That, more than the shifting, more than the bond, more than the impossible biology, is the thing I keep coming back to. He respected my choice even when every instinct he possesses must have been screaming at him to stay.
Chapter 19
Her Pain Is Mine
Roan
The first nightafter Phoebe asks me to leave, I don’t go home.
I shift in the lane outside her cottage and run the eastern perimeter until my legs burn. The forest is cold and dark and exactly what I need: something physical, something that hurts in ways I can understand. I check every marker on the boundary, nose to the ground, cataloguing scents with the obsessive thoroughness of a wolf who needs a task to keep from howling outside his mate’s window.
The eastern approach is clean. No rogue trails, no fresh marks. But the absence feels deliberate. The rogues have been pressing closer for weeks, and now, the moment Phoebe’s scent starts broadcasting heremergence, they go quiet. That’s not retreat. That’s patience. They’re waiting for something, and I have a bad feeling I know what.
I circle back past Ivy Cottage at dawn. My wolf wants to stay at her door until she wakes. Her light is off. She’s asleep, or trying to be. I can feel the restlessness from here, a low-frequency hum that matches the one in my chest. I want to lie down on her doorstep like a guard dog and stay there until she wakes. Instead, I go home, shower, and try to eat something and fail.
My father calls at eight. I let it ring.
He calls again at half past. I let that ring too.
The text arrives at nine:My office. Today. Non-negotiable.
I go, because avoiding him now would be petty rather than principled, and I’m trying to learn the difference.
The main house is quiet. Rebecca isn’t here, which means my father has chosen to have this conversation without his Beta present. That’s either a sign of trust or a trap, and with Chris Mistwood, it’s usually both.
He’s at the long table with a mug of coffee and a single patrol map. No stack of papers, no agenda. Just one map, marked with the eastern boundary and the cluster of cottages around Ivy Lane.
“Sit down,” he says.
I sit. The surprise of it registers on his face before he hides it.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he tells me. “About watching me do this your entire life. About your mother.”
I didn’t expect this. My hands tighten on the edge of the table.
“Your mother was the best thing that ever happened to this pack.” His voice is measured, but the effort behind it is visible. Chris Mistwood does not discuss his mate easily. “She was also the best thing that ever happened to me, and I failed her. I know that. I’ve known it for sixteen years, and I’ve had to live with the knowledge that the way I loved her was the thing that wore her down.”
The kitchen clock ticks in the silence.
“I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel sorry for me,” he says. “I’m telling you because you’re about to make decisions about a woman’s life, and I want you to understand that I know what it costs when those decisions are wrong.”
He pauses. “You’ve been fighting me since you were seventeen years old. I called it rebellion because that was easier than admitting you might be fighting for the right reasons.”
“Then let me make them,” I say. “My decisions. Not yours.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.” He pushes the map towards me. “But while you’re making decisions about the girl, someone needs to make decisions about this.”
I look at the map. The eastern markers are flagged in red. Three of them.
“Lewis found scent traces this morning,” my father says. “Faint. Deliberately masked, which tells us they’re getting smarter. Three separate points along the eastern boundary, all within a mile of the village. They’re not testing anymore, Roan. They’re positioning.”
The cold that moves through me has nothing to do with the weather.
“Positioning for what?”
“I think you know for what.”
Phoebe. Her scent, strengthening by the day, broadcasts the emergence to every wolf within range. To a pack of rogues without mates, without territory, without anything to lose, an emerging Omega is the most valuable thing in the world.
