Then she was gone, her slight figure swallowed by the darkness between the shelters, and I was left standing by the dying fire with my brother.
Ryke didn't leave. I'd known he wouldn't. He had that look—the one that said he'd been watching me all evening, adding things up, and the total had come out wrong.
I busied myself banking the council fire, pushing the larger logs together so they'd burn slow through the night. Anything to keep my hands occupied. Anything to avoid the conversation I could feel building behind me."You going to stare at that fire all night, or are you going to tell me what's actually going on?"
Ryke's voice was mild. Conversational, even. The tone of a man who already knew the answer and was simply waiting for his brother to catch up.
I shoved another log into the embers harder than necessary. Sparks erupted upward in a swirling column, bright against the dark sky. "Nothing's going on. It was a long council. I'm tired."
"You're a terrible liar. Always have been. Remember when we were ten and you tried to convince Father you hadn't eaten the smoked fish he was saving? You had the same look then. Like a wolf sitting next to a pile of feathers insisting he'd never seen a bird."
Despite everything, my mouth twitched. "That was you. I took the blame for you."
"Exactly my point. You've always carried things that aren't yours to carry." He moved closer, settling onto the log Sira had vacated. The firelight caught the planes of his face, so like mine, but softer somehow, less worn down by the weight I'd been dragging since our father died. "Talk to me, Rivik."“About what?”
"The part where you suggested adopting four strangers into the pack during the most politically dangerous season we've faced in a generation. That part."
"I said it was just a thought."
"No, you said it was just a thoughtaftereveryone shot you down. Before that, you were serious. I know the difference, Rivik. I shared a womb with you."
I straightened, wiping my hands on my leggings. The fire was banked. There was nothing left to fiddle with, no excuse left to avoid his gaze. I turned and found him watching me with an expression that was half concern, half the careful calculation of a second who needed to understand what his alpha was thinking.
"It's Daska," Ryke said, and the certainty in his voice told me he'd already built his theory and was just looking for confirmation. "You're worried that when the travellers leave, he'll go with them."
He said it like it was obvious. Like the answer had been sitting in plain sight and he'd simply picked it up.
I wanted to let him believe it. It was a logical explanation.
"He's been different since she arrived," Ryke continued, taking my silence as confirmation. "I've seen the way he is with her. The way he looks at her. The way she looks at him. There's a bond forming there, anyone can see it. " He exhaled slowly, rubbing his jaw. "I like Daska. You know I do. He's pack, regardless of what Varek and his ilk mutter into their furs. But if the human woman leaves and he follows..." He shook his head. "We'd need to find another healer. The summer gathering might be our best chance. There's usually a few unattached healers looking for a pack. It wouldn't be Daska, but—"
"Stop."
The word came out rougher than I intended, and I turned away before I said more. Four weeks. Four weeks of keeping my distance, of finding reasons to be elsewhere when she was near, of redirecting my gaze every time it drifted toward Daska's hearth like a moth to the fire. Four weeks of lying awake at night with the bond humming in my chest, a constant low vibrationthat no amount of willpower could silence. Of aching to have her in my arms, in my furs.
I barely knew her. That was what I kept telling myself. I didn't know her favourite food, or what made her laugh, or what she dreamed about. I couldn't even speak her language. Everything I knew about Ellie, I'd learned from watching, and I'd watched far more than I should have.
I knew she woke early, before most of the pack, and sat outside Daska's cave with her hands wrapped around that little cup he'd carved for her, watching the sky lighten. I knew she helped Kessa and the other women prepare the evening meals, her movements clumsy but willing, and that she laughed when the children corrected her pronunciation. I knew the way her face changed when she thought no one was looking, the warmth draining away, replaced by something lost and hollow that made my wolf spirit claw at my insides.
“I knew it.” Ryke’s quiet statement had me turning back to him.
“Knew what?”
“She’s yours, isn’t she? Your fated mate. The one you’ve been searching for all this time.”
I should have denied it. Should have laughed it off, clapped his shoulder, told him the cold was getting to his head. That was what a smart alpha would do. Deflect, redirect, maintain the careful walls I'd spent four weeks building around this impossible, devastating secret.
Instead, I sat down heavily on the log beside him and put my head in my hands.
"Yes."
One word. It came out like something torn loose, ragged at the edges, and the relief of finally saying it aloud was immediately swallowed by the terror of what it meant.
Ryke was quiet for a long time. Long enough that I lifted my head to look at him, half expecting to see horror or disgust or the careful diplomatic mask he wore when he was about to deliver bad news. What I saw instead was worse. Compassion. The deep, aching kind that came from understanding exactly how fucked the situation was.
"How long have you known?" he asked.
"Since the moment I caught her scent on the wind. Before I even saw her face." I closed my eyes. The fire crackled between us, and somewhere in the camp a child laughed, the sound carrying on the cold air like something from another world. A simpler world, where alphas didn't fall for impossible women and the ground didn't shift beneath your feet every time she smiled at someone else. "The moment I saw her. Before I even knew she was human. My wolf spirit knew. It just... knew."Ryke was quiet for a long time. When I finally opened my eyes, his expression held none of the shock I'd braced for. Just a deep, steady sadness that was somehow worse.
