Nova found me in the garden three mornings later, curled on the same fountain edge that had become something like my thinking spot over the last two weeks, and settled beside me with the careful, hesitant energy of someone still relearning how to simply exist without watching over her shoulder.
“Dr.
Voss cleared me,” she said.
“Said the bruises from the enforcer’s grip are healing fine.
No lasting damage.” “Good.” I studied her carefully, cataloging the small changes two years apart had etched into her features — sharper cheekbones, a wariness around her eyes that hadn’t been there when I’d last held her as a carefree fourteen-year-old.
“How are you actually doing?
Not the version you’d tell Elias, or the pack Elders.
The truth.” She was quiet for a long moment, tracing patterns in the fountain’s water with one finger.
“Scared, mostly.
Everything here is so different.
Isabella’s been kind, and Adrian’s men have been careful not to make me feel like a prisoner, but I keep waiting for someone to tell me this was all a mistake and send me back.” “That’s not happening.” I said it with a certainty I felt down to my bones.
“Whatever else stays uncertain about all of this, that part isn’t.
You’re safe here, Nova.
For good.” Something in her posture eased slightly, though the wariness didn’t fully leave her eyes.
“I believed you were dead for almost two weeks,” she said quietly.
“Elias made sure the whole pack believed it.
I had to grieve you, Wren, while pretending in front of everyone that I was simply managing the loss appropriately, because showing too much wasn’t considered proper for a future enforcer’s discipline.” The casual cruelty of that — a sixteen-year-old forced to perform composure over grief for a sister she believed murdered — settled heavy and furious in my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For all of it.
For not being able to reach you sooner, for leaving you there as long as I did—” “Don’t.” Nova’s voice sharpened slightly.
“None of this was your choice, Wren.
I know that.
I’ve had two weeks to actually think it through instead of just reacting to it.” She met my eyes directly, something older and steadier than her sixteen years settling into her expression.
“What I need from you isn’t guilt.
It’s honesty.
What’s actually happening?
What am I walking into, staying here?” I told her everything — the bloodline, the erasure faction, the Ferro Alpha’s assassination, the careful, dangerous week of preparation still ahead of us.
She listened without interrupting, her expression cycling through fear and disbelief and, finally, something that looked almost like fierce, protective determination.
“Then teach me,” she said, once I’d finished.
“Teach you what?” “Whatever Lucian’s been teaching you.
The training, the control.” Her jaw set with a stubbornness I recognized instantly as an echo of my own.
“I’m not going to sit in this house being protected while you walk into danger for both of us.
I want to actually help.” “Nova, you don’t carry the bloodline.
Whatever I’m learning to summon, it’s not something you can—” “Then teach me to fight the ordinary way.” She cut across my protest with surprising firmness.
“I’ve had basic pack training since I was twelve, same as you did.
I’m not helpless.
I just need someone willing to actually let me use what I already know, instead of deciding for me that I’m too fragile to be part of this.” I studied her for a long moment, recognizing in her insistence the same fierce refusal to be sidelined that had carried me through every impossible thing the last two weeks had demanded of me.
“Okay,” I said finally.
“We’ll talk to Sal.
See what training he thinks is actually useful, given everything we’re facing.” Relief and gratitude flickered across her face in equal measure, and for a moment, sitting together at the fountain’s edge, some small, precious piece of the sisterly closeness we’d shared before the ceremony’s rejection settled back into place between us.
“Can I ask you something else?” Nova said, after a comfortable silence had stretched between us.
“Anything.” “Adrian.” A small, knowing smile tugged at her mouth despite everything we’d just discussed.
“You look at him like—” She hesitated, searching for the right words.
“Like someone finally looking at you the way you always deserved to be looked at.” Warmth crept up my neck despite the exhaustion still lingering from the last several days.
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“New.
Terrifying, honestly, after everything with Ronan.” “But good terrifying?” I thought of Adrian’s steady hand finding mine in every crisis, his fierce, unwavering certainty that I was worth protecting regardless of the danger I carried, the raw honesty of his confession in the safehouse study.
“Good terrifying,” I agreed quietly.
Nova’s smile widened, some of the earlier wariness finally softening into something closer to genuine relief.
“I’m glad,” she said.
“You deserve that.
After everything.” Isabella found us there a few minutes later, carrying a tray of tea with the easy, welcoming warmth that had made her one of the first genuine comforts I’d found in this strange new world.
She settled beside Nova without hesitation, already deep in easy conversation about nothing important within minutes — training schedules, favorite foods, small ordinary details that felt almost startlingly precious after two weeks of nothing but crisis and danger.
“You know,” Isabella said, during a lull in the conversation, “my own family history isn’t nearly as dramatic as a lost royal bloodline, but there’s actually an old story about my mother’s side that I never quite understood until recently.” “What story?” I asked, curiosity piqued.
“My grandmother used to talk about serving ‘the old moon families,’ back before she married into the Vitale line properly.” Isabella’s brow furrowed slightly, like she was reaching for a half-remembered detail she’d never thought worth examining closely before.
“I always assumed it was just old superstition, the kind every family collects eventually.
But given everything you’ve told us about the Sovereignty and the Keepers—” She trailed off, something uncertain crossing her expression, and I felt a fresh chill settle low in my stomach despite the warm, ordinary comfort of the garden around us.
“Isabella,” I said slowly, “do you know what family your grandmother actually served?” Isabella’s frown deepened, clearly trying to dredge up details she’d never had reason to examine this closely before.
“I don’t,” she admitted.
“But I know exactly where her old journals are kept.
If there’s anything useful in them, we should probably find out before we’re any further into whatever’s actually still hunting you.” The comfortable, ordinary warmth of the morning shifted subtly beneath us, another thread of the ancient conspiracy surfacing unexpectedly close to home, and I understood, with the now-familiar weight of a world that refused to let danger stay neatly contained to a single front, that whatever answers Isabella’s grandmother’s journals held, they weren’t likely to stay simple for long.
[End of Chapter 23]