“Even if it means going against the pack.”
“Especially if it means going against the pack.” I hold her gaze. “My father’s been waiting my whole life for me to fall in line. If I hand Phoebe over to the system, that’s exactly what I’d be doing. Following the rules because they’re the rules, not because they’re right.”
Maggie looks at me for a long time. Then she smiles. Quiet, knowing, carrying the weight of every difficult thing she’s ever watched play out in this village.
“You sound like your mother,” she says.
The words land somewhere I keep locked. My mother died when I was twelve. She is not a subject I discuss.
“She fought the same fight,” Maggie says. “She loved your father. She loved the pack. But she never let the pack tell her how to love. She found her own way, even when it put her at odds with tradition. Especially then.”
I don’t trust myself to speak.
“You’re not your father, Roan. You never will be. And whatever you decide to do about that girl, you’ll do it your own way, because that’s the only way you’ve ever known.” She stands, gathering the cups. “Now. You promised me a fence.”
* * *
I fix Maggie’s fence. It takes two hours. I do it badly because my hands are steadier in a fight than with a hammer. But the posts are straight, the wire is taut. Maggie pronounces it acceptable, which from her is high praise.
Walking home through the village, I pass Ivy Cottage. The surgery sign is dark, the curtains drawn. Sunday. She’ll be inside, probably reading, probably drinking tea, probably not thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about her.
Maggie’s words sit in my chest.You’ll do it your own way, because that’s the only way you’ve ever known.
My way. Not my father’s way, which would be a formal introduction to the pack, a structured integration, the full weight of tradition and ceremony brought to bear on a woman who doesn’t know werewolves exist. Not Rebecca’s way, which would be carefulplanning, strategic management, and a measured approach that works for pack business but has no place in something this personal.
My way is simple. My way is honest. Just me, standing in front of her, telling her the truth because she deserves it and because every day I don’t is a day I’m choosing my comfort over her right to know what’s happening to her.
Not as the Alpha’s son. Not as a Mistwood heir fulfilling his destiny. As Roan. The man who’s spent his whole life refusing to be what everyone expects, and who is only now beginning to understand that refusing was never the same thing as choosing.
I’ll tell her. Soon. On my terms. And if the pack has a problem with that, they can take it up with me directly. I’ve spent a decade avoiding confrontation with my father. For Phoebe, I’ll have it.
My father won’t like it. Rebecca will have opinions. The pack will adjust, or they won’t.
I keep walking, past the cottage, past the lane, into the trees where the path turns towards my cabin. The forest is quiet around me, the way it gets in late autumn when the birds have gone south, and the undergrowth has thinned to brown stalks and bare earth. My wolf is calm for the first time in days, settled by the decision, even if my human brain is still turning it over.
I’ve been called the rebel my whole life. I’ve neverreally earned it. Avoiding your responsibilities isn’t rebellion. It’s just absence.
But this, choosing to protect someone even when the pack says she belongs to them, choosing honesty over protocol, choosing her over the path of least resistance, this is the first time the word fits.
Chapter 14
Cracks
Phoebe
The dream startsthe way it always does now. The forest, dark and close, the ground cold beneath my bare feet. I’m running, but not away from anything. Towards something. My body moves with a certainty my waking self never possesses, sure-footed and fast, weaving between trees I can’t see but somehow know are there.
Then it changes.
My hands hit the ground. Not because I’ve tripped. Because I’ve dropped onto all fours and it feels right, feels natural, the way standing upright never quite has. My fingers sink into the earth. The earth pushes back. I can feel every root, every stone, everyburied thing beneath the surface, as if my skin has developed a new language. My spine stretches. My shoulders broaden. Something is happening to the architecture of my body, bones shifting and reshaping with a grinding pressure that should hurt but doesn’t, that feels instead like a lock turning, like something slotting into place after years out of alignment.
I try to look at my hands. They’re not my hands anymore.
I wake up gasping, sheets soaked with sweat, my heart slamming against my ribs like something trying to escape a cage. The bedroom is dark. The clock reads 3:47 a.m. My hands are shaking so badly that when I reach for the glass of water on the nightstand, I knock it to the floor.
I sit on the edge of the bed and press my palms flat against my thighs until the trembling stops. My skin feels wrong. Too tight, too sensitive, as if every nerve ending has been turned up to a frequency I’m not designed to receive. As if my body is making room for something it can no longer keep buried. Like something is… waking up.
The sheets are unbearable against my legs. The cotton of my pyjamas scratches like sandpaper. Even the air moving across my bare arms feels textured, granular, like I can feel individual molecules.
