Kael didn’t walk me out. He didn’t look back, didn’t speak again. Just turned toward the map like it hadn’t stirred, like my veins hadn’t lit up. No goodbye. Just silence thick enough to choke on.

I left in silence.

The door shut behind me with a soft finality, and I walked the long corridor back toward the compound’s lower level, where the Nightclaw wardens usually waited.

The corridor was colder than before, or maybe I was just noticing it now. Outside, the rain had returned. Not hard. Just a slow, steady patter against the stone roofs. A hush that made everything else feel louder.
At the end of the path, a dark carriage waited—enclosed, ornate, and far too luxurious for routine transport. Not one of the Nightclaw patrol rigs. This was one of Kael’s. Oversized, iron-rimmed, and spellbound for comfort. He rarely used it unless a summit was involved or he was leaving the compound entirely.
So why send it for me?
I didn’t get the chance to puzzle it out.
Because Damien was standing beside it.
His arms were folded, black jacket soaked through at the shoulders. His hair clung in damp curls around his face, and he looked like he’d rather be standing anywhere else.
But when he saw me, something flickered behind his eyes.Outside, the rain had returned. Not hard. Just a slow, steady patter against the stone roofs. A hush that made everything else feel louder.

At the end of the path, a dark carriage waited, far too luxurious for routine transport. Not one of the Nightclaw patrol rigs. This was one of Kael’s. Oversized, iron-rimmed, and spellbound for comfort. He rarely used it unless a summit was involved, or he was leaving the compound entirely.

So why send it for me?

I didn’t get the chance to puzzle it out, because Damien was standing beside it.

His arms were folded, black jacket soaked through at the shoulders. His hair clung in damp curls around his face, and he looked like he’d rather be standing anywhere else.

But when he saw me, relief flickered behind his eyes.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming out,” he said.

I stopped a few feet away. I didn’t know what I expected him to say. Or what I wanted to say in return.

“Here I am,” I replied dryly. “Figured I’d look less threatening if I came out alone.”

He huffed, almost a laugh. “You’ve never looked less threatening a day in your life.”

That cracked something in me, but I didn’t let it show. I walked past him and reached for the carriage door just as he stepped forward.

“Luna’”

“I’m fine,” I said, too quickly.

We both froze in the space between movement and meaning. I turned toward him, about to say something when footsteps crunched behind us.

Marrick.

He stepped forward from the side path, dry as ever under a charmed hood, hands tucked in the folds of his coat like he hadn’t just interrupted a moment hanging on a thread.

“Gamma,” he said with a nod at Damien. “You’re needed on the training fields. Kael’s orders.”

Damien’s jaw tightened. “Now?”

“Yes. Now. He wants the formation drills run before sunrise.”

For a heartbeat, Damien didn’t move. Then he gave a curt nod and stepped back. His eyes shifted to me once, like an apology, and then he turned and vanished into the dark.

Marrick watched him go, then glanced at me. “What? Were you expecting someone else?”

I didn’t answer. Just climbed into the carriage without looking back.

Marrick followed, the door closing with a soft thud as the horses stirred under the reins. The cabin was warm, lit by a low-burning crystal lamp in the ceiling.

We sat in silence for a few minutes. I could feel him glancing at me, like he wanted to say something but couldn’t figure out how.

“So,” I said eventually. “Still think I’m the ticking time bomb?”

He leaned back and rested an arm on the window rail. “No. I think you’ve always been one. We just didn’t know where the fuse ended.”

I let out a bitter breath. “Comforting.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

Another silence settled over us, heavier than the last. Outside the carriage window, a Nightclaw patrol passed by, hounds trotting alongside silver-armoured enforcers, weapons gleaming under wardlight. They didn’t look our way.

I glanced at my brother. We still had a while to ride, and the question had been sitting in my chest ever since Lyra casually mentioned she’d known about Damien’s feelings for me.

So I asked. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Marrick’s brow furrowed slightly. “Tell you what?”

I stared ahead, jaw clenched. “That Damien” that he had feelings for me. That all this time, something real was there, and he never acted on it. You knew, didn’t you?”

He let out a sharp breath, dragging a hand through his damp hair. “Luna, now’s not’”

“No.” My voice cut through the quiet. “You don’t get to dodge this. We never talk. Not really. And you know that. So now that we’re stuck in here, say it. I spent years convincing myself I was imagining it. That I was just another name on the roster to him. But tonight I saw it.”

