Chapter 2

The bathroom door swung open and Cain stepped out in a cloud of steam, a towel slung low around his hips. Water traced the lines of his torso—the same body that had pinned three wolves to the ground last Tuesday without so much as shifting.

I shoved Aldric's folder into my bag before he could see it.

"Working on something?" He rubbed a second towel through his dark hair, not really looking at me.

"Supply routes for the northern corridor." I pulled the zipper shut and kept my tone flat.

He didn't press. Just kept drying off, tossing the towel over a chair with the casual ease of a man who'd never had to clean up after himself. "You've been running yourself ragged lately. Maybe pull back from patrols for a while. The pack's well-covered. You don't have to be everywhere."

I stared at him.

Five years, and this man had never once understood what I was. He knew I'd turned down my own territory three times—for him. He knew the work was the only thing that kept the wolf in me from climbing the walls. And still he said things like that, like I was some omega he could park in a comfortable den while he handled the world.

"Maybe." The word tasted like rust on my tongue.

Fourteen more days. That was all. Fourteen days and I'd be out of Ravenhold, out of his orbit, out of this half-life where I mattered only when it was convenient.

In the bedroom, I'd barely pulled the covers over myself when his arm coiled around me from behind. His body was still warm from the shower, that familiar cedar-and-woodsmoke scent wrapping around me—his scent, the one my wolf had memorized so completely that I could find him in a crowd of a hundred. His hand slipped beneath the hem of my shirt.

I seized his wrist. "Don't."

Behind my eyelids—Celeste's post. Those red nails curled possessively around his forearm at some pack dinner I'd never been invited to.

He went still. "What's wrong?"

I turned away, pulling the blanket higher. "Headache."

Silence. Then he shifted closer, pressing his lips against my hair, his palm settling warm and heavy over my stomach. The bond between us—that quiet, insistent thread that wolves called a mate pull—hummed with his concern. "This better?"

In the dark, I squeezed my eyes shut. Tears built pressure behind them like water against a dam. His gentleness felt so real. But so had the lies.

If I actually meant something to him, why was he still tangled up with the she-wolf he swore was ancient history?

His phone lit up on the nightstand. I glanced over before I could stop myself.

Celeste: Remember that place you told me about? The hunters' bar off Greystone Row—the one with the live band. I'm here. Come find me ❤️

My chest caved in.

Last weekend, Cain had promised to take me there. I'd even called ahead under a different name—because that's what you do when your own alpha can't be seen with you in public.

So the ex didn't just get the gifts first. She got our plans, too.

Cain saw the message. He was out of bed in seconds, already reaching for his clothes. "Something's come up at the Greystone post. I need to handle it."

I watched him button the midnight-blue shirt I'd bought him for his last birthday. My voice, when it came out, was strange and distant even to my own ears. "Take me with you. Right now."

His fingers stalled on the cuff for half a beat. "Next week. Things are too unsettled right now. Next week, I promise."

He pocketed his phone, grabbed his coat, and was gone.

The door latched shut. In the silence, I whispered to no one: How much longer am I supposed to wait?

It hadn't always been this way. Last winter I'd mentioned offhand that I'd never watched the first snowfall settle over the Ashridge Valley from the old northern lookout. He'd had the truck running in fifteen minutes, wrapped me in his coat, and stood beside me in the freezing wind until my breath fogged in white clouds—laughing like a man who had nothing more important in the world to do.

Now? One text from her and I stopped existing.

I drifted to the window and watched his truck disappear down the compound road, taillights swallowed by the dark tree line. Then I turned back to face the living room.

The photo wall.

Five years of memories—I'd chosen a hundred shots and pinned them across the exposed stone in neat rows. Our own private record.

The first: the night we settled the Caldwell border dispute, both of us standing on the ridge at dawn, his arm thrown over my shoulder, grinning like wolves who didn't yet know how much blood that ground had cost.

The second: Kyoto, the week he'd taken me overseas under the cover of an inter-pack summit. Cherry blossoms caught in my hair. His mouth on mine in a garden no one from the pack would ever see.

The third: Iceland. Northern lights bleeding green across a black sky. He'd draped his jacket over me and stood shivering in his shirtsleeves, lips nearly blue, too stubborn to admit the cold bothered him.

The fourth: New Year's Eve in the mountains. Snow in our hair. His forehead pressed to mine like we were the only two wolves left on earth.

Every frame held a story I thought I'd carry forever. When he'd first seen the wall, he'd pulled me against him and murmured: A hundred pictures. A hundred years. That's the deal.

Turns out the deal expired long before the century was up.

I reached for the first photo and pulled. The tape tore. I moved to the next, and the next, working my way across the wall until my hands were trembling and the stone behind was bare. The pin holes dotted the grey rock like a scatter of old wounds—fitting, really. Our relationship had always been full of holes. I'd just refused to see them.

After the last frame came down, I checked my phone. Celeste had posted again.

Some people remember every promise you ever whispered ? #GreystoneRow #HeKnows

Center of the grid—two hands intertwined on a candlelit table. I knew those scarred knuckles. I knew that watch. I'd given him that watch.

My lungs forgot how to work.

Before I could close the app, a notification dropped. A voice note. From Celeste.

I stared at the play button for a long time. Then, like someone watching their own hand from very far away, I pressed it.

"Cain—slower—it hurts..."

Her sounds. His breathing. Low and rough and unmistakable—and worse than anything, carrying the rumble that only surfaced when a wolf was close to the edge of his control.

The phone hit the stone floor.

I sat on the couch and watched the screen fade to black. So after Greystone Row, there had been a second act.

Something inside me snapped clean—not the ragged, agonized kind of breaking, but the precise, final snap of a bone set wrong finally being reset. It hurt exactly that much, and then the pain became something else entirely.

I stood up and got to work.

Cain came back close to midnight, that foreign perfume trailing him like a second shadow. He shrugged off his coat and froze at the empty wall.

"Mara. Where are the photos?"

I curled my fingers until my nails bit into my palms. "They fell. I put them away."

I turned toward the hallway. He followed.

"Why not put them back?"

I glanced at him—the open collar of his shirt, the faint bruise along his throat that hadn't been there this morning, the thin mark at his collarbone that no pack business ever leaves behind.

I looked away. "The pins gave out. Nothing to hold them up anymore."

Relief smoothed his face. He hadn't caught the meaning. "I'll fix it this weekend. We'll put them all back."

He disappeared into the bathroom. The door clicked shut.

I stood in the hallway and spoke to the closed door in a voice only I could hear.

"You can rehang photos, Cain. You can't rehang what's already dead."