Chapter 4 MORNING

I woke up to grey light and this heavy, bone-deep silence.

Not the screaming hollow from last night...that ringing void that made my chest feel like a goddamn crater. Nah, this was quieter. Natural. The kind that belonged to a place that had never been loud to begin with. Wind whispering through the pines outside, faint and constant like a secret it wasn’t ready to spill.

A fire burned down to soft orange embers in the hearth, popping every now and then like it was trying to remind me I was still alive. Thin December light sliced through the small stone window, weak and half-assed, like even the sun couldn’t be bothered to show up full force but figured it’d stop by anyway.

I lay there under the heavy blankets and did the inventory, slow and careful, because rushing anything right now felt like daring the universe to kick me while I was already face-down in the dirt.

Chest...still hollow. That specific ache of absence, like pressing your tongue to the empty socket where a tooth used to be. It hurt every time you touched it, but it was quieter than last night. Less like a raw scream tearing through me. More like a low hum you could maybe learn to live underneath without losing your mind. It was going to feel like this for a long time. Maybe forever. But at least it wasn’t trying to kill me right this second.

Body...total fucking wreck. Every muscle had filed its own formal complaint, loud and pissed. My feet were wrapped in clean bandages, the cuts from the frozen ground cleaned and dressed while I was out cold. Hands too. Someone had cleaned the bloody crescents from my nails and wrapped them without waking me. I stared at the bandages for a long beat, the fabric soft against skin that still remembered the dirt and the drag and the humiliation of being hauled out like trash.

Then I looked for my wolf.

She was there.

Reduced and slow-moving, like something healing from a deep, ugly wound, but there. Present. I reached toward her the way you reached for a hand in the dark...cautious, half-scared of what you’d actually find...and she turned toward me.

I’m here, she said without words, that quiet animal certainty wrapping around the edges of my mind.

I know, I told her, throat tight even in my head. Me too. We’re still fucking here.

That small contact...I’m here, you’re here, we didn’t die...hit me harder than anything else. My breath finally came out steady for the first time since the bonds snapped.

I sat up slow, every joint protesting like an old man after a bar fight.

The white dress was gone. Thank fuck for that small mercy.

In its place on the chair: dark leggings that looked soft and worn-in, a thick grey pullover that smelled like pine and cold air and something clean, wool socks folded neat on top. No note. No explanation. Just clothes left by someone who’d decided getting it done mattered more than getting credit for it. No fuss, no pity performance. I appreciated the hell out of that.

I got dressed. The pullover swallowed me whole, sleeves hanging past my hands, but it felt good against my skin...warm, solid, like the territory itself was trying to wrap around me whether I wanted it or not.

I stood at the window.

Shadowpine territory spread out below in the pale morning light, dense pine forest in every direction, the ridge rising sharp and jagged to the left, no other structures visible from here. Everything dark green and grey and old as hell. Nothing like Bloodmoon’s slick modern lines, glass walls, and that arrogant architectural confidence of a pack that thought it had already won the game.

This place didn’t give a shit about looking impressive.

It just remained.

I understood that right now in a way I couldn’t have yesterday. After being dragged out like garbage in front of everyone I used to call family, after the bonds ripping out roots and all, staying rooted felt like the only thing that made sense.

---

The corridor outside my room was empty.

No shadow under the door this time. No boots planted like a silent guard. Just the low, lived-in sounds of a packhouse waking up...distant clatter of a pot on a stove, someone’s muffled voice calling something casual, the old wood creaking and settling in the cold like it was stretching after a long night.

I followed the smell of something warm drifting down the hall. Oats, honey, a fire going somewhere close. My stomach growled loud enough to embarrass me, but there was nobody around to hear it.

The kitchen was large and stone-floored, the kind of room that had seen generations of hard use and didn’t pretend to be pretty. A woman stood at the massive hearth stirring a pot...dark hair pulled back, the watchful stillness of a wolf who was politely not making it obvious she was sizing me up from head to toe.

She turned when she heard me hesitate in the doorway.

We just looked at each other for a beat. No fake smiles. No forced “welcome to the family” bullshit.

“You’re up,” she said finally, voice neutral but not cold.

“Apparently,” I muttered, stepping inside.

She nodded at the pot without ceremony. “Sit your ass down. Nara said you needed to eat before you did anything else. Doctor’s orders, basically.”

I dropped into the chair at the long wooden table, bandaged hands resting on the scarred surface. She set a bowl in front of me...thick porridge, steaming hot, honey drizzled over the top like someone actually gave a damn...and sat across with her own. We ate in silence for a few minutes, just the scrape of spoons and the crackle of the fire and the grey morning doing its quiet thing through the high windows. It was… nice.

No pressure. No pity stares. Just two people putting food in their faces while the world kept turning.

“Pira,” she said eventually, not looking up from her bowl. “Pack Beta.”

“Lyra.”

“I know.” A short pause. “Whole pack knows. You weren’t exactly a quiet arrival last night.”

I glanced at her. She met my eyes for half a second...careful, but not mean. Like she was weighing how much to drop on a stranger who looked one wrong word away from bolting.

“The energy when whatever the hell happened at the border happened,” she went on, spoon scraping the bowl. “Wolves felt it for miles. Ronan was already moving toward it before his patrol even radioed in.”

I didn’t say shit. Just kept eating. But my mind flashed back to those green eyes going dead still in the moonlight. The way his hands had felt on me when he lifted me like I weighed nothing. That flicker of warmth I’d tried to convince myself was bullshit.

“Where is he?” I asked, keeping my voice flat.

“Ridge meeting. Territory stuff.” She pushed her empty bowl away. “He left a message for you. Said to tell you exactly...you’re not a prisoner here. You can leave whenever the hell you want.”

