Caroline's POV
I find the phone while unpacking laundry.
Tucked between a folded sweater and borrowed jeans—a cheap burner, already powered on, a single message glowing on the screen.
Someone placed it here while I was at the morning briefing, with the precision of an operative who knows my room, my drawer, my habits.
The compound is guarded. Wolves patrol every entrance. The only people with access to this room are Lysander, Thalia, and the monitoring team, which means someone inside Silvermoon is working for my father's people.
The message is brief:
‘We know about your relationship with Lysander Fenris. You've provided intelligence to the wolves. Under Montgomery clan law, these actions constitute treason.’
‘You have three days. Return with Silvermoon intelligence, and be welcomed as heir. Refuse, and you'll be hunted alongside the wolves you've chosen. Your father would want you home.’
The last line is the cruelest. They know exactly which wound to press.
"You look like you're carrying something heavy."
Lysander stands in the doorway. His eyes drop to the phone, and I watch him process what a device that wasn't here this morning means. "Where did that come from?"
"It was in my laundry. Someone inside the compound planted it." I hold it out. "Read."
His expression shifts as he reads—jaw tightening, golden light flickering behind his irises. "They're giving you an ultimatum."
"A choice between betraying you and being hunted by my own blood."
"That's extortion."
"From their perspective, it's mercy. The lieutenant could have killed me during the last assault and chose to talk instead." I take the phone back.
"They think I'm a prisoner here, and the mate bond is holding me against my will."
"Are you considering it?"
No accusation. He asks it the way he asks everything that matters—directly, willing to hear an answer he doesn't want.
"I'm afraid of what happens if I say no. Refusing confirms their worst fear—Robert Montgomery's daughter chose wolves. They won't just hunt me, Lysander. They'll make an example. Every hunter in North America will know the Montgomery heir turned traitor."
"We can protect you."
"Really? Someone planted a phone in my underwear drawer inside a guarded compound. Your Alpha can't shift. Your defenses have been probed and mapped by the organization now offering me a seat at their table."
"So what are you thinking?"
I sit on the bed, the phone heavy in my lap. "The message says my father'd want me home. But the man who drove me to school and made terrible pancakes—would that man want me to destroy a family with three children who argue about board games at breakfast?"
"That's not a question I can answer for you."
"I know, and I'm not asking you to," I turn the phone over. "I'm asking myself whether the Montgomery clan is right about wolves. Whether the lieutenant's version of reality is more accurate than what I've seen with my own eyes."
"And what is that?"
"I see your nephews as the most wonderful and talented kids I ever met. Phoenix practicing is a pure magic. Luna being so kind and empathetic to everyone she meets…"
I look up at him. "Thalia drinking cold coffee because she forgot about it while being so busy with her duties and responsibilities… She reminds me of my own approach to work. And you! Reaching over to microwave it without being asked."
"That's not evidence but an anecdote."
"Don't do that!" My voice sharpens. "Don't argue their case for them. I'm trying to tell you that I watched your family exist for a few weeks, and nothing I saw matches the narrative of apex predators who deserve extermination."
"The clan will say we showed you what we wanted you to see."
"Then they'd be wrong," I set the phone on the nightstand with deliberate force. "Real things happened in front of me, Lysander. Messy, painful, human things that predators don't bother faking."
"You sound like you've already decided."
"Part of me decided the morning I watched you warm Thalia's coffee. Another part decided when Phoenix held my hand walking to the training room—carefully, like I was something precious she didn't want to break."
My throat tightens. "But the part that's my father's daughter is still standing in the dark asking whether love is real or manufactured, and I can't silence her just because the answer scares me."
Lysander crosses the room and sits beside me. Close, not touching—giving me the space to choose contact rather than assuming it.
"I need the truth. Not the version that keeps me here—the actual truth," I whisper.
"Ask."
"The mate bond. Is there any possibility that what I feel for you is artificial? That your biology created an attachment I wouldn't have formed on my own?"
He's quiet for a long time. I watch him wrestle with the honest answer versus the easy one, and the fact that he's wrestling tells me more than his words will.
"The bond recognizes compatibility. It identifies someone whose presence makes the wolf settle," he chooses each word with visible care.
"I can't prove it doesn't influence human partners. But wolves with confirmed mate bonds also fall in love through choice. The bond opens the door, but walking through it is voluntary."
"That's not a no."
"It's the most honest answer I have. And it's more than anyone in my species has ever admitted to a human partner."
"The clan will say you're managing my expectations."
He turns to face me fully.
"Caroline, I can give you the fact that I sat in an airport choosing you over a woman who was pregnant with my child. That's not a bond operating—that's a man making the most consequential decision of his life with full awareness of what it cost."
I stare at the phone on the nightstand.
The ultimatum glowing on its screen, three days ticking down, the weight of generations pressing against the weight of a few weeks that felt more like home than years of Montgomery legacy ever did.
"I need you to understand something," I take his hand. "Whatever I choose, it won't be about the bond, clan loyalty, or supernatural politics, or whose version of history is more accurate."
I squeeze his fingers.
"Monsters don't raise children with love, Lysander. Whatever the Montgomery clan believes about wolves, they've never watched Phoenix practice gentleness, and that ignorance disqualifies their judgment."
"Does that mean you're staying?"
"I already know what I'm going to do," I look at the phone one last time—the blinking cursor, the three-day countdown, the weight of a legacy I never asked to inherit.
"I just need three days to figure out how to survive the consequences of choosing it."