5
Savannah’s POV
The Oregon forest at night sounded like an ocean.
Pine branches moving together, one long breath after another, rolling in from every direction.
I tucked Finn into bed, pulled the blanket up under his chin, and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
He was already asleep, breathing slow and steady, dark curls spilling across the pillow.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a long moment and didn’t move.
I didn’t want to get up.
I didn’t want to face the world outside that bed.
My phone buzzed.
Leo.
*Did you make it, warrior princess?
The training base is already buzzing.
Oh, and word is Iron Ridge’s heir took a personal interest in your arrival — that’s not standard protocol.*
I stared at the screen.
I didn’t reply.
Declan Voss showing up at the airport had been enough.
An Alpha heir personally receiving a regular combat instructor?
That wasn’t routine.
And I was old enough to know that nothing about an Alpha’s attention was accidental.
David appeared in the doorway a little while later, and I kept my face blank.
He was holding a gift basket wrapped in silver paper — the kind of thing that cost more than a week’s rent.
A card tucked into the ribbon read it was from Renata, Declan’s mother.
Alongside it, a folder of admissions materials for Oregon’s werewolf elementary school.
“That’s a significant kindness,” David said, holding it out.
“Please thank her for me.” I took the basket, gentle and firm at the same time, and handed it back.
“Finn is already enrolled in a public school.
We have our own way.”
David looked like he wanted to say more.
He didn’t.
A moment later he was gone, and I was leaning against the closed door, letting the quiet settle around me.
*”Mom.”*
Finn’s voice came from down the hall, small and awake.
“The whispers here are different.”
I crossed to his room and knelt beside the bed.
The moonlight came through the window and cut silver lines across his face.
“Different how?”
He thought about it for a long moment, scrunching his brow, trying to find the words.
A six-year-old doing his best to describe something I’d spent my whole life trying to understand.
“Like they know who I am.”
My fingers tightened on the edge of the blanket, hidden from his view.
In a world that read everything by scent and bloodline, Finn’s amber-brown eyes were a flag flying in open air.
The kind that said he didn’t belong to any pack.
The kind that invited questions.
Sooner or later, someone was going to start asking them.
I waited until he was asleep again before I picked up my phone.
I scrolled to a number I’d never dialed.
Six years, and I’d never once pressed call.
Tonight, I did.
“Dad.” My voice came out steadier than I expected.
“It’s me, Savannah.”
Silence.
A long one.
The kind of silence you can hear your own heartbeat in.
“Savannah.” His voice was older than I remembered.
Worn, the way something sounds after it’s been dragged across years.
“I heard you were back.
I heard…
you did well.”
*Did well.*
Six years.
That was what he had for it.
“Finn is good,” I said.
“He’s smart, and kind, and strong.
Everything a Silver Creek Alpha’s grandson should be.”
The edge behind that sentence — I let it cut.
I wanted him to feel it.
“I should have listened to you,” he said, and his voice cracked.
Something broke in it, something he’d probably been holding for six years.
“I should have given you a chance.”
“You should have.”
The words came out clean and even.
“Goodbye, Dad.”
I ended the call and set the phone down on the table.
I sat in the dark and didn’t let the sob out of my chest.
Not for him.
Not for me.
I let it stay there, locked tight, and waited for morning.
**Declan’s POV**
David set the report on my desk and stood back.
“She has a son,” he said.
“Six years old.”
I was looking out at the ridgeline, at the dark shape of the mountains against the night sky.
The words settled into the air around me, and I let them sit for a moment.
A son.
I stayed silent for a long stretch, turning it over.
Then, slowly, I felt something loosen across my shoulders.
A weight I’d been carrying since I was old enough to understand what a marriage contract was.
Six years of my mother explaining, gently but endlessly, what I owed to Margaret’s family.
A daughter.
An alliance.
A debt paid in a life I’d never asked for.
A child changed that.
No pack would insist on that marriage with a child in the picture.
No family would send a daughter into a union where she’d bring another man’s cub into an Alpha household.
The arrangement would dissolve quietly, without anyone having to raise their voice.
For the first time in six years, I could see a way through.
*”Poor child.”*
Renata’s voice came from the doorway.
I turned.
My mother was standing there, her eyes red-rimmed.
“A werewolf cub, raised alone in the human world.” She shook her head slowly.
“Do you know how hard that is, Declan?
To keep a child hidden, to keep them from shifting in front of the wrong eyes, to teach them to be normal when every instinct says otherwise?”
That wasn’t what I’d expected her to say.
“I thought you’d want to reconsider the alliance,” I said carefully.
“I thought I knew what the alliance meant.” She walked into the room and took my hands, holding them warm and firm, her voice dropping low.
“Margaret gave her life for you.
What is our repayment?
Watching her daughter be thrown out of her own pack, raising a child alone, scraping by with nothing?”
She paused.
“A woman who can protect a cub in the human world for six years on her own — a woman who can be knocked to the ground and climb back to her feet from nothing — that’s the Luna Iron Ridge needs, Declan.”