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The corridor stretched between them. A door opened somewhere down the hall, spilling laughter from the gathering, then closed again. The silence came back.

“I remember,” Sloane said.

“I know you remember. I’m not asking you to apologize. You pledged your loyalty. I accepted it. That chapter is closed.” Caitlynn uncrossed her arms, letting them fall to her sides. Her hands were still. “But Chris isn’t a chapter. He’s my family. He’s the only one who has ever made me feel like I belonged, until I married Kahn.”

Sloane said nothing.

“He doesn’t talk about himself,” Caitlynn continued. “He never has. He stands behind everyone else; he watches, he holds the doors open. He’s done that his entire life. He doesn’t ask for things. He didn’t ask for this bond. He didn’t ask to be paired with anyone, least of all you.”

“Neither did I.” Sloane’s voice was sharp, and Caitlynn sighed.

“He never knew his blood-family, you know,” she said conversationally. “Grew up being passed around from foster home to foster home, eventually aging out of the system. And yet… he never wanted sympathy for himself. Always made sure to protect the kids with him. Like he protected me.”

Her voice stayed level, controlled, but her eyes were bright. “So I need to say this, because he won’t.”

“Say it.”

Caitlynn held her gaze. “Don’t hurt him.”

The request sat between them in the empty corridor, plain, unadorned, carrying a weight that had nothing to do with pack politics or magical bonds or the ugly history that connected them. It was a sister standing in a hallway, asking a woman she had every reason to distrust not to break the person she loved most.

Sloane’s throat ached. The bruises were nearly gone, faded to a yellowish shadow beneath her collar, but the ache that lived deeper than tissue had no interest in healing on schedule.

“I don’t intend to hurt him,” she muttered.

“Intent doesn’t always matter.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” Caitlynn took a step closer. “Because the woman I remember from two years ago never looked like she cared about who she hurt. I ate cold eggs alone for weeks because you turned the staff against me. You didn’t lay a hand on me. You didn’t have to.”

Sloane’s fingers curled against her thighs. Her nails pressed into the denim. She could feel her wolf bristling, not with aggression but with the low, restless shame that came from hearing the truth spoken by the person she’d wronged.

“That woman was performing,” Sloane said. The words came out rough. “I was performing. For Gideon, for the pack, for anyone who’d let me stand close enough to pretend I belonged.”

“I know.” Caitlynn’s voice softened. Not pity. Recognition. “I didn’t understand it then. I think I’m starting to understand it now.”

They stood in the corridor with the distant sounds of the gathering filtering through the closed doors. Sloane counted three breaths before she spoke.

“He sat in my cottage all night after my door was broken. He pulled a chair against the wall, watched the tree line, and didn’t push me to talk.” She swallowed. “No one has ever done that for me before.”

Caitlynn was quiet for a long moment. Her expression shifted by degrees into the look Sloane had seen her wear on the dais during the ceremony, the focused stillness of a woman reading what sat beneath the surface.

“That’s who he is,” Caitlynn said.

“I know.”

“Then you understand why I’m here.”

“Yes.”

“One more thing,” Caitlynn said.

Sloane waited.

“The cold eggs.” Caitlynn’s mouth moved, wry, self-aware. “They were terrible. Elena’s cooking deserves better than to be eaten cold.”

“It does,” Sloane agreed, and the agreement surprised her, the ease of it, the way it came out sounding almost like a conversation between two people who might, given enough time, learn to be in the same room without the air turning thin.