The council moves on to discussing the placement of the other defectors. Four will go to Ambersky, five to Grayhide, and three to Llewelyn, though Matriarch Lydia makes it clear she’s accepting them under protest. The logistics take another hour to sort out, and by the time we’re finished, my legs ache from standing and my head pounds from exhaustion.
Caelan is waiting for me outside the council chamber. She’s leaning against the wall with her arms wrapped around herself, and she straightens when she sees me.
“How did it go?”
“They agreed to a three-month probation for all of them. They’re being given an opportunity to prove themselves.”
She nods and asks, “And Jonas?”
“He’s staying here. Reeyan will supervise him.”
“That’s good. Reeyan is fair. He’ll give Jonas a real chance.”
“I need to talk to him. Before anything else happens. I need to see where his head is.”
Caelan squeezes my arm. “I’ll wait here.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to. Go. He’s your brother.”
I find Jonas in the holding room where Reeyan left him after the council meeting. The guards stationed outside the door all step aside when I approach, though neither of them looks happy about it. Jonas sits on a wooden bench against the far wall with his wrists still bound and his eyes fixed on the floor. He doesn’t look up when I enter.
“They’re going to cut those off,” I tell him, nodding toward the bindings. “Reeyan just needs to finalize the paperwork.”
“Great,” he grumbles with a grunt. “Then I can be a prisoner without the visual reminder.”
I pull a chair from the corner and position it across from him before sitting down. The distance between us feels like miles instead of feet. “You’re not a prisoner, Jonas. You heard what Oren said. They’re giving you probation. A chance to prove yourself.”
“A chance to prove myself to people who spent the last decade trying to kill us.” He finally looks up, and the anger in his eyes is scorching. “Do you have any idea how insane this is? Two weeks ago, these wolves were the enemy. Now I’m supposed to live with them, follow their rules, and pretend like everything is fine?”
“They’re giving you a chance to start over.”
He scoffs and replies, “You make it sound so simple. Like I can just forget everything Thornridge taught me and become someone else overnight.”
Jonas shakes his head and looks away. He works his jaw like he’s chewing on words he doesn’t want to say. I wait him out.Sixteen years of being his brother taught me that pushing Jonas only makes him dig in deeper. He needs space to find his own way to the truth.
“You left me,” he whispers. “I woke up one morning, and you were just gone. No warning. No explanation. Bastian told me you’d been captured, that the allied packs probably killed you. I mourned you, Patrick. For weeks, I thought you were dead.”
The guilt I’ve been carrying since my defection lodges itself deeper into my chest. “I couldn’t tell you. If you knew what I was planning, you would have tried to stop me. Or worse, you would have come with me, and Bastian might have killed us both.”
“So you decided for me. Just like always.” His bound hands clench into fists. “You’ve been making decisions for me my whole life. Where I sleep, what I eat, and who I trust. You never once asked what I wanted.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what? From the truth?” He launches to his feet, and the guards outside the door visibly tense through the window. I hold up a hand to signal that everything is under control. Jonas doesn’t seem to notice. He’s pacing now, burning off sixteen years of questions that never got answered. “You knew, didn’t you? About our father. About what really happened when Thornridge took us.”
“Yes,” I confirm.
“And you never told me. You let me walk around believing the lies they fed us. You let me worship the wolves who murdered our father.”
“You didn’t remember any of it, Jonas. What was I supposed to do? Destroy the only stability you had? Make you live with the same nightmares I carried?” I stand to face him, keeping my voice calm even though everything inside me wants to shout. “I made a choice. A bad one, maybe. But I made it because I thought I was protecting you from pain you didn’t need to carry.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make.”
“You’re right. It wasn’t. I was wrong. I should have told you years ago. I should have trusted you to handle the truth instead of treating you like a child who needed to be shielded from the world. I’m sorry, Jonas. I’m sorry for all of it.”
The anger drains out of him slowly, leaving something exposed underneath. He looks young standing there, younger than his twenty-four years. The boy I raised is still in there somewhere, buried beneath layers of Thornridge conditioning and justified resentment.
