“What are you doing?” I ask tentatively.
He turns to me, and the expression on his face makes my breath catch. Cloudy. Raw. Like he’s been wrestling with something heavy—and losing.
“You’re awake,” he says quietly.
I push myself up to a sitting position, clutching the sheet to my chest. My eyes drop to his closed fist. “What’s that?”
For a moment, he doesn’t answer. Just stares at his hand like he’s not sure he wants to open it. Then, slowly, he uncurls his fingers.
In his palm sits a gold ring.
It’s scratched. Bent slightly out of shape, like it’s been through hell. But it’s clearly a ring. Simple. Delicate. The kind of thing a teenage boy might have saved up for.
My throat tightens. “Kain...”
He gives me a small smile, but it’s sad. Devastating in its quiet resignation.
He stands and comes around to my side of the bed, then kneels beside it. The position is so intimate, so vulnerable, that my heart clenches painfully.
He takes my hand and places the ring in my palm, then closes my fingers around it. His hands are warm, steady despite the storm I can see in his eyes.
“I know last night doesn’t mean you forgive me,” he starts, his voice low and careful. “And I fully understand why you can’t. But I’ve been holding on to this, waiting for the right moment to give it to you.”
He pauses, his thumb stroking my knuckles.
“And now, there is no right moment left but this one.”
The weight of his words settles over me like lead. There is no right moment left. Because tomorrow, he may be dead. We both may be dead if the Covenant is stronger than the pack can handle.
I swallow with difficulty, my voice barely above a whisper. “What is it?”
“Remember when I said I kept something to remind me of you and give me hope?” His eyes search mine. “This is it.”
My fingers open, and I stare at the ring. Really look at it this time.
The scratches aren’t random. They’re deliberate—worn into the metal from years of being held, rubbed, touched. The bend in the band looks like it came from being hidden, maybe stuffed into a boot or wrapped in cloth and shoved into a crevice where guards wouldn’t find it.
Evidence of survival. Of defiance. Of love that refused to die even when everything else was being destroyed.
“I bought it during the war, a week before I was taken,” Kain continues, his voice rough. “I’d saved up for months from odd jobs around the pack. It wasn’t much, but I thought—I thought it would be enough. A promise that I’d come back to you. That we had time.”
My vision blurs.
“When they took me, it was the only thing I managed to hide. They stripped everything else away. My clothes, my dignity, my sense of self. But I kept this.” His hands cup mine as I hold the ring. “Every night in that place, I’d take it out. Run my fingers over it in the dark. Try to remember what your smile looked like. What your laugh sounded like. Whether your eyes were more green or more brown.”
A tear slides down my cheek.
“There were days I couldn’t remember,” he admits, and his voice cracks. “Days when the torture was so bad that I forgot my own name, let alone yours. But I always remembered that this ring meant something. That someone, somewhere, was worth surviving for.”
I can’t speak. Can’t breathe past the emotion clogging my throat.
“When they told me I’d been sold, that no one was looking for me, I almost threw it away.” His thumb traces the bent band inmy palm. “Almost gave up completely. But part of me wouldn’t let go. Couldn’t let go.”
“Kain—” I whisper, but he shakes his head.
“I held onto it through everything they did to me. Hid it when they searched my cell. Kept it on me during missions. It was the one thing that remained mine. The one piece of the boy I used to be that they couldn’t break or twist or corrupt.”
The tears are falling freely now, hot and fast.
