“What?”
“I told you five minutes. You’ve been here over fifteen.”
Brody looked at him. Ren raised his eyes and met something he couldn’t name on the alpha’s face. It wasn’t relief. It wasn’t a victory. It was something closer to the silent gratitude of someone who knows they received a chance they didn’t deserve.
“Do I stay or do I go?” Brody asked.
Ren leaned back against the headboard. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Go. I need to think.”
Brody nodded. He walked to the door without saying another word. But before he left, he paused with his hand on the doorframe.
“Your father and your brother won’t find you here. I give you my word.”
“Your word is worth as much as your last name, Kovac.”
The blow landed where Ren wanted it to. He watched Brody take it, his back tensing beneath the black fabric, his knuckles white against the wood of the doorframe. But he didn’t respond. He walked out and closed the door with a soft click that sounded louder than a slam.
The echo of raisins and walnuts faded into the air, leaving Ren alone with twenty-three ghosts he didn’t know but somehow understood better than anyone.
Chapter 15
Ren paced down the hallway with his fists clenched. Each step echoed off the dark marble floor like a foreign heartbeat—too loud, too fast. Brody’s scent grew stronger as he neared the office, and Ren forced himself to breathe through his mouth to keep his head clear.
Jax’s words echoed in his head.Say you’re sorry. Then tell the truth.
Simple. Direct.
His life had never been straightforward or easy to understand.
He stopped in front of the office door. Solid, dark wood, with a wrought-iron handle that looked like it belonged to another century. On the other side, voices. Brody’s, deep and restrained, and another softer one, almost a whisper. Zev.
Ren raised his fist and knocked twice. The voices fell silent.
Silence.
Then footsteps. The door opened and Zev appeared in the doorway, those black eyes of his that always seemed to calculate something. He looked at him for a second, just one, and stepped aside without saying a word.
Brody was standing by the desk. Not sitting. Standing, his knuckles resting on an unfolded map, his jaw so tense that themuscles stood out beneath his pale skin. He didn’t look at him as he entered.
“I need to talk to you,” Ren said.
“Come in.”
The word came out flat. No inflection. No warmth, the warmth that usually colored Brody’s voice when he spoke to him, even when they were arguing. Ren felt the chill of that absence like a punch to the chest.
Zev closed the door behind him but didn’t leave. He leaned against the bookshelf to the side with his arms crossed, watching. Ren ignored him. He focused on Brody.
“I wanted to tell you that…”
“Sit down.” Brody finally looked up. His gray eyes, rimmed with red from lack of sleep, fixed on him with a hardness Ren had never seen before. “I have news. About your family.”
The floor tilted beneath his feet. Or so it seemed to him.
“My family?”
“Sit down, Ren.”
