Black water that reflected the sky too clearly, like reality had been pressed flat and hung between heaven and earth. Mist crawled low across the surface, thick enough to obscure the far shore, and the trees packed tight around the clearing like witnesses who'd gathered to watch judgment delivered.
We'd brought Alaric here wrapped in clean cloth, carried by wolves who'd fought beside him for years. No coffin. No manufactured distance between flesh and earth. Just the old rites.
The pack formed a ring around the pyre we'd built at water's edge. The absence of one screamed louder than any eulogy couldmanage. Some stood in human form, others as wolves, all of them silent with the kind of quiet that felt like the forest was listening.
Michael stood beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. He'd insisted on coming despite exhaustion that made him sway, despite corruption burns still raw across his arms. Nate pressed against his other side, and Evan completed our circle, all of us connected by pack bonds and grief and the desperate need to witness this together.
Gideon stood apart. At the edge of the gathering, alone in ways that had nothing to do with physical distance. His eyes were red-rimmed, expression carved from something harder than stone, and I saw the way pack wolves tracked him. Calculating. Measuring. Waiting for my signal to either accept or destroy.
I'd deal with that after. Right now, Alaric deserved our full attention.
I stepped forward, and the pack's focus shifted to me with the weight of expectation and trust I wasn't sure I'd earned. But Alpha meant standing when you wanted to collapse, speaking when words felt like broken glass, leading when every instinct screamed to run.
“Alaric wasn't easy,” I said, and my voice carried across still water. “He wasn't always kind. He questioned orders, pushed boundaries, made me want to throttle him on a weekly basis.” A few wolves made sounds that might have been agreement or grief or both. “But he changed. Over years, over battles, over choices that were hard and unglamorous and done when no one was watching.”
I looked at the pyre, at cloth-wrapped form that used to be pack, used to be alive, used to matter in ways we'd never fully appreciated until he was gone.
“He became someone we could count on,” I continued. “Someone who showed up when showing up was all we had. Someone who stood his ground when Silas brought hell to our clearing and dying was easier than fighting.” My voice cracked slightly. “He died doing what wolves do. Protecting pack. Protecting home. And that matters. Even when it's not enough, it matters.”
Silence fell, broken only by wind through trees and the soft lap of water against shore. Then Evan stepped forward, knelt, and lit the pyre with hands that shook despite his steady expression.
Fire caught. Spread. Consumed cloth and wood and flesh with the kind of hungry efficiency that made cremation look gentle by comparison. Flames licked upward, orange and gold and red painting the clearing in colors that didn't belong in daylight. Smoke curled over black water, and I watched ash scatter—some falling on the lake's surface where it floated like snow, some carried by wind into trees that would hold fragments of him forever.
The pack stayed until fire became ember became ash. Until all that remained was smoke and the memory of someone who'd been here yesterday and would never be here again.
Some of them cried without sound, tears tracking down faces scarred by years of violence. Some stood with jaws clenched so tight I could see muscle jump. And some—like Sienna, like Mason—just stared at the dying flames like they could find answers in heat and char.
I watched until the last of Alaric was carried away on wind that felt too cold for November, and something in my chest cracked. Not broke—I couldn't afford breaking when the pack needed me vertical. But cracked. Deep enough that I knew I'd feel it every time I breathed for however long breathing continued to matter.
When the fire finally died, when only gray ash remained where a life had been, I turned to face the pack.
And Gideon.
“Stay.” My voice cut through the silence as wolves started to drift away from the ashes. “All of you. There's something that needs to be said.”
They froze. Pack bonds carried enough of my intent that even those already moving toward the tree line turned back. Settled into positions around the clearing's edge, watching with eyes that had seen too much and weren't ready to see more.
But they'd see it anyway. Because secrets had already cost us Alaric, and I wouldn't let them cost us anyone else.
“Gideon.” I didn't raise my voice, didn't need to. “Front and center.”
He moved like a man walking to execution. Slow, deliberate, every step weighted with knowledge of what was coming. When he stopped three feet from me, close enough to hear my heartbeat, I saw exhaustion carved into every line of his face.
“Tell them,” I said quietly. “All of it. No more half-truths. No more protecting us from information we need.”
“Daniel—”
“Tell them.” Steel underneath the quiet, Alpha authority that didn't bend.
Gideon's jaw tightened, and for a second I thought he'd refuse. Thought he'd force me to be the one who shattered whatever fragile trust remained between him and pack.
But he looked at the assembled wolves—at Evan's careful neutrality, at Michael's protective stance over Nate, at Jonah and Sienna and Mason watching with expressions that promised violence if the next words were wrong—and something in him broke.
“Silas Duvall is my father,” he said, and the words fell like stones into still water. Rippled outward. Created waves thatwould take hours to fully understand. “Blood father. Magic father. The man who taught me craft before I was old enough to understand what I was learning.”
Silence crashed through the clearing. Not shocked silence—most of them had heard that revelation last night—but the kind that came from having suspicion confirmed, from realizing they'd been living next to someone whose bloodline was poison and they'd never known.
“I left him when I realized what he was becoming,” Gideon continued, voice steady despite the tremor I could hear underneath. “Walked away from his teachings, from his plans, from everything he wanted me to become. Changed my name. Hid my magic. Pretended I was just human enough to blend in.” He looked at me, and grief bled through his control. “And then I came back to Hollow Pines because I knew. I knew Silas would eventually come here. That the Evernight Forest was too powerful, too connected to old magic for him to resist. I came to protect it. To protect you.”
