POV: Rena Vale
Static crawls over my skin as both of them turn—two storms finding a single target.
I grip the doorframe because my knees forget how to hold me. Auren’s chest heaves like he sprinted here until his lungs burned. Kai stands between the porch light and the night, carved from shadow and control, every line of him saying this is as close as you get.
“Rena,” Auren breathes, voice cracked. “Please… I messed up.”
He takes a step toward me.
Kai moves first.
One shift of his body erases the distance—broad shoulders blocking Auren’s path, arm easing back just enough to shield me without touching. The message is simple, sharp: not through me.
“Stop there,” Kai says, low.
Auren flinches, then tries to look past him. “I need to talk to her.”
“You had a stage,” Kai replies. “You used it to harm.”
“I panicked,” Auren says, words tripping. “I—Rena, look at me.”
I don’t want to. I do anyway.
His eyes find mine around Kai’s shoulder: green gone glassy, ashamed, shining, too late. For a heartbeat all I see is before—Auren shoving his notes across a library table, whispering answers during Pack Theory; Auren stealing my fries behind the diner, saying, If the moon likes us, I’ll make this official someday; Auren on the riverbank last summer, thumb tracing circles on my palm as he said, We have time and didn’t kiss me.
Then I see now: him under the Trial lights, voice steady while he cut the bond in front of everyone.
Everything inside me twists like it wants to turn back time and can’t.
“I want to go home,” I whisper, barely sound. Home, where my mother is probably pacing and my stepfather is sharpening his disappointment into knives.
Kai’s head tips, just enough for me to catch the refusal already waiting. “Not tonight.”
“I can’t stay here,” I try again, hating the tremor. “Everyone is going to lose it. My mom, my stepdad, the whole pack—”
“Not tonight,” he repeats, softer but immovable. “You walk into that house and I can’t cover your back. Here, I can.”
Auren lurches a step closer, palms up. “Come with me instead. I’ll take you home. Or to my place. Or—” he stumbles, scrambling for safe— “the packhouse. Anywhere you want, just… not with him.”
Of course. Not because he suddenly grew boundaries, but because the idea of me under the Alpha King’s protection terrifies him—for me, for his family name, for what people will say.
Concrete leeches cold through my soles. “You can’t reject me and then change your mind the same night,” I say, each word a stitch holding me together. “That isn’t care, Auren. That’s damage control.”
His face folds, pain cutting through the arrogance I’m used to. “I know. I know.” He drags a hand through his hair, hungry for a fix that doesn’t exist. “I didn’t mean the words.”
Kai’s gaze doesn’t leave him. “Meanings live in actions.”
“I’m talking to Rena,” Auren snaps, heat flaring, then catching on who stands between us. He drops his eyes for half a second, something like instinct remembering rank. “Alpha,” he adds, rough. Then, to me, “Please. I thought I was protecting us. I thought if I ended it now, before the bond locked in, my father would back off, the council wouldn’t use you against me—” Words tangle and choke. “I made it worse.”
Air scrapes in my chest. Lyria presses close in my mind, steady as a palm between my shoulder blades. Say what keeps you whole.
“I believed you were kind,” I say, voice small and clean. “Tonight showed me where that belief ends.”
Something flickers in Kai’s stance—approval, maybe, or just recognition that I’m standing upright on my own. He doesn’t move, doesn’t crowd me, just holds the line like it’s his religion.
Footsteps slap pavement; perfume hits a beat before the voice.
“Are you kidding me?” Hailey explodes as she rounds the corner, ponytail a metronome for fury. “You ran off and your parents called my dad, and then I hear you vanished with him—”
Of course she’s here. If Auren ran through half the district like a panicked wolf, his scent would be a trail of neon. Hailey would follow; Blackthorn Beta’s daughter never misses a scene that could affect her future title.
She clock Kai, and whatever she was about to say dies halfway out of her mouth.
“I told you to stay back,” Auren grits at her without looking, but it’s too late.
Hailey’s glare spears me. “You dragged him here? After you threw yourself at the Alpha King? You seriously—”
“Enough,” Kai says without looking at her.
One word. One look.
Volume dies in Hailey’s throat like someone cut a wire. She staggers half a step, mouth still open, fury trying to climb back up and finding nowhere to grip under his gaze.
“I’m speaking to my friend,” she manages finally, quieter but venomous. “Rena needs to—”
“Watch your next sentence,” Kai advises, eyes never leaving Auren. “Choose one that doesn’t end badly for you.”
Hailey’s jaw works. She flicks a glance at Auren, searching for an ally, then at me like she could burn holes through skin just by wanting it. Her voice drops, petty sharp. “This is pathetic.”
Auren doesn’t look at her. “I came alone,” he tells me, like that proves something. “I ran because when you left the circle, it felt like somebody ripped out whatever part of me knew how to breathe right.”
The words used to be the kind I would’ve replayed at three a.m. and believed. Now they just make me tired.
“That part should have spoken before a hundred people,” I say.
“I know.” His voice fractures. “I know.”
