Page 155 of Chaos At Second Sight

He glanced down and I knew it. Ruby knew it too. For one terrifying heartbeat, he didn’t recognize who I was.

But something shifted and I saw it—the pain, so much of it that I almost missed the underlying fury.

“Who was she?”

“Nobody,” Logan said.

I stroked his cheek with my thumb. “I can’t help if you don’t let me in.”

His lips pursed, causing his canines to dig in further, blood running faster.

My eyes welled up. “You don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”

The forest darkened around us. One star popped in, then another, while the wind gathered in the branches overhead, carrying the scent of rain.

My arm ached from holding his face but I didn’t lower it.

Only when a faraway howl rose, announcing the beginning of another night, did Logan fold.

His head dropped to my shoulder, his body still trembling as though Francisca had left frost under his skin.

I didn’t need to know who she was. I knew it already.

Lucien told me regardless.

“She let Lucien stay inside her womb for six months,” he said, speaking through Logan. “And spent the next six years locking Lucien up in the attic.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

YVAINE

One thing I’d always taken for granted was my family. My enormous, loud, occasionally infuriating but wonderfully overinvolved family.

A family is like a tree. The people, like branches, grow in different directions, reaching for different skies. Yet they’re all fed by the same roots. Cut those roots, and every branch withers, swallowed by the undergrowth.

My family, however, wasn’t just a tree. They were an entire forest of towering pines and stubborn oaks and tangled brambles. They gave me roots and the safety to become who I was.

Dad had surrounded us with so much love that Lachlan and I could have lived off it for years. Mom protected us with all she had, taking us to Scotland at every chance, teaching me archery, and bringing me to medical conferences on weekends. Lachlan was that best friend who never had to earn my trust because he’d been born with it. And little Ian taught me that life was frighteningly fragile, and that time was the only thing no one was ever promised.

Beyond them was Scotland, with grandparents who loved us with the strength of a thousand suns, mischievous aunts and uncles, and more cousins than I could count.

In my family, there was always a seat waiting for me, always another plate on the table, always someone who’d come looking if I didn’t come home.

But Logan…

He’d never had a forest, just a tree that had tried very hard to survive the fire.

“There was a rogue in the pack.”

Those were the first words out of Logan’s mouth when we stepped inside the packhouse.

Alpha Jonathan sat in a huge charcoal armchair in the massive living room. Floor-to-ceiling, black-framed windows overlooked the dark forest, while oversized sand-colored sectionals and cognac leather armchairs gathered around coffee tables. A sleek black dining table, long enough to seat twenty, lay at the far end under soft pendant lights. One entire wall served as Dark Diamond’s shrine to wereball. The glass cabinets displayed polished silver trophies, medals, framed championship photographs, and signed jerseys.

The large room hummed with ordinary, peaceful life. A pair of elderly wolves argued over a chessboard; teenagers laughed over a card game sprawled across an olive-green rug. Two women and a man knitted beside one another, while another read aloud from a book. Children darted between the furniture before being shooed away with affectionate grumbles.

An enormous stone fireplace dominated the room, though only a few lazy logs smoldered inside—werewolves rarely needed fire for warmth.

And tonight, the cold wasn’t from the absence of flames.