The summons came from Roman himself, delivered over breakfast in a tone that told me before he even finished the sentence that I wasn’t going to like what came next.
“A regional accord,” he said, sliding a folded letter across the table toward me.
“Every pack within two hundred miles is required to send a representative. Border disputes, trade routes, rogue activity along the shared territories. It’s been organized every five years since before you were taken from us, and Dreadmoon has never missed one.”
“Every pack,” I repeated slowly, already understanding where this was going even before he confirmed it.
“Including Hellfang.”
The twins were still eating across the table, blessedly oblivious to the way my stomach had just dropped straight through the floor.
Ronan was narrating some elaborate story to Draven involving a rock he’d apparently reclassified overnight from “very important” to “possibly magic,” and neither of them looked up at the sound of a name that would have meant nothing to them yet, though it meant everything to me.
“I don’t have to attend,” I said carefully.
“You could send Killian. Or go yourself.”
“I could.” Roman studied me with the kind of patient attention that had become familiar over five years, the look he gave me when he was letting me arrive at a decision on my own instead of pushing me toward it.
“But you’re my daughter, and Dreadmoon’s claim to this territory runs through you as much as through me now. Hiding you away from something like this only tells every pack in that room that we have something to hide. I’d rather they see exactly how little we fear them.”
“I’m not afraid of them.” The words came out faster than I meant them to, defensive in a way that told both of us it wasn’t entirely true.
“I didn’t say you were.” Something gentle crossed his face.
“I said hiding looks like fear, even when it isn’t. That’s different.”
I sat with that while the twins argued good-naturedly about whether the rock could, in fact, talk if you asked it nicely enough, and I understood, somewhere underneath the anxiety already building in my chest, that Roman was right.
Five years of rebuilding myself into someone stronger than the woman who’d left Hellfang bleeding, and I still felt that old flinch at the mere idea of being in the same room as Darius again.
“I’ll go,” I said finally.
The accord took place on neutral ground, a sprawling estate belonging to a pack that had held the position of mediator for generations, its grounds meticulously arranged to keep rival packs at a careful, deliberate distance from one another even while sharing the same space.
I stood near Killian and Roman as the various delegations arrived, watching faces I didn’t recognize alongside a handful I did, old Hellfang names I hadn’t thought about in years surfacing with small jolts of unwanted memory.
I felt him before I saw him.
It wasn’t the mating pull exactly, though something in that direction stirred too, faint and infuriating and entirely unwelcome.
It was something more like instinct, my whole body going alert the way it used to when danger was somewhere nearby, even before my eyes found him across the courtyard. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
Darius looked older than five years should have made him.
Not in any obvious way — still tall, still broad through the shoulders in the way Alphas always were — but something in his bearing had changed, a tightness around his eyes that hadn’t been there before, a weight to the way he carried himself that read less like authority and more like exhaustion wearing authority’s clothes.
He saw me at nearly the same moment.
Everything in the courtyard seemed to hold very still, though I knew that was only my own perception distorting the moment, nobody else pausing at all, the diplomatic business of five different packs continuing around us while the two of us simply stared at each other across a distance that felt both enormous and entirely too small.
I made myself breathe.
In, out, the way Damien had taught me years ago for exactly this kind of moment, when panic wanted to override discipline.
I wasn’t the woman who used to beg him not to leave her.
I hadn’t been her in five years.
He started toward me before I’d decided whether I was going to allow it.
“Maeve.” My name in his voice landed strange, familiar and foreign at once, like hearing a language I used to speak fluently and hadn’t practiced in years.
“You’re—” He stopped, visibly searching for a word that wouldn’t come easily.
“You’re here.”
“I am.” I kept my voice even, the same tone I used with council members I didn’t fully trust.
“Dreadmoon sends representatives to the accord. I’m one of them now.”
“I heard you were alive.” Something in his expression cracked slightly, just at the edges.
“I didn’t know if I’d ever—” He stopped again, and I watched him visibly decide against finishing that sentence too.
“You look well.”
“I am well.” I didn’t offer anything further.
Five years ago I might have filled the silence out of old habit, out of some desperate need to smooth over every awkward gap between us.
I didn’t feel that need anymore, and letting the silence sit there, unfilled, felt like its own small victory.
Darius’s eyes moved over me, careful and searching, like he was trying to reconcile the woman standing in front of him with whatever memory he’d been carrying for five years.
I didn’t let myself wonder too hard about it.
“The pack you’re with,” he said finally.
“Dreadmoon. I didn’t know until recently that you’d—” He gestured vaguely, encompassing something he clearly didn’t have adequate words for.
“That you’d found family there.”
“I did.” I kept my chin level, refusing to let anything in my voice soften.
“More family than I knew I had. More than I ever had at Hellfang, if I’m honest.”
Something flinched across his face at that, quick and involuntary, and for one unguarded second I saw exactly how much the words had cost him to hear.
I didn’t feel sorry for it.
I’d spent five years earning the right to say true things without softening them for his comfort.
“Maeve.” His voice had gone lower, quieter, meant only for the narrow space between us.
“I need to talk to you. Properly. Not here, not like this.”
“There’s nothing for us to talk about.” The words came out steadier than I expected, though something underneath them still trembled, some old, worn part of me that hadn’t fully caught up to the rest of my resolve.
“You made your position clear five years ago. I’ve built a life since then that doesn’t require your input.”
“I know what I did.” His voice cracked slightly on the words, and for a moment I saw something underneath the composed Alpha exterior, something raw and unrehearsed.
“I’ve never stopped knowing it.”
I didn’t have a response ready for that, and before I had to find one, Killian appeared at my side, his presence a solid, deliberate wall between us, his expression carrying a warning that didn’t need words to land.
“The delegations are being called to session,” Killian said, his voice even but leaving no room for argument.
“Maeve. We should take our seats.”
I held Darius’s gaze for one more second, feeling the full weight of five years compressed into that single look — grief, and rage, and something more complicated underneath both of them that I refused to name even to myself.
“Goodbye, Darius,” I said, and turned before he could answer, before I had to watch whatever expression crossed his face in response to two words that used to be so much harder for me to say.
I felt his eyes on my back the entire walk to the session hall, and I didn’t turn around once, though it cost me more than I wanted to admit to keep from doing it.
Whatever he’d meant to say, whatever unfinished conversation he was clearly determined to force eventually, I wasn’t ready for it.
I didn’t know if I’d ever be fully ready for it.
But I’d survived the first sight of him again, standing on my own feet instead of collapsed on stone floor, and that, at least, felt like something worth counting.