“He told you to memorize it.”

“Word for word. Made me repeat it back twice.” Something almost like a smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth...brief, gone fast. “He was real specific about how it landed. Like he was scared I’d screw it up.”

I looked toward the window. Outside, the pines pressed in thick and dark and stubborn as hell, the ridge cutting sharp against the grey sky. This whole territory felt rooted deep, like it had decided to stay no matter what shit the world threw at it. I got that. Right now, I felt pretty rooted in my own wreckage too.

“What do people think?” I said. “About me crashing here like this.”

Pira was quiet a second...honest quiet, not dodging. “Mixed bag. Curious ones want to know what the fuck you are and what that light show was about. Cautious ones figure a wolf fresh off a double bond break is a walking liability we can’t afford right now.” She looked at me straight. “We’re not exactly running from a position of strength.”

“The curse,” I said.

Something shifted in her face...careful, guarded. “You know about that.”

“Everyone knows about that.”

She nodded slow, relaxing a fraction. “Then you get it. We’ve been losing people slow and ugly for years.” Her voice went level in that way voices do when the grief’s been carried so long it’s just part of the scenery now. “Ronan’s been Alpha five years. Lost four on his watch. His sister was the first...he was seventeen, she was fifteen.” A pause that felt heavy. “He found her himself in the morning. She’d just… gone in the night. No fight. No warning. Just gone.”

I looked down at my bandaged hands on the table, throat tight.

Thought about those fourteen wolves I’d counted from the rise yesterday. Thought about the hollow in my chest after twelve hours and couldn’t imagine that same emptiness stretching out slow and permanent, eating at someone you loved while you stood there helpless to stop it.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

Pira looked at me like the words actually surprised her. Like she’d expected something more self-protective from a stranger still in survival mode. “Yeah,” she said, softer than before. “Us too.”

The back door banged open.

Cold air rushed in, carrying the sharp bite of pine and frost. Ronan filled the doorway...jacket zipped, boots caked in mud from the ridge, dark auburn hair messy from the wind. He stopped dead when he saw me at the table.

That thing happened to his face again.

I’d seen it twice now...in the dark at the border, in the corridor last night. That raw, private movement, large and unguarded, there and gone before it could become anything. He was faster at locking it down in daylight, but I’d spent two years learning to read a man’s face for truths he wasn’t offering, and I caught it anyway. Like seeing me hit him somewhere deep and personal every single time.

He crossed to the hearth, poured water from the pot into a cup, then leaned against the counter and looked at me properly.

In the grey morning light the tiredness in him was different than last night. Deeper. The kind that came from carrying something massive for years and quietly making peace with never putting it down. His green eyes settled on mine...steady, patient, waiting like he had all the time in the world.

“How do you feel?” he asked. No bullshit preamble.

“Honest answer or the polite crap?”

“Honest.”

I actually thought about it, staring at my bandaged hands. “Like something essential got ripped out of me and the hole it left is gonna stay cold for a long-ass time.” I looked up at him. “But I’m here. Wolf’s here. We’re… functional. Mostly.”

He just nodded. No empty it’ll get better or you’re strong lines. Just the nod, like he was filing the truth away and respecting it for what it was.

I looked at him hard. “You stayed outside my door all night.”

Pira went statue-still across the table.

Ronan’s hands tightened on the cup, knuckles whitening for a second. “You were a stranger in my packhouse coming off bond shock. Someone needed to be close. In case shit went south.”

“You could’ve sent Nara.”

“She needed sleep.”

“Someone else then. Anyone.”

He held my gaze, green eyes unflinching. “I stayed,” he said, simple as that. No long explanation. Just fact. Like it was the only answer that made sense to him.

My wolf turned toward him again...that slow, deliberate pull, animal certainty that didn’t need my permission and wasn’t asking for it.

I pulled back from it hard. Filed it away for later. Too much had happened in too few hours to trust anything that moved that fast—even the things that came from the part of me that had never once been wrong about a person.

Especially those.

“I’m not deciding jack shit today,” I said.

“About what?”

“Anything.” I kept my eyes on his. “Staying. Leaving. Whatever it is you want from me that you’re not saying yet.” My voice almost cracked, but I powered through. “I know there’s something. I can feel it in my bones. But I need one day where nothing is required of me. No decisions. No expectations. Just… one day.”

Ronan looked at me for a long, heavy moment.

Those green eyes reading something in my face. Deciding something.

“Okay,” he said.

I waited for the "but". The conditions. The push.

It didn’t come.

“That’s it?” I asked, half-laughing in disbelief.

“That’s it.” He pushed off the counter. “Pira can show you around the territory if you want to move. Nara wants to check those feet this afternoon.” He paused at the doorway, broad shoulders filling the frame. “There’s more in the pot if you’re still hungry.”

Then he was gone, door swinging shut behind him.

I stared at the empty space like an idiot.

Pira was watching me with this unreadable look...half-amused, half-worried.

“What?” I snapped.

“Nothing.” She stood and grabbed the bowls, crossing to the washbasin. “Just that in five years I’ve never once heard that man say ‘okay’ like that. To anything. Ever.”

I kept staring at the doorway where he’d been.

Felt my wolf turn that way again...slow, stubborn, like she was already leaning in.

Told her gently to stop.

She did.

But slowly.

The way she only moved slowly when she’d already decided something and was just waiting for the rest of me to catch the fuck up.

Outside the window the Shadowpine pines stood dense and dark and ancient, full of secrets I didn’t know yet.

And somewhere under the hollow in my chest...quiet, new, growing without asking...that pull.

Pointing straight at the door he’d just walked through.

Patient as the forest itself.

Real as the cold biting at the glass.

And way too hard to ignore.