I found them near the eastern edge of the square, Bastian still gripping both boys close, Ronan’s face buried against his shoulder, Draven watching everything around him with the too-careful stillness he used when he was working hard not to look as frightened as he actually felt.
“They’re safe,” Bastian said before I’d even finished crossing the distance between us, his voice tight in a way that told me safety wasn’t the only thing he needed to report.
“Nobody touched them. But Maeve—”
“What happened?” I reached for Ronan first, and he came into my arms immediately, small hands fisting in my shirt, his breathing still uneven from whatever fear he’d carried through the fighting.
Draven allowed himself to be pulled close a moment later, quieter about it, though I felt him trembling too once I had both of them gathered against me.
“Darius saw them.” Bastian said it fast, low, like ripping off something that would hurt worse the longer he delayed it.
“He was here, fighting the rogues same as the rest of us, and then he heard Ronan crying and he just — Maeve, he knew. Instantly. I don’t know how, but he knew.”
Something cold dropped through my stomach, displacing every other feeling that had been building since the scout’s warning at dawn.
“Knew what, exactly? What did he say?”
“He said they were his.” Bastian’s voice carried real fear now, the kind I rarely heard from him.
“He asked me to tell him he was wrong, and I couldn’t, because I wasn’t going to lie to him, but I wasn’t going to confirm it either. Killian pulled him away before it went any further. But Maeve, he saw Draven’s eyes. He said it out loud. He’s not going to let this go.”
I closed my eyes, holding both boys tighter, feeling five years of careful, deliberate protection crack under a single unplanned moment in a market square I’d never wanted either of them near in the first place.
“Mama.” Draven’s voice, quiet, careful, the same tone he used when he was working through something too large for the words he had available.
“The man. He looked at me like he knew me.”
“He doesn’t know you,” I said, faster and firmer than I meant to, some old instinct taking over before I’d fully thought through what I was saying.
“He said I had his eyes.”
“You have your grandmother’s eyes.” I said it with total conviction, because it was true, because I needed it to be the only truth that mattered in this moment, needed both boys to hear certainty in my voice instead of the fear currently tearing through every other part of me.
“That’s all that man saw. A resemblance. It happens sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Draven didn’t argue, though something in his expression told me he wasn’t fully convinced, some sharp, careful part of him already filing away the discrepancy between what I was telling him and what he’d felt standing in front of a stranger who looked back at him like recognition instead of confusion.
Killian found us minutes later, his expression grim in a way that confirmed everything Bastian had already told me.
“I got him away. He didn’t follow, but Maeve—”
“I know.” I kept my voice even for the twins’ benefit, though everything underneath it was unraveling rapidly.
“Take them to the wagon. I need a moment.”
Killian took both boys from me gently, and I watched them go with an ache in my chest that had nothing to do with the fighting we’d just survived and everything to do with the unraveling I could feel starting, slow and inevitable, at the edges of a life I’d built specifically to prevent this exact moment from ever happening.
Darius found me before I’d fully composed myself, crossing the square with an urgency that told me Killian’s earlier warning had barely slowed him down at all.
“Maeve.” His voice cracked on my name, raw in a way I hadn’t heard from him even at the accord.
“Tell me. Please. I need to hear it from you.”
“Hear what?” I kept my voice cold, deliberate, every instinct I’d spent five years building rising to meet this exact moment even though nothing had prepared me for how much it would cost to hold the line.
“That two children were frightened during a rogue attack? Yes. That’s what happened. I’d think an Alpha would understand that much without needing it explained.”
“Don’t.” Something desperate cracked through his composure.
“Don’t do that. I saw his eyes, Maeve. I know what I saw.”
“You saw a boy with gray eyes.” I held his gaze without flinching, drawing on every ounce of the discipline Damien had spent five years building into me.
“Gray eyes aren’t uncommon. If you’re looking for confirmation of something that isn’t true, you won’t find it here.”
“I’m not imagining this.” His voice had gone rough, desperate in a way that would have undone me completely five years ago and only made me colder now.
“My wolf recognized them before I even understood what I was looking at. That’s not something I can explain away, and I don’t think you can either.” Read this novel at novelping.com for the best experience.
“I think you’re a man carrying five years of guilt who’s looking for something to attach it to.” I kept my voice level, unmoved, though everything underneath the surface was screaming at me to either run or break down completely, and I refused to let either happen in front of him.
“Those boys are mine. Mine and my family’s. They have nothing to do with you.”
“Maeve—”
“We’re finished here.” I turned before he could say anything further, before the crack in his voice could work its way any deeper into the composure I was barely holding onto.
“The rogue threat is handled. There’s no further reason for either of us to remain in Ashford.”
I walked away without looking back, the same discipline that had carried me out of that courtyard at the accord months earlier holding steady now despite how much harder it was to maintain, and I didn’t stop until I reached the wagon where Killian waited with both boys, Ronan already half-asleep against his shoulder, Draven watching me approach with the same careful, assessing gaze he’d apparently turned on Darius minutes earlier.
“Is it over?” Draven asked quietly, once I’d climbed into the wagon beside him.
“Yes.” I said it with more certainty than I felt, wrapping an arm around him as the wagon began to move, watching the smoke-stained square disappear behind us.
“It’s over. You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
I didn’t believe it myself, not fully, not with the memory of Darius’s face still fresh in my mind — the absolute, unshakable certainty in his voice when he’d said *I know what I saw.* Five years of careful protection, and one unplanned encounter in a market square had cracked something open that I didn’t know yet how to close again.
Darius wasn’t convinced.
I’d seen that clearly enough in his eyes before I turned away from him.
Whatever composure I’d managed to project, whatever cold denial I’d held steady through sheer force of will, it hadn’t actually changed what he believed.
It had only bought me time.
I understood that much clearly, holding my son against my side as the wagon carried us back toward the only safety I’d ever fully trusted.
I just didn’t know yet how much time I’d actually bought, or what I intended to do with it once it inevitably ran out.