Draven found me in the library on a Saturday morning, a book clutched against his chest like something precious enough to guard, and the seriousness on his five-year-old face told me before he said a word that this was going to be a conversation, not just a visit.
“Mama. I have a question.”
“You usually do.” I set aside the report I’d been reading and made room for him on the couch, and he climbed up beside me with the book still held close, waiting until he was settled before he opened it to a page he’d clearly marked already, a corner folded down with careful precision.
“This book says wolves live in families with a mom and a dad.” He looked up at me, his expression carrying the particular gravity that only a five-year-old asking an enormous question while believing it to be a small one could manage.
“We don’t have a dad. Ronan says maybe we don’t have one because we’re special. Is that true?”
I felt my chest tighten, the particular ache of a question I’d known was coming for years and had never quite finished preparing for.
Draven watched me with patient, careful attention, the same quality that Killian had noted in the training yard months ago — a boy who thought before he reacted, who noticed things other children his age missed entirely.
“You have a father,” I said carefully, choosing each word the way Damien had taught me to choose words in negotiations that mattered.
“He’s just not here with us. That’s not because you’re not special. It’s complicated, and it’s not something either of you did wrong.”
“Is he far away?”
“Yes.”
“Is he ever coming?”
I didn’t have an honest answer for that one, not yet, not with everything still unresolved between Darius and me, the boundaries I’d drawn still holding, the accord’s uneasy peace still the only contact our two packs maintained.
“I don’t know,” I said, because it was true, and because Draven deserved truth even when it was uncomfortable, especially when it was uncomfortable.
“But whatever happens with him, you have Grandpa Roman, and Uncle Killian, and Uncle Bastian, and Uncle Lucian. You have more family loving you than most children ever get. That’s not a smaller thing because one piece of it is missing. It’s still enormous.”
Draven considered this with the same seriousness he brought to everything, turning it over visibly before he nodded, apparently satisfied enough to let the question rest for now.
“Okay,” he said.
“Ronan’s going to ask you the same thing eventually. He just got distracted by a beetle before he could.”
“Of course he did.”
“He’s very concerned about the beetle’s family.”
I laughed despite the ache still sitting in my chest, and Draven allowed himself the barest hint of a smile in response, brief and pleased, before sliding off the couch and heading back toward wherever Ronan and his beetle investigation had gone.
I sat there for a long moment after he left, turning over the conversation the way I turned over everything now, honestly, without flinching from any part of it.
Five years of building a life for two boys who deserved better than the one I’d almost given them by accident of who their father was, and some days the weight of that responsibility still caught me by surprise, arriving in small moments like a five-year-old’s careful, patient question about a book on wolf families.
I found both of them an hour later in the garden, Ronan crouched over something in the grass with the intense concentration only small children could bring to entirely mundane discoveries, Draven standing nearby with his hands clasped behind his back, watching his brother with the patient indulgence of someone who considered himself vastly more mature despite being only minutes older.
“Mama, look.” Ronan didn’t look up as I approached, entirely absorbed.
“This beetle is very important. He’s going somewhere. I’ve been helping him.”
“Have you.”
“He’s slow,” Ronan explained, as though this were a significant scientific finding.
“But he knows where he’s going. Draven says beetles don’t actually know where they’re going, but I think Draven’s wrong.”
“I said probably wrong,” Draven corrected, with the exactness that had become one of his defining traits.
“There’s a difference.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing at all.”
I watched them bicker with the easy, unguarded affection of two boys who’d never once had to wonder whether their disagreements might cost them anything, who argued about beetles with the total security of children who’d been loved unconditionally since the moment they were born, and something in my chest settled even as another part of it remained alert, watchful, the old instinct that had never fully faded no matter how safe our life at Dreadmoon had become.
Killian found us there not long after, his expression carrying something that made the watchful part of me straighten immediately, some old, practiced instinct assessing threat before I’d even fully processed what I was looking at. New chapters come out on novelping.com first.
“Everything’s fine,” he said quickly, catching my reaction.
“Nothing urgent. I just wanted to update you before the evening council session.” He glanced at the twins, lowering his voice slightly out of habit more than necessity, since neither boy was paying him any attention at all, fully absorbed in their beetle debate.
“Word from our contacts inside Hellfang. Nothing concrete, but there’s been movement. Elder Marrow’s been asking pointed questions about the heir. Astra’s been unusually careful about who has access to the boy.”
“Careful how?”
“Limited visits. New guards on the nursery wing who weren’t there before. One of our contacts said it feels less like protection and more like containment.” Killian’s expression stayed carefully neutral, the tone he used when he didn’t want to alarm me before he had anything concrete to alarm me with.
“It might be nothing. Might just be Astra being paranoid about her own position, the way she’s always been.”
“Or it might be exactly what it sounds like.” I watched the twins, Ronan now attempting to build his beetle a small shelter out of leaves while Draven supervised with visible skepticism about the structural integrity of the design, and something cold settled in my stomach despite the warmth of the scene in front of me.
“Something’s wrong there. I can feel it, even without your contacts confirming it.”
“Maybe.” Killian didn’t argue the instinct, which told me he shared some version of it himself.
“Whatever it is, it’s not touching us yet. I just wanted you to have the information.”
I nodded, filing it away the way I’d learned to file away every piece of information that might eventually matter, and turned my attention back to the twins, who had moved on from beetle architecture to a passionate debate about whether the beetle would prefer a leaf roof or a stick roof.
“Stick,” Draven said, with total confidence.
“Leaves blow away. Sticks are structural.”
“Leaves are cozier.”
“Cozy doesn’t matter if the roof falls on him.”
I let myself laugh again, quieter this time, watching my sons argue about beetle architecture with total, uncomplicated safety, and underneath the warmth of it, I felt the same old watchfulness settle back into place, the instinct I’d built over five years and never quite managed to fully retire.
Whatever was happening inside Hellfang’s walls, whatever Astra was containing behind new guards and limited visits, I didn’t yet know how it might eventually reach us.
But some quiet, practiced part of me understood, watching my sons build shelter for a beetle in the safety of a garden that had never once let them down, that peace this complete rarely lasted without a price eventually coming due.
I intended to be ready when it did.