Kai shifts just inches, a tide guarding a shore. “You said your piece,” he tells Auren. “You’re finished.”
“I’m not finished,” Auren bites out, desperation seaming the words. “She is—”
“Not yours to possess,” Kai says, tone still level, iron under velvet. “You forfeited claims when you made her humiliation public.”
Hailey’s laugh snags in her throat. “Claims? She never had one,” she spits, jealousy finally bleeding through. “She was a maybe you turned into a mercy case. Everyone knows that.”
Kai looks at her properly this time. “Last warning.”
Her mouth snaps shut. Color drains from her face, like some ancient part of her recognizes the thing looking back.
Wind slides around us, cool and cutting. Somewhere down the block a dog barks twice, then thinks better of it. Porch light hums; my pulse tries to match the sound and can’t.
“I’m sorry,” Auren says to me, almost inaudible now. “I am so—”
“Sorry doesn’t change a bruise,” I answer, glancing at my wrist. Purple shadows throb under the skin where he grabbed me in the hallway after the Trials, hissing that it was “for the best” while my vision blurred. “Or a memory.”
His gaze drops there; guilt flares hot. “I should’ve—”
“You shouldn’t have grabbed me,” I say, and his eyes squeeze shut like the words hit bone.
Kai’s hands remain in his pockets, jaw tight, like he’s holding back the urge to teach lessons with bones instead of words. “Leave,” he instructs, quiet and absolute.
“I can’t.” Auren sets his feet, chin lifting. He looks less like a future Alpha and more like a kid bracing against a tide. “Not until I know she’s safe.”
“She is,” Kai replies.
“How am I supposed to trust that?” Auren’s fear sharpens to anger. “You show up at my school, take her, won’t tell me where—”
“You don’t have to trust me,” Kai says. “You have to go.”
Hailey finds her volume again, smaller, nastier. “Rena, come with us. Stop milking this for attention. You got rejected, big deal—everyone saw you drooling over him for months.”
My head snaps toward her. Words crowd my tongue, all claws, all edges. Kai spares me the blood.
“One warning,” he says, eyes on her now. What lives there makes the night hold still. “Leave her alone.”
Hailey’s throat bobs. She takes two careful steps back, like the concrete decided to tilt under her heels. “Whatever,” she mutters. “Auren, let’s go.”
He ignores her. “Rena—”
“I hear you,” I say, hands shaking now that the anger ebbs and exhaustion seeps in. “I just… can’t do what you want.”
“What do I want?” he asks, and the question is raw, broken.
“A rewrite,” I say. “Tonight doesn’t get one.”
He flinches like I struck him. “I deserve that.”
“I didn’t say you did.” My voice softens despite me, old habits dying slow. “I said I can’t.”
Hailey huffs, spun sugar curdling. “This is ridiculous.”
“Last chance,” Kai tells Auren, not bothering with her again. “Leave on your feet.”
Auren’s breath saws; one hand curls into a fist, then opens again. He looks at me like he’s trying to memorize a map he never bothered to learn before. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” he says, more to himself than to me, clinging to the idea.
“Don’t,” Kai answers.
Auren swallows. His eyes flick between us—me in the doorway, Kai in front of me—and I can see the moment it hits him: whatever is happening here is bigger than his panic, his pride, his father’s expectations.
“Alpha,” he says quietly to Kai, forcing the title out this time, “with respect… you can’t keep her from her own pack.”
“I’m keeping danger from her door,” Kai says. “Right now, that includes you.”
“Stop,” I whisper, because my head is starting to ring. “Both of you. Please.”
Silence spreads, thin as ice and just as dangerous.
Porch light blurs at the edges. I blink hard, try to steady the world, fail. Lyria lifts, ears forward, voice sliding into me like cool water.
He’s not your mate… but he could be.
The words split me open—terrified, pulled, furious at the possibility. Which one? I want to snap. The boy who broke me or the king who caught me? Lyria doesn’t answer; she just hums, bright and terrified and sure.
“What?” I breathe, to her or to no one.
Heat climbs my neck; chill rushes my arms; the ground tilts a degree and then another. I press my palm harder into the doorframe. Wood skids under sweat-slick fingers.
“Rena?” Kai’s voice, closer now. “Look at me.”
“I’m fine,” I lie, because I always pick the wrong moment for pride.
Auren surges forward as if he can catch me with apologies. “Rena—”
“Stay back,” Kai snaps, and the air fries between them, power snarling against power.
Lyria again, urgent now, the whisper sharpening into a bell. He’s not your mate… but he could be.
Vision tunnels. Porch light narrows to a coin of gold; both males blur into dark outlines, twin gravities pulling in opposite directions. My name stumbles off someone’s tongue—Auren, Kai, maybe both. I can’t tell.
My knees decide this is a bad arrangement and abandon ship.
The world tilts hard left. Sky and porch and brick smear together. For an instant I feel strong hands closing in—from which side, I don’t know—and then everything goes sideways.
Black rises up to catch me. I collapse.