Then Jonah's voice cut through the quiet, sharp and unforgiving. “And what about you, Daniel?”
The question hit like a fist. I turned to face him, saw the challenge in his eyes, saw the same question reflected in a dozen other faces. Waiting. Measuring.
“What about me?” I asked, though I knew exactly what he meant.
“Rafe.” Jonah said the name like a curse. “You brought him into the pack house. Into our home. You vouched for him, trusted him, let him inside our defenses while he was poisoning our wards and feeding information to Silas.” His voice went hard. “Gideon hid his bloodline. But you handed a traitor the keys to our destruction. So where's your accountability, Alpha?”
The words should have sparked rage. Should have made me shut him down with authority that didn't tolerate challenge. But looking at Jonah's face—at the grief and fury and desperate need for someone to acknowledge the failure—I couldn't find it in me to deflect.
Because he was right.
“You're right,” I said, and the admission tasted like ash. “I brought Rafe in.” I looked at each of them in turn—Jonah, Sienna, Mason, all the wolves who'd followed me for years and deserved better than an Alpha who'd failed them. “I fucked up and Alaric died because of it.”
“Daniel—” Michael started, but I shook my head.
“No. It's true.” I forced myself to meet Jonah's eyes. “I'm not off the hook. I made a choice that cost us a pack member, that put all of you at risk, that gave Silas exactly the opening he needed. And I'll carry that for however long carrying matters.”
“So what?” Sienna's voice was sharp, cutting. “You admit it and we're supposed to just accept it? Trust that you won't make the same mistake again?”
“No.” The word came out flat, honest. “You're supposed to hold me accountable. Call me out when I'm making decisions based on personal shit instead of pack safety. Challenge me when something feels wrong, even if it means going against Alpha authority. Because I'm not infallible, and pretending I am gets people killed.”
The pack stirred, wolves exchanging glances, processing an Alpha admitting weakness in ways that violated everything they'd been taught about how leadership worked.
“Rafe manipulated me,” I continued. “Silas trained him to find weakness and exploit it. But that doesn't absolve me of responsibility for letting him in. For missing the signs.” I looked at Alaric's ashes scattered across dark water. “I failed the pack. Failed Alaric. And I'll spend every day trying to earn back the trust I lost.”
Silence fell again, but this time it felt different. Less like judgment, more like assessment. Like the pack was seeing me as something other than the infallible Alpha who always had answers.
Like they were seeing someone who could fail and admit it and still stand here asking for the chance to do better.
“Good.” Jonah's voice had lost some of its edge. “Because we can't afford another mistake like that. Any of us.”
“I know.” I turned toward the tree line, suddenly exhausted in ways sleep wouldn't fix. “We go home. We rest. And tomorrow we start preparing for war. Because Silas isn't done. He got what he came for, and now he's building something worse than we can imagine. But we face it together. As pack. With all our failures and flaws laid bare, because secrets and pride are what got us here.”
The pack dispersed slowly, wolves breaking away in pairs and small groups. Some lingered near the ashes, paying final respects to pack member turned memory. Others vanished into trees like they couldn't stand to be in the clearing anymore, shadows swallowing them whole until only rustling branches marked their passage.
Gideon stayed where he was, standing alone near water's edge. The sight of him—isolated, grieving, carrying secrets that would never fully wash clean—made something in my chest ache despite the fury. He'd violated trust in ways that couldn't be forgiven easily. But standing there watching him stare at black water that reflected nothing back, I understood the weight of choices made with terrible certainty that they were necessary.
We were both guilty. Both carrying deaths we couldn't prevent. Both asking for mercy we hadn't earned.
Michael's hand found mine, squeezed briefly. Warm and solid and real in ways that anchored me when the ground felt like it was dissolving beneath my feet. “You did the right thing.”
“Did I?” The question came out more vulnerable than I meant. “Feels like all I'm doing is making the least-bad choice from a lineup of disasters.”
“Yeah.” He leaned against me, and I felt him tremble slightly—exhaustion or fear or both. “But that's what leadership is sometimes. Choosing between terrible options and living with the consequences.”
He was right. I hated that he was right, but he was.
We walked back toward town with ash on the wind and grief heavy enough to drown in. The pack moved like wounded animals, favoring injuries, leaning on each other, bound by loss and fury and the desperate need to survive whatever came next. Moonlight filtered through branches overhead, painting everything in silver that looked too much like blood,and somewhere in the distance I heard a wolf howl—pack communication or something else, I couldn't tell anymore.
The forest pressed close on all sides, trees leaning in like they were listening. Waiting. Measuring how much more we could withstand before we finally broke. Corruption still pulsed through ward-lines that had held for generations, a sickness we could feel but couldn't see, poisoning protections from the inside out.
And somewhere beyond the trees, beyond the lake, beyond the boundaries we'd spent lifetimes defending, Silas was building power. Commanding rogues. Planning his next move with the patience of something that had already lived too long and would live longer still.
The war wasn't coming.
It was already here.
And we'd face it bleeding, broken, and bound by failures that would haunt us until the forest finally decided we'd suffered enough.