Or at least I thought I did.

Marrick’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t look away. “It wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“So you knew,” I whispered. “Kael forbade him from telling me, didn’t he? Or was it you?”

His silence said everything.

I leaned back against the seat, arms folded tight across my chest. “Gods, you did. You told him to stay away from me.”

“It was for your own good,” he muttered.

I laughed. “My own good? Or for the pack’s convenience?”

He didn’t rise to the bait. Just looked down at his hands, flexing them once before speaking. “You were already carrying too much. Our father’s death. The council. The burden of being a female Baudelaire. You didn’t need the added mess of love.”

“I could’ve handled it.”

“No,” he said quietly, “you couldn’t. Not back then.”

And deep down, I knew he was right. I just hated hearing it.

Marrick sighed again, this time heavier. “It wasn’t just about you. Damien’s a protector. Always has been. And you” you were never supposed to be his to protect. Not like that.”

I turned toward him. “So what, I was a burden?”

“No,” he said, and for once his tone softened. “That’s how I saw it. Not how it was. He was terrified he’d hurt you. Or worse, hold you back.”

I blinked, my throat tightening.

“He doesn’t allow himself weaknesses, Luna,” Marrick went on. “And you’ve always been the one thing he couldn’t ignore.”

I looked away, fingers curling in my lap.

“That’s not fair,” I muttered. “You let him believe that.”

“What would you have had me do?” he snapped. “Tell you both to go for it? Let everything fall apart when it did?”

“No,” I said quietly. “I would’ve wanted the truth. That’s all.”

Marrick exhaled, rubbed a hand over his face, and looked at me again. “It would have fractured the bond between alpha and gamma. Damien knew that. He knew where the lines were. He was never going to claim you. Not while Kael still looked at you like you belonged to him. Not when duty came first.”

I stared at the floor. “Did it ever cross your mind to ask what I wanted?”

Marrick didn’t answer, and he didn’t need to. His silence gave me everything I needed to know.

“No,” I said, nodding to myself. “You didn’t. You decided for me. Like you always have.”

He winced, and that was when it slipped, the look. Not just guilt, but something closer to fear.

“Gods,” he muttered. “Wait” do you’” He turned fully toward me, disbelief etched into every word. “Are you in love with him?”

His voice cracked on the last word. Like he couldn’t fathom it, or maybe it was the one thing he hadn’t prepared himself to hear.

“Yes,” I said. Just that. Nothing more.

Marrick reeled, blinking hard. His composure broke. “You never said anything.”

“No one ever asked.”

His hands clenched at his sides. “So that’s why you rejected Kael and chose the Gamma path? So you could be close to him?”

I didn’t respond, and that told him everything.

He let out a sharp breath, raking both hands through his hair like he wanted to tear the whole conversation apart. “Does he know?”

“I told him,” I said. My voice sounded foreign to my own ears. “After he found out about my mate.”

Marrick stilled.

I stared out the window, watching the trees blur past. “I don’t want him to reject me. But I don’t know if he’ll let himself want me back. Not after all these years of trying not to.”

He looked at me for a long time, eyes shadowed with an emotion I couldn’t name. Then he said, “Luna’”

But I shook my head. “Don’t. I’m not asking for your approval, Marrick. I just needed to say it out loud. Once. To someone who already knew.”

He didn’t argue. Didn’t comfort me.

Just let the silence fall again, as the carriage rolled forward toward the place where duty waited, and love had never been allowed to follow.

Marrick didn’t speak, and I didn’t try to fill the space. Some truths didn’t need follow-up. They just needed to sit there, fully formed, refusing to be pushed aside.

When the carriage finally slowed, I looked up. Kael’s residence was up ahead, more of a fortress than home. Slate towers wrapped in silver-etched wards, every corner angled like it had been built to defend, not invite. Lanterns burned low in the arched entry, flickering with pale green flame. The only light that didn’t seem entirely alive.

The horses pawed the stone as the driver brought them to a stop. Marrick was the first to move.

“I’ll walk you in,” he said quietly.

I didn’t argue.

The door opened with a hiss of enchanted air, cool and sharp against my face. We stepped out into the drizzle, and for a moment, I thought maybe he’d try to say something else. Offer advice. Apologize.

