The morning after the shrine had lit up beneath their hands, Hazel, Aldrien, and Garrick stood at the edge of Moonfall Valley, looking out toward the distant peaks.
The moonstone had gone dormant again overnight, quiet as any ordinary stone, but the line it had shown them still burned clearly in Hazel’s memory.
Garrick studied their map, tracing the direction the light had pointed with a weathered finger.
“That’s not marking any road I know,” he said.
“Looks like an old mountain route, one that existed before your packs ever claimed this land.”
He warned them properly before they set off.
The Veiled Mountains were enormous, far larger than the map made them appear, and weather could shift without warning up there.
Paths vanished beneath snow or loose rock or overgrown brush, and travelers who didn’t know the terrain could spend days circling the same peak without ever realizing it.
The old route, whatever it was, gave them their best chance of actually crossing to the other side.
Then he told them he wasn’t coming any further.
His territory ended at the edge of the Wildwood, and he had no reason to follow them into the mountains beyond that.
Before he turned to leave, he offered one last piece of advice.
“Whatever you’re looking for beyond those peaks,” he said, “don’t assume it wants to be found.”
“What does that mean?” Hazel asked.
Garrick only shrugged.
“Old stories. Mountains keep their own kind of memory.”
He looked at Hazel then, still wearing Aldrien’s body, and for the first time since they’d met him, there was no scorn in his expression at all.
He gave her a brief nod.
“You handled yourself better than I expected.”
“I’ll treasure your approval forever,” Hazel said, unable to resist.
He rolled his eyes and walked back into the trees without another word.
Once he’d disappeared, Aldrien glanced at her.
“You liked him.”
“I tolerated him.”
“That’s what you call liking someone?”
“Don’t start.”
They were properly alone after that, no Wystan managing things from behind the scenes, no Garrick offering gruff guidance along the way.
Just the two of them and whatever lay ahead.
Aldrien simply handed it to her, and she checked the route without either of them treating it like a contest.
Somewhere along the road they’d developed a rhythm without ever deciding to, and it struck her, walking beside him now, how different this felt from the beginning of the journey, when every small decision had turned into an argument neither of them wanted to lose.
She noticed something else too.
Aldrien kept shifting uncomfortably as they walked, adjusting his shirt every so often, grimacing whenever the fabric caught wrong.
“Still uncomfortable?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“I’m walking.”
“Very dramatically.”
He gave her a look sharp enough to make her laugh outright, and she reminded him, not without some satisfaction, that she’d warned him this might happen before her bleeding days arrived.
He muttered something under his breath about never wanting to experience another woman’s body again as long as he lived.
“And you thought being an Alpha was difficult,” she said, grinning.
He didn’t dignify that with a response, though the corner of his mouth twitched despite himself.
Later, he stopped walking entirely and reached into the travel bag, pulling out a small pouch she hadn’t even remembered packing.
She stared at it, then at him.
“Where did you get that?”
“You told me to pack it,” he said, sounding faintly confused by the question.
She turned the memory over in her mind and realized she had mentioned it, briefly, almost in passing, days ago, something small that might help with the discomfort she’d known was coming.
She hadn’t expected him to actually remember it, let alone make sure it ended up in the bag.
“You actually listened?” she asked.
He shrugged, like it hadn’t required much effort at all.
“You said you’d need it.”
It wasn’t a grand gesture.
It wasn’t the kind of thing that demanded gratitude or acknowledgment.
But something about it settled in her chest anyway, the quiet realization that he’d been paying attention, not just to the body he was currently occupying, but to her, the actual person underneath it.
“Were you always this observant?” she asked. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
“I have to be. As Alpha.”
“You noticed things about everyone except me,” she said, more challenge than accusation.
He looked at her, something steady in his expression.
“I noticed you.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You spent years insulting me.”
“I noticed you enough to know exactly what would annoy you.”
She laughed at that, and he let a small smile through, unguarded for a moment.
“I just didn’t understand you,” he added.
That line sat between them longer than either of them acknowledged out loud, another quiet step away from the years of hatred they’d both carried without questioning it.
By late afternoon, the dense forest began thinning around them, trees giving way to rocky ground, the air noticeably colder than it had been that morning.
The Veiled Mountains rose ahead, enormous and half swallowed by mist, their peaks disappearing somewhere above the clouds.
Hazel hadn’t expected them to feel quite this massive up close, and Aldrien studied the range with the same seriousness he usually reserved for council meetings, tracing the narrow pass between two peaks that their route would eventually require.
They made camp at the foothills as the light began fading, and before settling in for the night, Hazel wandered a short distance off to look for water.
Something beneath the grass caught her attention, a hint of pale stone poking through the dirt, and she crouched down to clear the growth away.
An old road emerged beneath her hands.
Not a pack road, not anything on their map.
A massive stone path, cracked with age, stretching toward the mountains in a direction that felt deliberate rather than accidental.
Carved into the very first stone was the same moonstone symbol they’d seen back at the shrine.
Aldrien joined her a moment later, crouching beside the carving in silence.
“This wasn’t on our map,” Hazel whispered.
He studied the symbol closely, then looked up toward the mist-covered peaks ahead of them.
“Then I think we just found the road we’re supposed to take,” he said.
Hazel looked back down at the carving, something unsettled stirring in her chest.
It didn’t feel like they’d stumbled onto this road by chance at all.
It felt like the road had been waiting for them.