Rykan’s voice echoed in his memory, as clear as if they were standing together again on that mountain ridge, the pack’s territory spreading out below them.
The pack needs someone steady. Someone they can trust. With me gone, Lysara will...
Rykan hadn’t finished that sentence. He hadn’t needed to. They’d both known what Lysara was capable of. What she’d already done.
So he had stayed. He’d watched his best friend walk away—exiled by his own stepmother, betrayed by the female who should have been his mate—and he’d stayed behind to pick up the pieces.
For a while, it had worked. The pack had needed him. The younger warriors looked up to him, the elders trusted him, and even Lysara had been forced to acknowledge his value. He’d been the glue holding everything together after Rykan’s departure, the steady presence that kept the pack from splintering into factions.
But Lysara was patient. And she was cunning. And she had plans that didn’t include a loyal enforcer who remembered what the pack used to be.
It started small. Little requests that pushed the boundaries of what he considered honorable. Collecting debts from families who couldn’t pay. Intimidating rivals who hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Enforcing rules that seemed designed more to benefit Lysara than to protect the pack.
He’d resisted. Questioned. Pushed back.
And then came the day she’d ordered him to kill an innocent man. A trader from outside the territory who had stumbled across something Lysara didn’t want anyone to know. The man had done nothing wrong. Had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Lysara had looked at Baylin with those cold, calculating eyes and told him to make the problem disappear.
He’d refused.
The fallout had been swift and brutal. Suddenly the pack he’d sacrificed everything for turned against him. Suddenly the warriors he’d trained and fought beside were looking at him like an enemy. Suddenly staying meant becoming something he couldn’t live with. There were those who supported him, but they were too few and too scared of Lysara to speak in his defense.
So he’d left.
Like Rykan before him, he’d walked away from everything he’d ever known. He’d spent the years since then wandering. Trying to find a new purpose, a new home, a reason to keep moving forward.
He’d told himself it was the right choice. The honorable choice. That walking away rather than letting Lysara use him against innocent people was the only option his conscience could accept.
But late at night, when the darkness pressed in and there was no one to hear, the guilt still whispered.
You abandoned them. The young ones. The families. The people who needed you to stay and fight.
You left them to her.
You could have done more.
He should have found another way. He should have challenged Lysara directly. He should have rallied the pack against her, exposed her schemes, fought for the home and people that mattered instead of just... leaving.
But he’d been tired. So tired. Tired of fighting battles that never ended, of holding together something that kept trying to fall apart, of being strong for everyone else when he had nothing left for himself.
So he’d run. And the pack he’d sworn to protect had been left to Lysara’s tender mercies.
He didn’t know what had happened to them since. He didn’t know if the young warriors he’d trained were still alive, if the families he’d protected were still safe, or if anything remained of the place that had once been home. He’d deliberately avoided any news, any contact, anything that might make the guilt worse.
It was cowardice. He knew that. But some wounds were too deep to probe, some failures too complete to face.
Liora stirred against him, murmuring something in her sleep. He tightened his arm around her, anchoring himself to the present.
This was different. This was a chance to do something right. To help someone who needed him, to free a prisoner who deserved to see the world, to be the protector he’d always wanted to be instead of the weapon others had tried to make him.
He wouldn’t fail her the way he’d failed his pack.
Whatever it took, whatever the cost, he would find a way to give Liora her freedom.
His beast rumbled in agreement.
Protect mate. Keep mate safe. Always.
He closed his eyes and let sleep finally claim him, his arms wrapped around the female who had somehow, impossibly, become the center of his fractured world. Just before he drifted off, Pip hopped up on the bed and settled against the curve of his neck.
