Beside me, Ben goes rigid. His steps falter, then reset with military precision. His shoulders pull back, spine straightening. His breathing pattern changes—slower, controlled. He glances that way but doesn’t speak.
Harper looks up, seemingly sensing our presence. Her eyes find Ben’s immediately, as if pulled by gravity. A small, hesitant smile crosses her face. “Hey, Benji.”
The reaction is immediate and jarring. Ben’s head snaps up, eyes flashing from warm brown to something cold and sharp. “Don’t.” The word cuts through the air like a blade. “Don’t call me that.”
She freezes, color draining from her face. The silence stretches, thick with old pain and newer wounds.
Ben’s jaw works for a moment before he forces his expression back to neutral. “Ben. It’s just Ben.” But the damage is done.
Harper flinches like he’d slapped her. “I—sorry, I didn’t ...” She swallows hard, the words catching in her throat. “I forgot. It won’t happen again.”
The moment falls into uncomfortable silence. Mateo suddenly finds something else to look at—the clipboard, his hands, anywhere but the space between Harper and Ben where something just shattered.
Ben mutters something that sounds like “Patrol duty” and veers sharply toward the command center. He doesn’t say goodbye. Doesn’t look back.
I watch the space he leaves behind. Note how Harper’s shoulders drop a fraction. How her voice carries on without wavering, but her fingers press harder against the clipboard until her knuckles go white.
How she doesn’t follow him with her eyes, but her body remains angled in his direction like a compass finding north.
Fuck. That will have to be dealt with, eventually. I stifle a sigh.
Across the clearing, Nova crouches with Lyanna near the eastern boundary marker. Both women have their hands in the dirt, tracing patterns, heads bent close together. They move in quiet synchronicity, reading the land together.
Rafe watches them from the treeline, motionless as carved stone. Always watching. Always calculating. I still can’t decide if I trust him or if I should put him down before he becomes aproblem. But he’s proven useful, and useful trumps comfortable in times like these.
Nova looks composed. Steady. Nothing like the woman who phased in and out of reality in my arms.
I stand still at the edge of camp, letting the truth settle into my bones.
This is what leadership costs. This is what being Alpha means.
All these fractured bonds—Ben and Harper’s unhealed wounds, Nova’s precarious stability, the pack’s shifting loyalty—and I’m meant to hold them together. Keep the perimeter. Guard the borders. Track the threat.
Without breaking.
My shoulders square. My jaw sets. I plant my feet and feel the territory beneath me—solid despite the fractures running through it.
I don’t chase Nova. Don’t fix Ben. Don’t interfere with Harper’s obvious pain.
I just watch. And hold.
Chapter 29
Nova
The eastern boundary smells wrong. Not dangerous, but off. Like a scent that doesn’t belong.
I crouch beside Lyanna, scanning the treeline. Nothing moves. Birds should be calling. Squirrels should be darting between branches. Instead, silence hangs thick as fog.
“It’s still here,” I say, fingers hovering over the soil. The shimmer isn’t visible to normal eyes, but I catch it: a faint ripple in reality where my magic crashed through.
Lyanna nods, her blonde hair catching sunlight as she leans closer. “The residue shouldn’t have lasted this long.”
My fingers brush the dirt. I don’t expect anything. Just confirmation.
Cold pressure shoots up my arm. Not pain. Something worse.
The sensation spreads like poison through my veins, a foreign presence threading beneath my skin. My pulse stutters, then races as something that isn’t mine moves through my bloodstream. The cold has texture—oily, invasive, wrong. It slides along my bones, mapping my magic pathways with intimate knowledge.
