. Walked toward Nate with deliberate, unhurried steps.
