[Skyler’s POV]
For days Leon existed in my peripheral vision like a splinter I can't locate and can't stop feeling.
He never did anything obvious. He was too careful for that.
He appeared near the packhouse when the children played there after breakfast, crouching to say something to River that made her laugh with her whole body. He materialized in the corridors I happened to be cleaning.
He never touched me or spoke to me where anyone important could see. But he was there. Consistently, quietly, relentlessly there.
And it was breaking me.
Because here is the thing about being careful not to hope—it only works if the other person is also not there. It only works in an absence where you can build walls around.
Kailani, of course, had been watching the whole time.
This evening I was looking for a stack of tablecloths in the storage room when the door clicks shut behind me. I turned around to find two she-wolves leaning against it with matching smiles.
Kailani's favorite minions, the ones she deploys when she wants to send a message that her own hands are too clean to write. Maren is the one who thinks before hitting. Joss doesn't bother.
"Busy few days," Maren says pleasantly. "All this wedding prep… You'd think the bride's sister would know her place by now."
As Joss closes the distance, the shelf edge hits into my spine with a hard shove. My teeth click together hard enough to taste copper.
"We've noticed you near Alpha Leon." Maren tilts her head. "A wolfless bitch, with her sister's fiancé." She clicks her tongue. "Seems like confusion about one's station."
Joss's fist finds my ribs. The air leaves my body in a single compressed rush and I fold forward, catching myself on the shelf with both hands. Before I've straightened, Maren has my jaw—fingers digging into the hinge, forcing my face up.
"Stay away from him." Her palm cracks across my mouth. Same lip. Same groove, warm copper rushing over my chin. "This is courtesy. Next time we skip it."
I'm still processing the blow when Joss grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks. The hot line of agony that fires above my left ear is immediate and total. She opens her hand and drops what she's taken onto the concrete floor.
Silver-blonde strands. A clump of them, lying between us on dirty concrete.
This is what happens when you forget what you are.
The door swings open and Beta Dylan stands in the frame. The look on his face as his gaze moves from me to them to the hair on the concrete is the kind of look that makes Alphas pay attention.
"Out." One word, but Maren starts to say something. "Now."
They move. Joss's hand slides into her pocket on the way past—and I note, through the ringing in my ears, that the hair is no longer on the floor.
Of course. Evidence of nothing. It was never here.
Dylan crouches beside me, hands reaching for my face. I wave him off and press two fingers below my own ribs, working along the bone—left side then right. The right side sends white light behind my eyes.
"I’m okay. It’s bruised, not cracked—cracked hurts on the inhale." I spit blood. "I need your handkerchief. Press it to my cheekbone, not the lip—the lip needs to clot on its own."
He pulls it from his pocket and obeys, looking faintly stunned. "You're giving me medical instructions while bleeding on the floor?
"Hold pressure and check if my pupils match—uneven means concussion." I probe the scalp where Joss tore the hair, wince, file it under superficial.
He tilts my chin toward the light, checks both eyes, and his expression shifts from stunned to genuinely curious. "Equal. How do you know all this?"
"Two six-year-olds and no medical insurance." I lean my head against the shelf and let out a slow breath. "The library had a first-aid manual thicker than my arm. I read it twice, then moved on to the emergency medicine textbook."
"When Leon told me this would be a diplomatic visit, I pictured bad food and awkward toasts." He gestures at my bleeding face. "Not a field hospital run by the patient."
The sound that comes out of me is closer to a real laugh than anything has been in four days. It pulls at my ribs and I don't care.
"You know, when my brother came back from the Festival seven years ago, he was different." He holds the pressure carefully against my cheekbone, his eyes on mine. "Rewired. Like someone went into him and moved everything so that none of it sat the same way anymore."
My hands grip the shelf behind me, and I don't speak, don't breathe.
Because Dylan is circling the one truth I've kept buried for seven years.
