Chapter 8

Vivienne snapped out of it fast.

She grabbed the drink from the person next to her and threw it straight at me.

Declan stepped between us. Orange juice soaked into his jacket.

His jaw was tight. "She's had wine. She doesn't know what she's doing. This is the Alpha's estate. Don't cause a scene. As your supervisor I'm telling you to sit down."

Vivienne pressed her lips together and stared at Declan. After a moment she sat, chest still heaving.

My subordinates caught my eye.

Both gave me a secret thumbs up.

Elara offered to give us a tour of the place to ease the tension.

Everyone said yes quickly.

She led us from room to room but kept getting it wrong. She'd push open a bedroom door and back out. She'd open a storage room and pause.

Vivienne still had fire in her and couldn't hold it. "Elara, do you even know this place?"

Elara looked embarrassed. She stopped and said:

"Honestly, I don't. I don't live here. He gave me my own place in the city after I finished school. This estate, he bought it six months ago and worked on it himself. He's very careful with it. Almost no one has been allowed inside. I've only been in here a couple of times."

There was a small silence.

She had been saying "my place" all day.

Someone muttered, "So the Alpha doesn't actually know we're here..."

Elara smiled, a little strained. "He knows. I told him I was bringing Pack friends for my birthday. He said yes right away."

My subordinate jumped in to smooth it over. "Elara, the fact that the Alpha let you use his personal estate for your birthday — you two must be very close."

Elara nodded quietly. "He was always a little solitary. Didn't like being close to many people. But he's always been good to me."

Solitary. Didn't like being close.

I wasn't sure whether she was being sincere or not.

The Cain I remembered could not stop touching. I used to tease him, ask if he had some kind of skin hunger. He'd just drag me closer and not say a word.

The group relaxed. We kept walking.

We pushed into a wide, bright room.

Afternoon light poured through full-length windows. Clean and sharp.

The walls were covered in photographs. Wilderness. The Northern Wildlands Highway. Mountains you could see from far away. Beside them, rows of biking gear.

"He actually does trail rides?"

Someone sounded genuinely surprised.

Elara stood looking at the photos, like she was seeing them properly for the first time. When she spoke, her voice had something quiet and heavy in it.

"When he was younger, a half-brother showed up to challenge the inheritance. He fell apart for a while. Then he found trail riding and pulled himself back together. After everything he went through to take over the Pack — which was a lot — he's made a point of going back to the Wildlands every year. He says it's his sacred trail."

Something in my chest tightened.

"He's always the same route. Every year. Won't miss it. He says that's where he found what he was looking for."

Elara's voice was light, almost wondering. A trace of something like longing underneath.

The party moved to the garden that evening. They'd brought in a band. People shook off the tension from earlier and let themselves have fun.

I slipped back to the trophy room alone.

I looked at the photos now, one by one.

Flatlands. Rock fields. Snow on high peaks. Prayer flags blowing in the wind of the Northern Wildlands.

Places I knew.

I stopped at one photograph.

A figure with a pack on their back, standing in open country, facing into the wind. The face was invisible. But the hair was moving and the back was straight.

After my Bond with Declan, I had stopped letting myself remember.

Living inside something too far and too bright made the present harder to bear.

Slowly, my mind had actually begun to let it go. Like it had been a dream. And dreams were meant to be forgotten.

But now.

The sound of wind through open space. A heartbeat. Two people breathing.

All of it came back at once, as clear as yesterday.

"Big sis."

A voice behind me, low and quiet.

I thought I'd imagined it.

But the voice came again, closer this time, carrying the coolness of the night with it.

"Big sis. Are you still running?"

I turned slowly.

Cain stood there without moving. The moonlight came through the window and turned his white hair a pale silver, making his features look sharper.

He stood straight and still in the half-dark.

He'd been traveling. He looked it.

I glanced at the door behind him.

He caught the look.

"Don't be in a hurry to leave," he said quietly. "I know I used Elara's birthday to get you here. But I promise I won't do anything you're not okay with. I've been careful all this time. Haven't I?"

I didn't answer.

My reason said to go.

But the wine was still burning, and it had burned through everything that told me to be sensible.

Fine.

I wasn't going anywhere.

The music from the garden was loud but muffled, like it was in another world. The silence in this room was very real.

Cain began talking in the dark.

"You really are cold. You left without saying a word."

"After you left, I spent six months fixing the thing I thought I'd never be able to fix. The Pack inheritance fight. Then I started looking for you. I figured as long as you were alive somewhere, I'd find you. I wanted to ask you in person: was I nothing to you?