He didn’t.

Inside, Kael’s residence was too quiet. Not peaceful, unnerving. The kind of silence that made you feel like you’d already walked into the wrong room.

I wondered where the servants were. And worse, where his mother was.

She’d never liked me much. That wasn’t exactly a secret. It was one of the many reasons I hadn’t stepped foot in this place in years. But it never really bothered me. Mostly because she hated Selena Duvall even more, and honestly, that felt like a win.

Right. She didn’t live here any more.

Lyra mentioned she’d moved into one of the side residences a few floors over, far enough to be absent but close enough to still whisper.

Good. One less ghost to dodge.

The scent hit me next; ash and old books. Familiar. A little too familiar. Wards pulsed faintly above the door frames, thin veins of green light crawling across the dark floors like something alive. No servants. No guards. Just stone and shadow stretched down a hall I’d never walked before.

Marrick led me through the front atrium, then stopped near the base of a grand staircase carved from obsidian. A pair of steel-banded doors stood to the left, slightly ajar. The rest of the residence rose above us in sharp lines and locked chambers.

“This is as far as I go,” he said. “Kael’s wards won’t allow me further unless summoned.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Charming place.”

“It’s not meant to be,” Marrick said. “He built it that way on purpose. Privacy and paranoia are a packaged deal.”

I turned toward the door. “Guess I’ll find out which one this is.”

He didn’t laugh. Just nodded once. “You’ll be safe here. Even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

That made me pause. Because that was the thing, safe had never felt safe to me.

“Thanks for the ride,” I muttered, before stepping through the threshold.

Marrick didn’t follow.

The door shut behind me with that same soft hiss, like the house itself was exhaling. Wards flickered faintly in the seams of the stone, pulsing low beneath the surface.

The foyer stretched out before me, wide, cold, and empty; the kind that stared back. Almost every surface gleamed like obsidian polished to mirror clarity. The chandelier overhead was little more than a skeletal frame of antlered steel, strung with crystals that gave off no light. There were no portraits. No family relics. No signs that anyone had ever truly lived here.

My boots clicked against the floor as I stepped in.

I could practically feel Kael’s presence in the walls. It was like walking into a memory he’d locked away and dared no one to look at for too long.

There were two doors ahead of me. One closed and the other slightly ajar with a warm light spilling across a slice of the floor.

I moved toward it, because apparently, I had nothing better to do than poke around the lair of the most powerful wolf in the dominion.

The room beyond wasn’t what I expected.

It was a study, but not like the council chamber or Kael’s war room. This space felt” lived in. There was a heavy armchair turned toward the fire, and books scattered haphazardly across the long desk, not arranged for show but marked and folded like someone actually read them. A decanter of dark amber liquid sat half-empty on a side table. The scent of smoke lingered faintly in the air.

And then there were the maps, dozens of them.

Pinned across the walls. Rolled and stuffed into corners. Sprawled across the desk and floor like Kael had been dissecting the dominion one territory at a time. Some were old, fraying at the corners. Others were marked with ink so fresh it hadn’t dried.

Most of them had Nightclaw at the centre.

But not all.

The hand-drawn map beside the hearth caught my eye. Its lines were refined but strange. The Enchanted River didn’t run as a border, like I was used to seeing. It moved. Pulsed across the parchment like it was alive. The witch territories weren’t labelled by name, but by symbol, covens and clans I didn’t recognize. And then, near the bottom, there was something else entirely.

A separate region surrounded completely by the river.

No names. Just markings, both coven and pack, blended together within it like they were a territory of their own.

“Impossible,” I murmured.

And right in the centre of that forested stretch, a charcoal circle had been drawn. I knew that place. The place I’d jumped into the river and should’ve drowned, but didn’t.

I stepped closer. The parchment was pinned low enough that I could touch it. And I did, tracing the circle with the tip of my finger, trying to remember if anything had felt different about that place.

Behind me, something creaked. I turned fast, pulse spiking. But nothing.

No Kael, guards, or shadow of his mother waiting with a sneer.

Just the fire, and the new question still breathing behind me.

I turned back to the map, gaze locked on that circle. What was this place? Why had Kael marked it? What had he been digging for—and more importantly, what had he found?