"Took me four years to drag it out of him. A girl he was forced to leave by morning… He's been obsessing over it ever since." Dylan meets my eyes, gentle—no demand behind the question. "You're her, aren't you?"
The storage room is very quiet, and my silence does everything my mouth won't.
"You won't have to deal with this much longer." He helps me to my feet, hand under my elbow. "One more day. Then Shadowcrest."
"And everything magically gets better?"
"Not magically." He tucks the ruined handkerchief into his pocket without a glance, as if my blood on his things is unremarkable. "But better. I'll make sure of it."
***
By evening my ribs have settled into a deep, constant ache that I've filed under manageable and my cheekbone has joined the rest of my face's ongoing renovation project. The cut on my lip has closed to a thin dark line.
I carry Kailani's pre-wedding drink delivery to Leon's door. She asked me to with a smile so wide and warm it made my stomach drop. The wrongness of her being warm has been sitting in my chest like a stone all the way down the corridor.
He opens the door before I've finished knocking and his gaze drops to my face immediately. "What happened?"
"Your fiancée's welcoming committee." I hold out the glass. "Pre-wedding toast. From Kailani."
He takes it without looking and his free hand catches mine. "Come in."
I should say no, but he’s already guiding me inside and closing the door behind us.
Leon sets the glass after taking a sip and turns to face me. When he comes closer, his hands find my arms, light and careful of the ribs, pulling me in.
I have a complete list of reasons why I should stop him, not a single one of them is currently available to me. When his arms closed around me and his chin dropped to the top of my head, my chest did something I cannot name and cannot stop.
I stand very still. Then, without deciding to, I press my forehead against his shoulder and close my eyes. He exhales, long and slow, and his face drops to my hair, staying there. I feel him breathe me in and the sound he makes is low and involuntary.
"There it is," he murmurs. Almost to himself.
"What?" A pause, his arms tighten fractionally.
"You." His voice is quieter than I've heard it. "You smell exactly the same." He stops, starts differently. "I used to think I'd imagined it, that memory makes things bigger than they were, but…" His mouth moves against my hair. "I hadn't imagined it."
The wire ring is cutting into my palm where my fist has closed at his back. "Leon…"
"I know." He pulls back just enough to look at my face, his hands moving to hold my jaw carefully. "I know what tomorrow is. I just need you to understand something before it happens."
I wait.
"Your scent has been driving me insane." His voice drops lower. "Always knowing where you are and not being able…" His thumbs trace the undamaged line of my jaw. "I need you to believe that Shadowcrest will be different. I need you to know that I’ll take care of my mate. I’ll take care of you."
The word lands in the center of my chest and detonates. Quietly. Completely.
Mate? He’s my… mate?
"I've known since the festival," he answers my silent question. "But I was at war with your pack and you were gone, and I spent four more years trying to find you while telling myself I was just…" a breath, "being thorough."
I am not breathing at a normal rate. I am aware of this and cannot correct it.
"Let me show you." His forehead drops to mine. "Let me spend the rest of my life showing you I can be good for you. For you and our children."
His nose brushes mine.
"Believe me," he whispers. "Just… start there. Just believe me."
His mouth is a breath from mine and I am thinking about the festival and all the years between then and now, and somehow none of it is enough to make me step back.
Leon knows it, and his lips brush the corner of my mouth when I feel him go rigid a half-second before I understand what I'm seeing. A dark line from his nostril.
He lifts his hand to it, looks at his fingers, and the look on his face is confused.
"Leon?" His knees go and I grab for him.
But he is two hundred pounds of Alpha going down fast and I am not. His head clips the edge of the bedframe as he falls. He is on the floor when I am on my knees beside him. "Leon." My hands find his face. "Leon!"
I check the back of his head where it caught the frame. A lump already rising, hot under my fingers. Pupils—I tilt his face toward the lamp. Uneven.
My stomach drops and I hear the door open. Dylan entered and read the room for exactly one second.
Then he's on his phone, already moving, already commanding.