**Declan’s POV**
The full moon sat in the sky like something deliberate.
I followed her to the terrace without deciding to.
That was the honest version — Dante was moving and I was moving with him, and the rational part of me that should have stayed inside, should have gone back to the table, should have found Celeste and made polite conversation until the evening ended, that part had simply stopped winning the argument.
She was at the far end of the terrace, one hand on the railing, her profile at the exact boundary where the moonlight ended and the shadow began.
The silver dress caught every movement of the night air.
That outline — I’d been seeing it for three weeks now, across training yards and corridors and offices, and it still did the same thing to my chest every time.
“Why did you follow me?” She didn’t turn.
But I saw her shoulder blades shift, the almost imperceptible tightening, the fingers on the railing going white at the knuckle.
I didn’t answer.
I walked closer.
Dante surged forward with a force that made my next step less steady than I wanted it to be.
That pull — that particular, specific, inexplicable pull that existed only here, only with her — wasn’t getting easier to categorize.
It was getting harder.
And the absence, the void where her pack scent should have been, wasn’t the deterrent it should have been for a wolf trained to read the world through its markers.
It was doing something else entirely.
It was reaching into a place below logic and pulling.
“You never answered my question,” I said.
My voice came out rougher than I’d intended.
“What happened six years ago.
The real version.”
She turned.
The moonlight fell across her face, and the sharp, warrior angles I’d been watching across the training ground looked different here.
Softer.
Not weaker — nothing about Savannah Cole was weak — just less defended.
Her dark green eyes held the specific alertness of someone who has learned that being still doesn’t mean being safe, and Dante made a low, aching sound inside me at the sight of it.
“If I told you,” she said, “would you believe me?” There was no humor in it.
Just a clean, precise question with a blade inside.
“You believed Celeste’s tears easily enough.
Why would my truth carry more weight than a lie she’s been polishing for six years?”
I moved forward until she was between my body and the stone pillar behind her.
But close.
Close enough that I could see the faint tremor in her hands, could see the pulse at the base of her throat moving faster than her controlled expression suggested.
That absence.
That void where her scent should have been.
It wrapped around us like something I couldn’t name, and Dante pressed toward it with a hunger that was becoming difficult to contain.
“Because there’s something about you—” I was searching for the word, trying to put language around something that had been operating below language since the day she walked into the training base.
“Something that feels—”
“Don’t.” Both her palms came up against my chest.
Pushing.
The contact sent current up through my ribs and Dante responded with a sound that was pure want.
Her push was real, but it didn’t have the certainty her pushes usually carried.
“Whatever game this is, I’m not playing.”
But her breathing had changed.
I could hear the slight catch in it, could feel the way her hands weren’t quite fully extending.
My hands found her waist without conscious direction.
The silk of the dress was cool against my palms.
That contact froze both of us in the same instant — a shared recognition that neither of us had words for and neither of us could explain away.
“This isn’t a game,” I said.
I leaned closer, drawn by whatever force had been pulling at me for three weeks, trying to find the scent that should have been there and wasn’t, the absence of it making my head swim in a way I couldn’t account for.
Like trying to catch hold of a memory that dissolves every time you reach for it.
“Why do you feel so familiar?
Why does Dante react to you like—”
“Like what?” Her voice had dropped to barely above a whisper, but that stubborn angle of her jaw hadn’t changed by a single degree.
“Like he knows you.” The words came out rough, stripped of everything except the truth of them.
“Like you’re something I lost without knowing I’d lost it.”
Her eyes widened.
Just fractionally.
Something moved through her expression — recognition, or fear, or something that was both at once — and it was gone before she could cover it, but I caught it.
I’d been watching her face too carefully not to catch it.
“You should go back inside.” She pushed at my chest again.
Still not convincing.
“Celeste is waiting.”
Dante’s response to that name was a sound of outright protest, immediate and sharp, and it moved through me visibly enough that Savannah felt it through her hands still pressed against me.
Both of us went still for a moment.
I should have stepped back.
I should have gone back through those terrace doors, back to the table, back to the woman who had my family’s silver chain and a set of photographs and six years of constructed claim on my conscience.
“Tell me what happened that night,” I said quietly, watching emotion move through her expression in waves she was working hard to contain.
“Help me understand.
Because Celeste’s tears feel wrong — they’ve felt wrong for years, and I’ve been telling myself that’s my problem — but your anger feels *real*.
The kind that comes from actual pain.
Not the kind you practice in a mirror.”
She stood very still, her hands still against my chest.
I could feel her heartbeat through the contact, could see the internal war happening behind her dark green eyes.
She wasn’t made of stone, whatever she wanted me to believe.
She was made of something that had been through fire and was still standing, which was an entirely different thing.
“Some memories are better left buried.” Her voice had a slight tremor in it now, barely there, and the moonlight caught the line of her throat as she spoke.
“Some wounds shouldn’t be reopened.”
I leaned closer.
That pull was in full control now, Dante at the front of everything, both my hands finding their grip on the silk at her waist.
She wasn’t pulling away.
Her lips had parted slightly.
I could feel her shortened breath mixing with mine, could see the gold flecks in what I kept miscounting as amber when they were green, always had been green, dark and complicated and full of things I hadn’t been given access to yet.
Inches.
The impulse to cross those last few inches was the most complete thing I’d felt in six years.
Dante pressed forward with everything he had.
Savannah turned her face away.
“Go back to your girlfriend, Declan.” Her voice had texture to it now — rough, like something abraded, like a surface that had been rubbed against something harder than itself.
“Let the past stay where it is.”
She slipped out from between my hands and the pillar.
Smooth, clean, the way water moves — not dramatic, not rushing, just suddenly no longer there.
The silver dress turned at her legs as she moved and then the ballroom light swallowed her and she was gone.
The warmth she’d left behind disappeared almost immediately.
I stood at the railing with both palms against the cold stone, looking at the space where she’d been, feeling the shape her waist had left in my hands.
Dante paced.
Slow, relentless circles, round and round, carrying something that was building past the point where I had useful names for it.
I lifted one hand and touched my fingers to my own mouth.
The kiss that hadn’t happened was still burning there.